So your 'Baby' is Going to be a Senior in High School. . .

By now you've gotten that postcard from your child's high school photograher giving you the appointment date for your child's senior class picture.  After you deal with the automatic, "My baby!  A senior in high school already - where did the time go?!" moment or moments, the next thing that pops up is, "Wow, I hope this doesn't get too expensive. . . ."

Yeah.  I'm here to tell you, as a surviving parent of two high school graduates . . . it does!  The pictures cost tons of money, especially if you are like me and commemorate things with pictures, and want everyone in your circle to have a picture of aforesaid baby because, after all, it takes a village!  Then there are other senior things - the senior class t-shirt, the senior picnic, the senior ball or senior prom (depending on your kids high school), graduation announcements, graduation celebration, last minute last rounds of SAT and ACT testing, college application costs, and then that first payment to college.  All in the next 12 to 13 months!  Yowsa!

So, the first time around, I sent Alex, my oldest,  for his in-school photo appoiontment, and he came home with beautiful picture proofs.  He was wearing a photographer-owned tux jacket, and a photographer-owned tux shirt, and his own, gorgeous, beautiful smile.  I got to peruse the 8 - 12 proofs, and then pick a package of prints.  They were all so well designed!  How should I pick?  How many did he want to give away? How many did we want to give away? How many and what sizes should we keep? Were we going to give any large prints to friends or relatives?  Well, I bought exactly zero photos of my son's beautiful Senior portrait.  I couldn't afford even the smallest package, which didn't meet our needs - too many people, not enough photographs.  Yes, it is a moment of a lifetime, but I couldn't afford it, and do the rest of the stuff too.  So, bye bye senior portrait.

Then along came James, high school senior #2.  In the interim, Alex had gotten engaged and married, and I had been given a signed copy of the book called "Let Me Eat Cake: A Celebration of Flour, Sugar, Butter, Eggs, Vanilla, Baking Powder, and a Pinch of Salt", and a photographer-client-friendship was born.  Leslie F. Miller (LeslieFMiller.com) is the mom of my neice's best friend, a writer, a photographer, an artist in other media, and a really cool person!  She's local to Baltimore, and she's willing to do what I want with photos, not some preconceived notion of what should be done.  So, when Alex got engaged, my husband and I took some photos of the ring on his bride-to-be's hand, and asked Leslie to take the engagement photos.  Several weeks later, off they went to an arboretum in Baltimore, and spent a little over an hour capturing Alex and his love in poses serious and silly, loving and playful, romantic and goofy.  All the words that describe Alex. 

So, we asked her to take James's Senior Portrait.  And she did.  She asked me about what he did.  I told her that he was a drum major in marching band, and he loved to ride his bike.  She thought about it, bugged me for more information, and thought some more.  We ended up meeting at Lake Montebello, James was supposed to bring his bike with him, but he forgot, so we borrowed one.  He brought his drum major's mace to use as a prop in some of his pictures.  He wore his Green Lantern T-shirt, and changed into a Justice League t-shirt mid-way through the photo shoot.  Leslie, James, and I trudged through brush and up a steep hill to get photos in the falling down grafiti house, then went to Herring Run to capture some shots of him on a bike by the water.  All-in-all, it was a wonderful hour and a few minutes spent with an engaging, interested, and interesting woman, my child and a Nikon.  We got very warm, but she took some great shots.  Within two weeks, I had a CD with 102 photographs on it, and the ability to post them online wherever I wanted, print them wherever I wanted (she will print them for you too), crop them if I chose (why would I, she had already done so much, each shot was incredible without my fiddling), and have them forever.  All of this was much less expensive than the smallest senior class portrait package from the standard school photographers.  Add in the photos that I had printed at Walmart and it was STILL so much cheaper than the other guys.  Add in the $25 sitting fee I paid to the other guys so that James could have the standard tux-shot for the school yearbook, and it was still cheaper.  And better.  And I had fun.  And James had fun.  And I found a few new nice spots in Baltimore to go hiking (along Herring Run, there is a great bike path/hiking path!).