This super-busy, high-achieving senior, among her many juggled responsibilities, also happens to be a wind goddess. If you’ve read Douglas Adams’s So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish, the rain clouds followed a character named Rob McKenna constantly because he was a rain god, and they wanted to love and cherish him. In much the same manner, on both my senior portrait sessions with Jessica, we’ve been abundantly supplied with wind, not gentle breezes, but hearty, robust gusts that would have left me short one speedlight and softbox if Jessica didn’t have exessively quick reflexes to catch them.

Cincinnati senior on rock

In a typical senior portrait session, I have the luxury of clicking the shutter whenever I see an gesture that intrigues me, but because of the wind, Jessica had to maintain her pose constantly, and we got a few shots in whenever the wind calmed enough to brush her hair out of her face. Looking at Jessica’s hair reminds me of a scene from The Gilmore Girls where someone assures Rory that she is going to make it to Harvard because she has that “really good, straight, shiny Harvard hair.”

Cincinnati senior on bench Cincinnati senior by tree

Even though the stiff breeze was doing its best to disrupt Jessica’s hair, it didn’t undermine her composure, and one could see that this was not the type of young lady that was going to be held back from her goals by unfortunate weather.

Cincinnati senior by tree

Congratulations, Jessica, on your graduation, and good luck in all your pursuits!