Senior year is a special time. It’s not just turning a page in life, but a pivotal page that needs to be captured. I love images that tell a story and show off personality. I’d love to highlight you or your senior.
I run my senior sessions as follows.
Senior Speed Session – $300
Perfect for when you just need a few photos for an invitation or your school’s yearbook? I like to have fun with senior sessions and this QUICK 20-30 minute session is as easy and painless as possible. We’ll meet at your local school or a similar location for the photo session. After the session is over, you’ll get an email to an online proof gallery. The session fee is $300 and includes the session, an online gallery to choose images from, and a $100 photo credit toward purchased photos from your session.
Senior Session – $500
A full senior session lets you show off a little personality. If you want photos that actually capture your interests and show who you are in more detail, this is the session for you.
A senior session starts off with a brief meeting where we can get to know each other a little bit and plan out your shoot so that we capture your interests. After your shoot is planned, The actual session will be scheduled for a different day. The session usually lasts up to 3 hours and can be tailored to various personal interests. If you are into sports, we can spend an hour shooting sports. If you have some other fun hobbies we can transition to that. We can get a variety of different looks in this one session. The session includes a proof gallery and a photo credit of $200 towards images or prints purchased.
Add On Couple – $100
Senior photo sessions are intended to highlight the personality of one person. However, sometimes a high school sweetheart is a significant part of your senior year. We’re happy to capture that aspect as well, but a couples shoot is a very different shoot than an individual portrait session. Just let us know and we will add on up to 30 minutes into your senior session for your boyfriend or girlfriend.
Add On Speed Session – $300 $250
Do you have more hobbies than we can fit into your Senior Session? Book a separate Speed Session with your senior session.
A Year in the Life of a High School Senior
Sometimes High School Seniors have a lot of hobbies and interests that cover more areas than can be fit into just one session or even two sessions. For many people, it’s not just a few photos from one day that they want to capture. You may want photos to remember your whole Senior year. The senior year package consists of up to four different sessions spread across the year. The sessions can be customized but ideally, we’ll begin in the summer before school starts. We can spend some time capturing water sports or some other summertime activity, etc… The next session is typically scheduled just after school is starting and temperatures begin to come down. This session can be a Friday night lights theme or more of a casual session that captures the beginning of your school year. The next session is really special. You’re halfway through your senior year. If hunting is your passion, we can shoot your own outdoor life session. For the final session, you’ll be wrapping up school and spring hobbies or softball or baseball maybe your life. College or trade school or military service may be your next step. These decisions are huge. We’d love to capture that part of your personality as well.
The total investment in all 3 sessions is $1,500 with a 10% deposit due at booking, the remaining balance will be divided into 3 equal payments due at each session or before the final shoot. This helps spread the cost over the course of the year instead of one lump sum. These sessions come with your own private online gallery and a $300 photo credit toward photos from your gallery.
Add On Speed Session – $300 $150
Didn’t get everything you wanted in your Senior Session. Book a separate Speed Session with your senior session
A photo credit toward the purchase of photos is included with each session, but your session fee does not include digital files and does not include sales taxes on photos. Prints start as low as $10 and digital photos may be purchased through your gallery at $30/photo or $500/full gallery of images. The session fee is a creative fee that covers the time spent planning your shoot, the session itself, and editing/organizing the files for a photo gallery of images from the session. If you need a digital copy of an image from your gallery, digital photos may be purchased individually or as part of a separate photo package using the photo credit which is included with your session. If you want to share your senior portraits with friends and family online (and who doesn’t!), you’ll want to share your digital online gallery from our website. The photos are watermarked and are not printable, but your photo gallery can easily be shared online to highlight your senior year and has no expiration date.
Do you travel?
I frequently travel for photo shoots. Travel within 1 hour of El Dorado, AR is included in the session fee. But if you have somewhere in mind that is beyond approximately 60 miles of El Dorado, additional travel expenses incurred will be added to the final invoice.
The other day, I shared a link to my personal Facebook page where a friend/client is using some of my photos for an online modeling competition called “Ms. Starts and Stripes“. Turns out I have three friends and two clients who have entered the competition. Jessica McGee, Cambry Thurmon, and Charlotte Rockett are all in the competition to be “Ms. Stars and Stripes”. The winner gets $25,000 a magazine spread in STAR Magazine and will act as a spokesperson for a year traveling to events like like the PBR and others
Jessica McGee
Cambry Thurmon
To win, competitors submit photos and a bio where they solicit votes from friends through social media. Each competitor gets one free vote each day and can buy extra votes to raise money for a charity. In this case, the charity is American Royal, a Kansas City based nonprofit that hosts rodeo and equine events as well as does a lot of Ag education outreach.
