I have photographed a lot of high school senior athletes for their final year in high school. However, prior to Mason’s session, I had never photographed a Texas state U. I. L. gold medalist. What made Mason’s senior session even more special for me is that his mom and I have shared a friendship spanning more than 30 years. We’ve even shared dreams the being gold medalists ourselves back in the early 80s. We dreamed of being the first all-female tag team in the WWE. (I am so happy that did not happen! But I would have still loved to have met all of the Von Erichs!)
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Anyhow, back to Mason.
Mason is graduating from Tompkins High School in Katy, Texas. He is a member of the NHS and the PAL’s program.
Mason played basketball since 7th grade, but it wasn’t until his junior year that he also started competing in track and field. He won his first meet with a jump at 6′ 7″ after only first attempting high jump one week prior to this first meet. In his inaugural season, Mason went on to become a 6A high jumping champion and clearing a jump of 6′ 11″. After his state performance, Mason was ranked 15th in the nation. These achievements earned him the title of MileSplitTX’s Boys Field Event Athlete of the Year and an athletic scholarship to Division I Texas A&M University.
Mason has already qualified for this year’s state track meet on March 12th in Austin, Texas. I have made plans to watch him compete!
State Champion Senior Portraits
We had a great time during Mason’s session. We laughed, I told my corny jokes, and we even laughed some more when a cab driver stopped to check on me when he saw me lying down in the middle of the sidewalk. What made that incident incredibly funny was the fact that while I was laying down on the sidewalk to take pictures from a lower perspective, Mason was posed, his mom was holding my speedlight, and his dad was guarding our bags. So there was a total of three people who had not noticed if I had indeed needed help. But I digress, I am thankful the cab driver cared enough to check on me.
We also got to school Mason on the Insane Clown Posse. They were performing just a few feet away from one of the locations we shot at. That explained why there all sorts of younger kids running around with their faces painted like clowns. I’m so glad that Mason does not have a clown phobia.
And lastly, Mason let me put his gold medal around my neck since I never got to earn one of my own.
Here are some of my favorite images from Mason’s San Antonio senior portrait session:
If you’d like to see all the images from this portrait session, please enjoy this video. For the best quality, be sure to change the video player settings to 1080 HD.
The post, State Champion Senior Portraits, first appeared on Ata-Girl Photography Co.’s website and blog. Please feel free to comment here, or share this post with your friends via Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. Please email me if you have any questions about this article or want to share a neat idea for a future blog post with me.
