This Sydney. She’s a senior. She lives a fair distance from me, but she had seen my work & really wanted me to shoot her senior pictures. It makes me feel pretty good when someone wants to take a road trip to just have me shoot them. Before the shoot her mom wrote me a little bio on her which I really appreciated. I learned a lot about Sydney including that fact that she is deaf.

Now I have experience shooting deaf people. If you’ve followed me for a while you might remember a story I told years ago about meeting a deaf couple, Maxwell & Erica while on a road trip on the West Coast. We met at Rouge brewery and to make a long story short we went out to the beach & I shot their portraits. I had the best time, & communicating with them was easy for me. Easier than most other people I had shot. Photography is about personalities, visuals & emotions.

Sydney has the best personality, so she made this look easy. She is so expressive & her deafness is not a handicap, it’s made her better. To quote her mom ‘peace, love, inclusion, to pave the way for others, kindness… That’s what drives this girl. She wants to be a nurse. I’m pretty sure she is going to be one epic nurse.