This is not my first involvement with this type of contest. Last year, I did some photos for Santanna Mitchell who competed in the “Ms. Health and Fitness” competition. It had the same format but was based around fitness and supported a first responders charity.
However, there have been some questions raised about whether these competitions and charities are on the up and up. Some of the information online appears vague and the competition asks for credit card information which kind of raises some red flags for many. If my photos are going to be involved with something and if I’m going to ask my friends to help vote or support something, I wanted to make absolutely sure that it is in fact legit. So, I did some digging.
First, I looked all over the websites for clues as to who is connected with the organization. I found two contacts other than the organization itself to verify what was online. First I contacted American Royal. They were aware of the competition but their PR person had only been with them for a couple of months and wasn’t fully up to speed yet on the exact ins and outs of the competition or fundraising efforts but told me a company called Colossal is involved with the competition. They are in effect the “operator” of these types of competitions. Colossal is a for-profit online marketing company. They take a percentage of the funds raised, but I believe around 70-75% of the funds raised go to the chosen charity.
After going through the Colossal website and social pages, I had more questions than answers because everything was recently posted. But I found that they were connected with a non-profit organization called DTCare. I left a voicemail with them asking for information.
I then reached out to Natalie Kovarik via e-mail. Natalie is listed as the host of the competition. Natalie is an influencer in the ranching/agriculture world with a large Instagram following. However, I didn’t immediately see any connection between here and the competition. I didn’t hear back from Natalie directly, but just a short time after e-mailing her, I received an e-mail directly from the MS Stars and Stripes organization.
Natalie had obviously forwarded my e-mail to them because they knew that I had contacted both Natalie and the American Royal. I still had a few questions in my mind, but the e-mail confirmed that a lot of what was going on was in fact legitimate. I responded to their e-mail and I did have a few more serious questions that I was looking for answers to.
I guess my due diligence had set off a fire within the organization because the next day, not only did I hear from the Ms. Stars and Stripes organization, but I’m pretty sure I received phone calls from virtually everyone involved in any level of the organization. The first phone calls that I got were from DTCare.
DTCare is a US-based charity also doing some cool charity work overseas in Poland, Ukraine, and other regions. I’m not an accountant so I don’t exactly understand this part, but I believe for some tax purposes, the funds raised pass through another nonprofit partner called DTCare. I don’t think DTCare is using any of the funds but DTcare is then passing the funds on to the American Royal or whatever the chosen charity is for the competition. While on the phone I got to speak directly to one of DTCare’s accountants and another Administrative staffer who filled me in on so much of what DTCare is doing and specifically how they work with Colossal.
Next, I received a phone call from a guy from Ms. Stars and Strips competition. He went over all of the concerns I’d raised about the organization, the Ms. Health and Fitness competition, and several other similar competitions/fundraisers that they work with. They have now been running these types of events for the past 8 years.
Before the day was over I got a call from the founder of DTCare. We had a great conversation about how the organization works and other things they are involved with.
I can say that I’ve never had so many people act so quickly and so fully address concerns with any organization. After all of this, to the best of my knowledge, Yes, this is a legit competition. It is a legit charity. If you are so inclined, go vote for one of these girls and help a charity. I don’t remember exactly how far or how much money has been raised through them, but I do know that last year, Santanna Mitchell made it pretty far in the competition last year.
If I can help anyone build their personal brand or help a charity with my photos, I’d love to work with you.
Thank you parents for choosing us and trusting us to shoot your baseball players photos. We had a lot of fun with them. While there are similarities between photos, It was my goal to create some cool, creative photos for each team and each player. Hopefully we succeeded in that goal.
You can view all of the photos in our Photo Galleries page, but I pulled a few of my favorites. I hope you like them.
If you have any questions about photos, orders, or would like to find out how to work with us in the future, give us a holler, we’d love to help you.
Around noon today, I got a call from my brother saying “Hey, Smokey and The Bandit left Texarkana this morning headed down Hwy 82. They just came through Magnolia and are in Village, Arkansas headed your way”. I dropped everything. I left my lunch, grabbed a camera and jumped in the truck like Buford T. Justice on a hot tip hoping to finally catch the notorious Smokey and the Bandit.
Luckily, I’m fairly close to Hwy 82 in El Dorado, Arkansas so I headed to an overpass that usually has very little traffic. I got there just in time to see the lead car in “The Bandit Run” coming my way.
