My little sister Ally graduated from the University of Georgia today, so I figured I’d show you all a few of my favorites from her graduation photo session last month!
A few people know this, but Ally is the one who taught me how to use manual mode on a camera, after I shot that first “session” completely in auto mode (oops). She has been one of my biggest supporters ever since I got started. I know that I can trust her to bluntly tell me if something I do doesn’t look good or if an idea sounds like it might be a dead end or do more harm than good. Her input means a lot to me, because even though she’s my little sister, she has been a mentor to me and I look up to her.
I feel like we just moved this girl into her freshman dorm. I’ll never forget our whole family crying when we left because that was the farthest we had ever been from each other (and then a couple years later she left us AGAIN to do the Disney College Program).
But even though it feels like it was just yesterday, I also know that I’ve watched her grow so much since that night we left our baby Bulldog in Athens, and I am just so dang proud of her. She is one of the most strong-willed, driven, and resilient people I have ever met. She might have hit a couple bumps in the road over the last few years, but she’s always been one to get up, brush herself off, and continue pushing forward. She has worked so hard over the past four years and we’re sad that we had to settle for watching her name and photo come up on a slideshow rather than watch her walk across a stage, but we will celebrate her properly soon enough!
2020 has been such a rough year for everyone in hundreds of different ways, but I think one of the groups of people that was hit especially hard were the graduates. It was hard to watch my sister and her friends navigate through their final semesters of college with the added stress of a global pandemic and civil unrest and uncertainty of the job market they were stepping into…But they all handled themselves with grace, and I have a feeling that overcoming this crazy mess of a year will shape them into stronger, more adaptable people. The Class of 2020 is going to be a force to be reckoned with.4
Congratulations, Seester! I cannot wait to see where life takes you next!
