This year I was grateful enough to be asked to photograph 24 fellow fourth year Hoos of the graduating Class of 2017!!! While we were all wrapping up assignments, final projects, exams, capstones and theses, we were able to slow down and spend some time on the Lawn getting pictures taken! I had such a hard time packing all of my favorite pictures from each shoot into one blog post that I decided to split it up into separate blog posts! Here’s the first blog post including some of my favorites from my first 6 photoshoots of the graduating spring season! I got to take pictures of some old time friends as well as of some new faces that became good friends by the end of their session!

You may already recognize these first two faces from previous blog posts but I wanted to include them again with everyone else!

Lakshmi

First up is Lakshmi who I actually met at orientation and almost roomed with first year! We ended up becoming very close friends throughout the next couple of years. She’s been my apartment mate for the last two years with Divya in our home that we lovingly named Black Box (because HOO doesn’t need more CS references in their lives?!). I got to take her senior portraits in two different outfits because about fifteen minutes into our first session, it started POURING, like it often does in the Charlottesville spring. If she seems familiar it might be from her blog post over here!

Riya

Next up is Riya aka Ri (although I might be the only person who calls here this lol), hoo might look familiar as well!! I’ve gotten to know Riya better over the last couple of years being on the Bhangra team going to practices, traveling to competitions, eating tacos, and sharing a love for Moscato together. My fourth year at UVA would have been soo different without her, I can’t even imagine it and I can’t wait for all of our adventures to come! I had so much fun taking her pictures despite the mini glitter fiasco we had right on the Rotunda! More on that incident hahahaha and the rest of her pictures are here!

She had one of my favorite grad caps of this year! Her parents hinted at wanting to be mentioned which is hilarious knowing them! But the cap is such a classic and so cute! 🙂

Kylee

Kylee’s mom actually reached out to me first about having Kylee her graduation pictures taken and it was possibly one of THE best emails I’ve ever received as an inquiry. She was super sure that I was absolutely the right kind of person to take Kylee’s pictures which could have been weird except for the fact that within five minutes of meeting Kylee on the day of her session, I could see exactly why her mom was so right!! Kylee was so laid back and not afraid to laugh and have fun with the entire afternoon! She brought along her friend Gennie and confetti poppers which were soo much fun to take pictures of!!! Kylee, I’m so glad I got to know you through taking your pictures and running into you on Grounds after! I hope I run into you more in DC next year!

Hehehehe their reactions were just perfect 😀

Rucha

I’ve known Rucha since orientation when a mutual friend of ours dragged me to lunch (well it was orientation, so I actually went willingly) and I got to meet a bunch of her friends from high school!! My second year I got to be apartment mates with her in good ‘ol Bice house which is a UVA-run apartment complex. We spent so many late nights in Bice 502 talking, laughing and doing anything but studying. We went on so many food adventures together, made THE BEST strawberry milkshakes, and shared and watched videos from each other’s dance teams. To be completely honest, me and Divya probably would have starved a couple nights for dinner were it not for her amazing food which she always kind enough to share. I’ve also loved seeing how far she was able to take her dance team this past year as a captain and I admire her dedication, passion, determinism and spirit that I can tell she brings even from someone outside her team. Rucha, I’m glad we were able to squeeze in your portraits on literally THE perfect day for them before you left Charlottesville to go home! I know I’ll see more of you in the future and I can’t wait to come visit you back in Charlottesville once you start full-time here! 😀

Ora & Lizzie

I can’t tell you how long I know Ora. I met her through engineering and CS classes within my first couple years at UVA and have been lucky enough to work with her on projects throughout our time braving through rough classes! Ora is such a sweet soul, such a hard-worker and has the kind of humor that cracks me up no matter what the situation is. This past semester we took what’s known to be one of the hardest CS classes at UVA, Operating Systems. The only redeeming factor of the course was that for two of the two week coding assignments, we were allowed to work with a partner. Ora & I literally spent HOURS on HOURS each day for the better part of those two weeks coding together and even though we hit so many points of being stuck, confused, frustrated, and straight up baffled, it was always still SO MUCH FUN working with her. I’ve never actually had so much fun coding before! Ora, thank you for being the support I needed to get through OS to graduate!!!

I met Lizzie on the day of the photoshoot and it was one of those days where I had a double shoot and was semi-frantically running around trying to make sure I had previous pictures backed up. Lizzie from the beginning was so calm, understanding and so upbeat. As soon as I started taking her and Ora’s pictures, I could tell that these two friends were something different, the best of best friends you could find. Take a look through some of my favorites of the two of them and you’ll see what I mean, it shows through the pictures!!

I’ve gotta say, bubbles might just be my new favorite prop!

FAVORITES BELOW!!! 😀 Got that amazing golden hour and André, a combination that can’t be beat for grad photos haha!

I can’t believe that this is just 6 of my seniors! Blogging this post has been so much fun to go back through all these pictures and remember running around the Lawn & Rotunda during some of my last days at UVA! Be sure to check back for parts two & three!

Part One | Part Two | Part Three