Pontiac Trans Am part of The Bandit Run along US Hwy 82 in El Dorado, Arkansas
According to the events website, The Bandit Run is an event put on by a company called Restore A Muscle Car.
“The Bandit Run is a yearly event started by Dave Hall of Restore a Muscle Car and David Hershey in 2007. The first year was a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the movie Smokey and the Bandit. The 2007 run re-enacted the drive from Texarkana to Atlanta.
The mission of the Bandit Run is to get classic cars out of the garage and onto the road.”
It was pretty cool to see coming down the highway. If you were a part of the group if if you just missed it, you can view or purchase images from the run as they passed through El Dorado, Arkansas by visiting our photo gallery.
After last nights cool front here in Arkansas, its finally fall. It feels amazing outside this morning. There are lots of fall posts on social media and people gearing up for fall photo sessions as well as fall hunting seasons that are getting underway. In celebration, I felt like I needed to post a fall photo or two to social media. As I was going through fall photos to share, I’ve got plenty of fall landscape photos but they say one of the keys to improving your landscape photography is placing people in your images. Although I didn’t know her long, this lady is one of my people. Her name is Ann Clark.
Who was Ann Clark?
In the fall of 2015, I got to meet Ann when I was asked to film a deer hunt with “some old lady” in Arkansas. I’m pretty sure those were the exact words Bill first used to describe her in the first phone call. His old high school basketball coach Arden Chapman had set the hunt up and the story of how that all happened is pretty involved on its own but Bills first words were pretty honest after all since she was 90 something at the time. I honestly didn’t know who she was at the time either. I had to google her. Sorry Mrs Ann.
I soon learned that Ann was one of the pioneers of the outdoor industry. She was one of the first of what we would now call a “pro staff” member of an outdoor company. She is a founding member of the Archery Hall of Fame. Her display cases are one of the first things you see when you walk into the museum at the Bass Pro Shop in Springfield MO. Long before names like Michael Waddell, Jim Shockey, or Eva Shockey or for that matter any of the other big names in the modern outdoor hunting industry were even born, Ann Clark was paving the way. Her contemporaries were mostly men like Fred Bear, Ben Pearson or Earl and Ann Hoyt.
Ann said she got started in archery when she and her former husband started a sporting goods store in Cincinnati, OH called Clark’s Archery and Sports Center. They didn’t have all of the archery options that we have to day so her husband tried to make a long bow fit her by cutting a section off of both ends to make it shorter and shorten the draw length. She said it was like shooting a broom stick. It’s a wonder she kept shooting but she did. And she got good too.
Its a Mental Game
Ann Clark became a competitive archery shooter as well as a bow hunter. She told me she had seen in various publications that Ann Webber Hoyt from Hoyt Archery was the person to beat. She was good and was winning all of the matches. At her first big match she found out she was going to be standing on the shooting line next to Ann Hoyt. Ann Hoyt was very intimidating, but in the middle of that match Ann Clark realized that she wasn’t competing against Ann Hoyt she was competing against herself. She said “Archery is a mental game and I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted by how Ann Hoyt or anyone else was shooting, I had to focus on my own target. The scores of Ann Hoyt or other competitors didn’t matter. It was only my personal score that mattered.”
“Archery is a mental game and I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted by how Ann Hoyt or anyone else was shooting, I had to focus on my own target.”
Ann Clark
Mic drop, que the music. Let me re-state that so the world can hear it again. It doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing. You focus on you and being the best person that you can be. You can’t change other people you can only change you. You can’t worry about how many likes, shares, or comments someone else gets. You have to focus on you. It doesn’t matter how much money someone else makes. You have to focus on you. I wish today’s world could get that. You can’t even worry about who else has the vaccine that’s all over the news today. All you have to worry about is you and being the best person you can be.
I can’t remember for sure if she said she’d beaten Ann Hoyt in that first match but Ann Clark scored the highest score she’d ever achieved that day. The two Anns became the closest of friends after that day. I believe they actually lived together for a while in their later years before Ann Hoyt Passed away.
As I mentioned before, She became a pro staffer for Ben Pearson Archery. Ben Pearson Archery was one of the first companies to market themselves with pro staff members. It was especially unique to have a woman like Ann Clark doing the job, but she did it well.
Ann’s daughter Debbie was also an accomplished archer
Images courtesy Ben Pearson family archives
She toured sports shows as she called them and did archery exhibitions in schools and other events all over the country. Here she demonstrates how she used to shoot a balloon from an assistant’s mouth. Can you imagine? She said she stopped doing this when a student popped a popcorn bag right before she shot. No one was ever hurt in her performances but she said she didn’t need that kind of excitement anymore.
