Kayli
People say that you make friends for life in college, and both Reece and I found that true from our time at Gonzaga. I was lucky enough to live with some pretty fantastic ladies during my time at GU, both for undergrad and grad school. The last two years as an undergrad I had the pleasure of sharing an apartment unit with Kayli, Heather and Priyanka. Even though we have all gone our separate ways since college, those girls will always have a special place in my heart (I would like to think it's the same for them). There's something to be said for living your early adult years with someone else; we all witnessed each other growing and maturing and forming ourselves into the people we wanted to be (...people the world needs most...haha, Gonzaga joke, sorry).
Anyway, Kayli actually doesn't live too far away from our family now, and is literally ten minutes from the studio space that I rented over the weekend. I was pining for a personal shoot where I could experiment a little bit and Kayli jumped into my mind. I've been trying to think of the best way to describe our relationship without getting too long winded, but am not sure how to do it...so I'll give it to you in bullet points (just so you get an idea):
- Every time we see each other, we end up thanking each other for being a low maintenance friend. We're both insanely busy and don't have time to really invest in many relationships right now, besides our core friend group (which for me, is just my family). Whenever we get together it is like no time has passed. We never get annoyed or frustrated if we don't hear back from the other person after sending a text, and we're just genuinely interested in what is going on in the other person's life. I've learned to appreciate that type of friendship over the years.
- When we were in college, the four of us would have America's Next Top Model marathons. This was before Tyra went cray-cray, mind you. We also had a few photoshoots with just the four of us, which was just so much fun. Kayli's a natural in front of the camera, so the minute we started shooting on Sunday my mind was transported back to our fun shoots at Manito Park.
- Kayli's always been a huge supporter of my photography business. When I finally left public accounting to pursue photography, she admitted "Oh KTO, I wanted you to quit accounting the day you started studying it." Ha, guess she knew what she was talking about! I just wasn't ready to admit it at the time.
- Even though she is an English major, she decided a few years ago that she felt called to be a teacher and is now teaching history to middle school students. I have so much respect for all of my friends who are teachers! They are all so funny and sassy and I can imagine that their students just love them. I tell her on a regular basis I wish I could be a fly on the wall in her classroom because I bet she's able to dish back whatever sass those middle schoolers give her. Case in point, I asked her to bring a mug for the shoot and she brought this mug full of Shakespearean insults:
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Hopefully, that paints somewhat of a picture of our relationship. So, with that, I'm excited to share with you a few favorites from our shoot on Sunday:
For those fellow photogs - these images were edited a little bit differently than my usualstyle. I went with the Fuji 160C preset from VSCO Pack 01, which gave these images a really cool blue/green-ish undertone that I don't usually use. Plus, they're a little higher contrast and not as warm. I kind of love it. :) Oh, and yes, that is a Ziploc bag around my lens in the first two images.
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Thanks for hanging with me, Kayli! You're the bestest.
P.S. Priyanka, you're up next!
xo,
