Senior Portraits: Xavier at Fort Monroe, VA

About 80% of my video and photography business is based on relationships. Not a romantic relationship, but lifelong friendships created in college or professional relationships established during my days in tv news and at NASA. As we live, learn and travel, the people we meet along the way become the customers that rely on you to capture their memories in video or still imagery. Serving friends, family and colleagues isn’t the end of the road. They eventually tell a friend, or family member and then those people call and request services. That was what happened with Xavier.

When I first started shooting still photography many years ago, Xavier’s mom, Genevieve, was a willing participant in my photo tests and trials that I shot all around the Hampton Roads area. As the years passed, she reached out to me for some family portraits as well as some nice individual portraits that I still use in my portfolios on the website.

Fast forward to 2021. Xavier is now a graduating senior from Kecoughtan High School. His mom reached out to me well in advance of graduation and asked me to get with Xavier to shoot his senior portraits. Xavier wasn’t really gung-ho about a senior pictures session, but he appeased his mom and got on board for the photo shoot. As we prepared for our shoot, I asked Xavier about his hobbies and what types of images he’d like to get from our senior portrait session. So Xavier, who is a lifeguard, an avid swimmer and longboard rider wanted to incorporate all of those aspects of his life into his senior portraits. He also wanted to represent his future university, Coastal Carolina, in the shoot. So we settled on 2 locations, his high school and the Fort Monroe beach.

We just rolled with the flow and knocked out a series of images in front of Kecoughtan HS, on Fort Monroe near the lifeguard tower, along the beach, and boardwalk. After each location, I showed Xavier what we captured and his enthusiasm about shooting senior portraits grew more by the minute. At the end of the day, Xavier was happy, and his mom was relieved that we finally got her son’s pictures in the can. Xavier has a little sister. I’m sure she will be ringing my phone shortly.