It’s the Miss America Organization’s, Miss North Carolina & Miss North Carolina’s Outstanding Teen 2015 pageant week and my girl & I are looking forward to heading downtown for the finals this weekend! (as soon as I can decide which one to go to 😉 ). Understandably, while I’m quite excited to – it wouldn’t be cool to share the program images I captured of both our fabulous 2014 gals here in our state’s Capital until after the pageant. However… when working on their blog, I realized that I had never blogged my session with Miss North Carolina’s Outstanding Teen 2013! It was close to the crazy holiday season, I was so new still & didn’t have a routine down – I don’t know why this got missed. It’s a special session to me though & we just can’t have that! So… I’m going to remedy it ‘Throw Back Thursday’ style 😉
The 2013 Miss North Carolina’s Outstanding Teen (aka ‘MNCOTeen’) was the beautiful, Emili McPhail. At the time, Emili was a Senior at Midway High School in Dunn, NC with a very busy schedule, impressively juggling all her responsibilities as a Senior, MNCOTeen AND extraordinarily charitable giving person. She is an amazingly kind, sweet & down to earth young lady… and not to be corny but yes, most definitely outstanding! I confess, before I met her – I was a bit intimidated & nervous heading to our session back in November 2013. However, with MUCH thanks to our mutual & amazing friend, Kevin – reality was that she was graciously coming to help ME! A complete no-name, not even in business a year at the time photographer, to build my portfolio as I began thinking about doing Senior Portraits. As if that wasn’t sweet enough… when she arrived, it turned out she was sick. Sick the entire ride to Raleigh & through our session! But she insisted on proceeding forward. As you look through the images below, I’m guessing you’d never guess it! (she was so strong & good at smiling through it that I kept forgetting myself!) She was absolutely FAB-U-LOUS!!
Upon meeting, my nerves were immediately put to ease & we simply started having fun! I left this session feeling as if I’d made a new friend, certainly not intimidated or nervous any more. And most definitely with quite a respect for what an extraordinary person she is. Many, MANY thanks to both Emili & Kevin for your valuable time, belief in & support of me & my work!!! I hope you’ve been well & that your current path is headed toward everything you dreamed it would be & more!
I adore this session, which holds a special spot in my memories as part of a major turning point in my path and am very proud to share it with y’all…
And, of course… a few behind the scenes memories – from how much Kevin looks after Emili (not just her hair & make-up) & the awesome relationship they have to THANKS for carrying my purple camera bag, bud 😉 to a few of the many ‘breaks’ we had for fans to get their pic of/with her too (she was so kind & gracious EVERY time!) 🙂
