Libby’s Senior Session at Lilydale Regional Park, St. Paul Minnesota

Libby was my first senior of the 2021 summer seasons and let me tell you, working with her was such an amazing gift! Libby chose to have her pictures taken at Lilydale Regional Park in St. Paul, Minnesota. Now let me tell you, this place was absolutely gorgeous! Lilydale had so much greenery and scenery. A gorgeous trail led to a creek with some stunning rocks and another path that overlooked the city and the Mississippi River! I was blown away, I had never been to this location before but that is some of the beauty of letting my seniors pick locations that they love, it shows me new places to explore, it pushes me out of my comfort zone of familiar places and now I have more amazing locations to share with people!

However, Libby made this entire session so easy for me. She was such a natural in front of the camera. I know I say this a lot but I actually mean it with her. She literally knew what I was thinking (although I am really good at repeating myself during sessions so she probably just caught on to my patterns haha!) she had such gorgeous and personalized outfits for her session that I totally loved! I literally could have taken pictures of Libby all night had the weather allowed it! We started out with some gorgeous sun, then some nice evenly lit overcast and about 5 minutes before her session time ended we got rain! Like what the heck Minnesota!

Getting to know Libby was so so so inspiring, as some of you may know, I did a short exchange trip in high school to Germany for a month. Well, Libby was telling me all about these work-away programs. Where you basically get to go live abroad in a different country and work for a family in exchange for a home away from home! I thought this was so cool! I love when I get to meet people who don’t do the traditional graduate high school then head to college thing. It is something that I find incredibly amazing and I wish more students were made aware of the other choices out there. I know plenty of people where college was not their thing and it won’t ever be something they have an interest in but they went anyway because it is what they felt like they had to do! I personally know I felt a lot of pressure from my high school to pursue college and higher education, which I did but I am so glad I decided to go to a two-year program instead of a full 4-year education that would have cost way more money than what I needed! So hearing about these programs from Libby was super amazing and now maybe this blog post will reach someone else who isn’t sure about college and maybe also wants to take a gap year and explore the world!