Look, you're not really here to read about me. You're here to figure out whether you trust me alone with your seventeen-year-old for two hours.

Fair. So:

I'm 49. I have four daughters. Three of them are teenagers. I've been photographing seniors in the Merrimack Valley since 2016, which means I've shot through the wheat-field years, the urban-brick years, the prom-staircase years, and whatever this year is calling itself.

I don't shoot any of those.

What I shoot is who she actually is, that month, with the hair she's been growing out since February. The reason I can shoot that is because I've sat in my own kitchen and watched a senior year happen, the part that's loud, the part that isn't, the part where she suddenly seems older on a Tuesday for no reason that you can name.

My job in the session is to do all the thinking so neither of you have to. Where she stands. What she does with her hands. When she's tired and wants to sit down (we sit down). When she's lit up and we should keep going (we keep going). You don't have to coach her from the side. I don't want you to. That's the deal.

 Here's the thing I'd tell you if we were sitting down:

The best senior portraits I've ever shot have one thing in common, and it isn't lighting or location or what she was wearing. It's that her mom — *you* — told her in the car on the drive over: "Just be yourself; he'll handle it." Then she walked in, and I did.

If that's the kind of session you're looking for, I'd love to meet her.

— Ian

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