Ann Clark demonstrating how her assistant would hold a balloon for her to shoot. No seriously!!
She had spunk like few others that I have known. I got to film her last two hunts with her before she passed away. She had moved to a crossbow instead of her traditional archery equipment. But she could still hunt.
Hunt at Longbow
For the first of the two hunts we would be hunting at the historic Long Bow Resort in Prim, Arkansas. It would be a fitting hunt since this property was originally her friend Ben Person’s farm and is now owned and operated by his son Ben Person Jr. Its a beautiful property with some of the coolest cabins and waterfalls and especially that fall, it was some of the best fall color I’ve ever seen.
We met Ann and her daughter Debbie at the Little Rock airport. A representative from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission was there to personally present Mrs Ann with her hunting license. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had that happen to me. For a lot of people, if a representative from the Game and Fish commission is there, someone has some questions to answer. Mrs Ann though was plumb royalty and it was proof that we were hunting with the Queen bee of archery.
After a short stop at Mikes Place in Conway, for dinner, we made our way on up to Prim, Arkansas where we arrived at longbow resort and were met by Ben Pearson Jr. Lots of old stories were told among these old friends as we toured the property and got situated in our cabins.
Rainy weather settled in the next morning and for most of our hunt. Ann and Debbie were staying in their own cabin and well before daylight we went to pick her up for our morning hunt. When we pulled up, Mrs Ann was already standing outside in the rain when we arrived waiting on us. She was ready. After quite a long sit that morning, we hadn’t seen much but squirrels, Mrs Ann mentioned that she needed to take a break and visit the little girls room. Bill and I trying to be gentleman and me thinking of my own 90 year old grandmother, I said I would run and get the UTV and get her back to the cabin and end the hunt for the morning. She looked at Bill and I and said, no honey, if you’ll just help me get our of this blind, I’ll walk into the woods behind the blind.
Yes Ma’am. And she did. A few minutes later, she came back to the blind and we hunted in the rain for a couple more hours. I know a lot of women these days who would not have done that. Heck, I was ready to end the hunt myself after several ours in the cold rain and not seeing much. Mrs. Ann was not average.
Bill and I cooked dinner for everyone the next night and somehow during conversation, the subject of dancing came up. In my past, I had learned to west cost swing dance. Upon hearing this, the next thing I know Debbie has pulled out her phone a turned on some music. She wanted to learn. I don’t claim to be the best dancer in the world but I showed Debbi a little and then Mrs Ann was not going to let her daughter out do her so I got to twirl Mrs Ann around the floor a few rounds. I swear I’m not making this stuff up. If you know them I’m telling you these ladies are a lot of fun to be around and it’s obvious that with Debbie, the acorn did not fall far from the tree.
Although we hunted hard, we did not get a chance to take a deer with her. However, Bill Petrus has a camp at Davis island in Louisiana which is know for some great white tail deer action. Mrs. Ann and debbie would be visiting family in Louisiana for Thanksgiving so we invited them to make another hunt with us in Louisiana at that time.
Louisiana Hunt at Davis Island
Now Bills show is called T.P. Outdoors Adventures. If you’ve never hunted an island on the mighty Mississippi river, just getting there can be a much bigger adventure than most people ever experience. Fluctuating river levels mean sometimes you can boat all the way in to the camp. Other times, you have to boat across a small section of the river to a sandbar and UTV the rest of the way. During the summer at low water, you can actually drive all the way. Some people even choose to fly in via helicopter or small airplane on a grass strip. It doesn’t matter if you have the nicest equipment, there are always equipment breakdowns in getting there. (although hopefully not with aircraft)
This trip would be boating part way and UTVing across the sandbar and a mile or two on back to the camp. However, it was cold and the wind was howling. The water level was to high to drive in, but almost to low to boat in. Still Mrs Ann and Mrs Debbie loaded up into a boat and were ready for the adventure.
Now remember we are trying to get 6 people including a 90 year old lady plus a dog across the Mississippi river via boat in a blowing late November cold front. After some trouble getting the boat all the way to the sand bar, Mrs Ann still had not had enough adventure so she and Bill set off doing donuts on the massive dunes of the Mississippi river sandbar in the UTV like kids on spring break. We then got everyone loaded up and headed to the camp for the hunt.
