Christian doesn’t crave the spotlight or relish having his picture taken. So throw in a suit and tie and a sweltering evening at the local retail and dining hub, this could have been a recipe for senior portrait meltdown. But Christian is a band kid.

Marchers are trained to put on multiple layers of polyester, shoulder pads, and headgear and look performance ready at all extremes of temperature and humidity. So Christian showed his mettle and heat tolerance and maintained his poise through the whole session. He could handle multiple posing directions thrown together, he was very responsive to verbal and visual cues, and his posture was always excellent.

The other thing that band kids learn is to never believe the director when they say “one more time.” So Christian was wise enough to not believe me when I told him he was almost done, or I wanted to get just one more spot. He stayed polite until dismissal, which I truly appreciated.