“Do we have enough for a ’27 with these tennis balls?”
I asked Shaad, Ben’s mom, as we were wrapping up his senior session.
She brought her hands to her cheeks.
“Oh my gosh. 2027 is next year. He’s graduating next year.”
And there it was.
That moment.
The moment when senior year suddenly stops being some distant thing on the calendar and becomes real.
I see some version of this at almost every senior session. Sometimes it happens to the senior. Sometimes it happens to a parent. A cap and tassel comes out. We take the first senior-year photo. A parent sees their child in a suit or holding their sport’s equipment. And suddenly, this isn’t just a photo session anymore.
This is their senior.
Ben’s session was otherwise pretty easy breezy.
We started at the Krause Gateway Center, where Ben showed up in a handsome suit and gave me his best Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson smolder. He absolutely committed to the bit—and then immediately started laughing at himself. Which, honestly, gave us some of my favorite images from that part of the evening.
From there, we hustled over to Gray’s Lake.
The weather had me watching the radar pretty closely because we’d already experienced a monsoon that morning, and I wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to get the tennis images Ben wanted before another round of rain potentially moved in.
Thankfully, I worried more than I needed to.
As we sat on the rocks near the water, the sun started breaking through the clouds. The clouds began to separate, the light softened, and I could practically feel myself exhale.
I didn’t have to rush anymore.
We had time.
We got some beautiful images around the lake, then made our way to the entrance of Ben’s high school with his cap and tassel in hand before heading to the tennis courts.
And this is where Ben really got to be Ben.
His teammates were practicing doubles, so we had a built-in cheering section. They also became very willing assistants when I needed tennis balls flying behind Ben for a little action in the images.
We worked the courts, the nets, the movement and the energy of the sport he loves.
And somewhere in all of that, there were enough tennis balls for a very important realization.
2027.
Graduation!
The last thing I want senior pictures to feel like is a checklist of pretty photos. I want them to give families little moments where they can stop and realize:
This is my kid.
This is this season.
This is really happening.
Ben’s session gave Shaad that moment. And I suspect there will be plenty more between now and graduation. It ended up being one of those quintessential Iowa summer evenings—warm but not muggy, beautiful light, just enough clouds to make the sky interesting, and no rainstorm chasing us out of our locations. As a photographer who spends a fair amount of summer with one eye on the radar, I don’t take evenings like that for granted. And I definitely don’t take these seniors for granted, either.
I’m so grateful I get a front-row seat to this season!
