Layla | Mahomet-Seymour Bulldogs Senior

I texted my friends an hour after this session: “Life-giving senior session tonight!” Gosh, I really do love photographing seniors, and Layla and her mom puts lots of thought and planning into her session and it showed! I loved her outfits and all the locations that we planned together.

When I was in college, the Boneyard Creek was a nasty place that you avoided at all costs unless you really wanted to go get a tetanus shot afterward. Broken glass, smelly, who knows what floating in it… LOL — but several years back a lot of work and money was put into it to make it clean and beautiful again. I have always been intimidated to go down to it for the above reason, and because I just didn’t know how to get in even though I’d seen other photographer friends’ images from there. I am so happy to say that we tackled it and it was SO WORTH IT.

Layla and her mom wanted to do an homage to the veterans in their family, so we started out at the war memorial by the Champaign County Courthouse in Urbana, and then did the first 1/3 of the session in the super cool downtown Urbana area.

Part 2/3 was the Boneyard Creek stretch that goes through the Bardeen Engineering Quad on campus. The weather was perfect, and the water level was low, just up to Layla’s ankles. THE LIGHT WAS AMAZING. If you’ve been on a session with me, there’s a good chance I uttered the words, “I love the light coming through the trees!” And the stars aligned for this set (especially the biggest star!)

The final part was at the Hazen Bridge north of Mahomet where the sun was just beginning to dip under the horizon. This bridge is in the National Register for Historic Places. It’s a pretty cool spot!

Thanks, Layla, for an amazing session!! Obviously I’m partial to redheads, but you totally killed it! Best of luck with your senior year at Mahomet-Seymour High School!