When Sioux City originally went into quarantine for COVID-19, my plan was to stay home, so I would limit the exposure from others and my family. I saw lots of other local photographers offering front porch sessions, and while I wanted to be out there shooting I just didn’t feel comfortable yet because the risk was so high at that point.
During this quarantine, I have been thankful for three really great friends who were an essential part of me staying sane while at home with our three daughters! 😉 We would talk every day about what was going on in our lives and the outside world. Two of my friends have senior daughters and listening to the heartache that their families were going through with senior year and the potential to not have an in person graduation ceremony, I began to think how could I help them? When SCCSD announced that they were cancelling the in person graduation ceremony, I decided to offer free photo sessions to seniors in their cap and gowns. This is typically a memory that is captured at their graduation but at least the seniors and families would have this memory to cherish.
It started with one post on our business Facebook page and that grew into a 7+ week project. A few weeks into it, I was interviewed via Zoom by Siouxland News about my project, which then prompted a lot of senior families to contact me. Last week I had the privilege of being interviewed in person by the Sioux City Journal by Bret Hayworth and photographer Jesse Brothers.
I’m happy to say that I feel that I have completed my goal of capturing this special memory for the 2020 seniors. During the project, I met and captured around 127 seniors. The majority of the seniors were from Sioux City West, East, and North, but also include Dakota Valley, Elk Point Jefferson, Homer, Le Mars, Cherokee, Lawton-Bronson, South Sioux City, Northwest Iowa Community College, Whiting, Millard South, Heelan, Kinglsey Peirson, and Sergeant Bluff Luton. I even captured a few 8th graders from East Middle and a preschooler from Kindercottage. I met the majority of the seniors at their high school, with a few at their homes and out of town seniors at the Dance Pavillion downtown. I traveled to both Le Mars and Homer for a night each.
Each week we made a video to highlight each senior, but then later on I posted each senior individually with information about them that I either got from the parent or the senior themselves. This included what their next steps were and their favorite memory from high school. I loved reading all the comments online from others wishing congratulations to the seniors on the posts. A few people even went out of their way and commented on each individual senior’s post.
Here are few photos from this project that I wanted to share.
If you’d like to see all of the photos, click on the link to view them all!
Until next time,
Liz