Davis island gets its name because in the 1800’s this was part of Jefferson Davis’s family plantation. Currently the island is not owned by one individual but is divided into a small handful of hunting clubs and some private individuals. It’s known for some incredible whitetail hunting due to its habitat created by the Mississippi flood plain. But even with the best habitat and genetics, If deer aren’t allowed to reach maturity you’ll never have a quality deer heard. Davis Island has all of the above due to very strict harvest policies designed to allow deer to reach maturity.
For this hunt in particular, we would be hunting on some private land. The land owner was willing to allow us to take a deer for Mrs Ann that didn’t quite make the normal criteria in the adjacent clubs given the circumstances of the hunt. He had one exception. We could not shoot one deer that he estimated to be 4 1/2 years old. He had been watching this deer and wanted to see what he was as a 5 1/2 year old which was the typical criteria.
The night before our hunt, Bill Petrus and I left to go setup a blind for the next mornings hunt. When we got to the area, we walked through the woods with just a dim light and we could hear the most awful crashing and clanging racket in the direction we were headed. Not 50 yards in front of us, there were two bucks going at it. It was the fight of the century and they could care less that we were even there. Other deer moved about watching the action and we watched for a minute before they finaly moved away. We were sure the next morning would be good.
A little after daylight we noticed a deer coming our direction. It was a good deer. Mrs Ann looked at Bill eager for him to hand her her crossbow, but Mrs Ann wasn’t aware of the deer on our no shoot list. He had to make sure this wasn’t the deer. We watched him come all the way in and stand there for what seemed like forever presenting the perfect shot for Mrs Ann to take. She was looking at us and the deer wondering just how big the deer have to get to shoot down here and knowing she could easily take the shot but Bill never handed her the bow. He was all but positive this was the deer on our don’t shoot list.
Bill took pictures of the deer and tried his best to send it to the land owner for verification or approval to shoot. However cell service is very spotty on the remote island. The txt messages wouldn’t go through. Knowing how many deer there were on the island and yet being unsure about this specific deer, Bill couldn’t give the green light to shoot. He never handed Mrs Ann her bow.
It was truly crushing for everyone to not get to shoot this deer. Bill had given his word to the landowner so we had abide by his rules. It was a judgment call that had to be made and you have to respect that but everyone wanted Mrs Ann to be able to take this deer. Knowing the number of deer on the island, surely there would be other deer. They never came. We’d missed our opportunity to take a deer for this trip.
I’m sure she was frustrated and disappointed as were we, but she was a sportsman and understood that we had rules we had to follow even if we didn’t like them and wanted to bend them a little. We didn’t. Instead we planned to do another hunt the following year.
Future Plans
At the beginning of December of that year, I’d been working in Texas and on my way home I got a call from my dad saying that I’d received a package. He hadn’t opened it but had placed it inside. When I got home several hours later, I opened it and it was from Mrs Ann and Debbie. They had sent me ice cream. I’m so glad I made it home before it thawed. I had no clue you could even ship ice cream like this. We’d spoken on the phone and she wanted me to attend the next Hall Of Fame induction dinner with her. A series of events happened and I was not able to attend the dinner at the Hall of Fame Induction that year. I ended up working because honestly, I couldn’t afford to make the trip. I needed the money from work. I hoped and made plans to make the dinner the next year and spoke to her and Debbie frequently on the phone and through e-mail and social media in the mean time.
The bible says in Proverbs 16:9 “The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.” Even though we’d made plans God had different plans. You and I are not entitled to tomorrow. Mrs Ann passed away due to a heart attack before the next years hunt or the Hall of Fame Dinner. Not making that dinner with her or getting her a deer was one of my bigger regrets in life.
Mrs Ann’s words about shooting and focusing on your own target ring true on so many levels. Each and everyone of us will have to stand before God and answer for our actions one day. Being raised in church won’t save you, having Godly parents won’t save you. Having others pray for you won’t help you either. Being a good person won’t save you because we all have failed at some point. One sin requires punishment. But Jesus Christ made a way that each and every one of us can follow him and place our full faith in him and just like when Mrs Ann was greeted at the airport terminal by the game and fish commission, Jesus Stands waiting on us to accept him as he vouches for us before Holy God saying She’s with me. He’s one of mine. Come with me. It helps to know people but you have to focus on your own target. If you have any questions about this, feel free to contact me.
Every fall since our hunts in 2015, I’ve thought of Mrs Ann and Debbie and the fun we had on these hunts. I still try to stay in touch with Debbie and think of them often. But until we meet again, Mrs Ann, “I’ll see you at the Hall of Fame.”
