The E&J Senior Experience: Our Senior Photos

Senior year in high school! Woo hoo! Senior-itis is in full swing but it’s the best feeling in the world now that you’ve finally made it!! We remember our senior year like it was yesterday! We love the fact that our love story started in high school and that we used to carry around each other’s senior photos in the clear photo inserts inside of our wallets! We couldn’t help but pull out our own senior photos last week. We needed a good laugh and we also wanted to give all of you seniors who are out there reading this a huge boost of confidence!!! So here you go – here are some of our favorites that we thought we would share with you to kick off Senior Week over here!!

JON

Jon was not exactly the most popular kid in high school. As a natural introvert, he was more at home at a lunch table with a couple of friends rather than being the center of attention! Jon’s always been musically inclined, although he’s never been able to dance quite right! That awkward truth aside, he was super involved in music in high school and sang in the school choir. Sounds like a real charmer, yeah!? Thankfully, Jon put those music skills to good use to write songs for Erica that she eventually fell for. We can all agree Erica has elevated Jon’s style and composure! If you’re not sure, just look at the photo below from Jon’s senior year!

(Side Note: Our apologies for the lack of photos of Jon. His senior photos were so amazing, he misplaced them, never to be found again. Luckily, his parents who live halfway around the world were able to send this one over to us via their iPhone!)

ERICA

Erica’s high school experience was similar to Jon’s. While being more involved in her youth group at church than she was with activities in school, she shied away from the lunch room. What is it with the lunch room being like the scariest place for any 17 year old to walk into?! If it wasn’t Thursday, the day she would brave the cafeteria only to buy the Jamba Juice smoothies they would bring in. She would buy her daily Jerry-Cherry Laffy Taffy from the school spirit store and sit along the brick walls of the school building and eat her highly nutritious lunch with her best friend. Put her in the corner of a class with a small group of students and she was fine and able to socialize. Drop her into the middle of ‘Hawk Hall’ where it felt like a zoo of students, and she would walk along the perimeter of the building and do whatever she could to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. The definition of a complete introvert. And that was her everyday life for 3 years inside of the 4 walls of Highland High.

its all about the experience

For Jon, the sad part was that his experience for senior photos was less than fantastic. His mom drug him into a portrait studio to capture the wall hanger you saw above. Pretty GQ, right?? And Erica, she felt that every bit of her experience was fantastic and was extremely proud of herself for taking and editing her own photos with the help of her parents and Jon! A black and white photo with pops of color was the thing to do. And she nailed it! Or at least she thought she did! Even as a senior in high school with just two years spent in the dark room, she was a self-proclaimed photographer who just lacked experience, but was determined to start somewhere.

Looking back, we both feel like our pictures were lacking the feeling of joy within the photo instead of the stiff, awkward, “hurry and take the shot” feeling that is bursting out of each picture. At the time, the pictures were great. Grandma and Grandpa loved them and the graduation announcements were each filled so that’s all that matters, right? Wrong! Instead of the excitement and eagerness that Erica felt at that time in her life, her photos show the nerves and uncomfortableness she felt sitting in a bed of flowers outside of the private community. They show her plopping down all over California while her parents used a point-and-shoot to quickly take a picture before any stranger saw the shy senior girl she was. And instead of Jon having natural, genuine and comfortable moments created for him where his relaxed and fun personality could have been captured, his pictures show how awkward he truly felt about himself at that time.

Looking back on both of our less-than-wonderful experiences, we were determined to put together a true Senior Experience that our high school seniors would be thrilled about! Something that let them know that everything was about them. That we were there to serve them. An experience that makes them feel confident and cared for. And photos and memories that will last a lifetime!

Tomorrow, we will outline exactly what the E&J Senior Experience looks like, and what you can expect with us! We can’t wait to see you there!