What sort of feelings does that sentence inspire within you?

 

Do you feel excitement about the next chapter of life? Nostalgia at the chapters that have already gone by? Fear or apprehension for the uncertainty that comes with the real adult life?

 

If you’re anything like us, it’s a great mix of all those feelings wrapped up with about a dozen more. But as a professional photographers, Final Exercises at the University of Virginia also means something totally different: it means that we’re about to have the busiest six weeks of the year.

 

As Charlottesville-based portrait photographers with deep ties to the UVA community, we’ll likely do more portrait photoshoots between now and mid-May than we have in the last four months combined.

 

And we couldn’t be more excited.

 

To the ordinary person, this daunting and inevitable increase in business (and therefore busy-ness) that occurs around Final Exercises could be incredibly stressful. The difference is, the ordinary person doesn’t love portrait shoots as much as we do!

 

I got my start almost half a decade ago shooting senior portraits for some friends and friends-of-friends, and have loved graduates ever since. There’s just something about the excitement and uncertainty – along with the boldness and bravado – that comes with being a senior in high school or college that translates to beautiful and confident smiles.

 

 

And to top it off, since moving to Charlottesville we’ve been given one of the most beautiful college campuses (aka Grounds) in the entire nation to use as a backdrop. Although we’ve done graduation shoots outside of the University’s Lawn, most 4th-years want to spend every minute they can walking the length of Jefferson’s Academical Village, even if only for an hour longer.

 

When it comes down to it, this is why we love the graduation shoot here at UVA. As many students very well know, in practically no time at all, it’ll all be over. The Lawn will have been walked and the Honor of Honors will have been worn. The families will have left town, and the new alumni will begin the next chapter of their lives. And when graduates look back on their time at UVA for decades to come, we know that our photos will get to be a small and beautiful part of that.

 

 

To the impending graduates, we leave you with the (virtually unknown) second verse of the Good Old Song:

 

“What though the tide of years may roll, and drift us far apart,
For alma mater still there’ll be a place in every heart.
In college days we sing her praise, and so, when far away,
In memory we still shall be at the dear old UVA.”

 

Here’s to you, Class of 2017. Congratulations!

 

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If you’d like to book your own graduation session in minutes, click here!