Emma M.'s Senior Portrait

Don't you hate it when you run your gels and the bands are all muddled and the data is crappy?  Emma and I commiserated about gel electrophoresis, which is something she's doing in her biotech class.  This totally blows my mind, by the way, because I didn't even know what a Western Blot was until I took genetics my sophomore year...of college.  I can't believe you can even take a class called biotechnology in high school now.  Amazing.

Emma does not love having pictures taken.  That gives us another thing in common.  Unlike me though, Emma has the most adorable dimples and she kept complaining that her dimple was getting tired.  So during this shoot, whenever I needed to adjust my camera settings, I would say "relax your dimple."  ​

Emma has the best schedule ever right now.  Most of the week she's done with school by noon.  On that other day she's done by 11:30am.  Part of the reason for that is that she's doing a work study.  She has a pretty sweet job: she's a waitress at a retirement community.  Emma admitted that the job is challenging but she recently got a raise and is making decent money.  ​

One crazy thing happened during this shoot when we were on this raised trait. I love this path- it's up high and gets great light at sunset.  But you know who else likes this path?  Lots of people.  Especially people out walking their dogs.  And that's totally fine except for the couple that walked towards us with their super friendly golden retriever who was soaking wet and off-leash.  I asked them nicely to please keep the dog away from the photoshoot because I was really worried that it was going to shake all over Emma in her lovely white romper.  And you know what they did?  ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.  And of course the dog ran right up to us!  So I got the dog by the collar and walked it around Emma so she would be out of the potential shake-zone.  The folks, who we thereafter referred to as "the mean dog people" then spoke loudly about having the right to do whatever they want with their dog in a public park and kept walking.  Astonishing.  

Thankfully everything turned out just fine.  We got our lovely sunset, Emma stayed perfectly dry, and all was well.   ​