Class of 2027 Senior Portrait Guide: Nashville & Murfreesboro

If you're a rising senior in the Nashville or Murfreesboro area, here's the most useful thing I can tell you upfront: the families who are happiest with their senior portraits are almost always the ones who booked early. Not because late sessions are bad — just because they had more options, less stress, and got to shoot in the seasons they actually wanted.

Here's everything you need to know to set your Class of 2027 session up right.

When to Book

The honest answer is: now, or close to it. My calendar for peak season (May through October) typically fills up months in advance. If you reach out in late winter or early spring, you have your pick of dates, locations, and times of day. If you wait until summer, you're working with what's left.

The sweet spot for Class of 2027 is late spring through early fall 2026. That puts you in the best light of the year with enough lead time to have everything in hand well before your senior year milestones start happening.

What a Session Actually Looks Like

It starts before the session itself. We get on a call, talk about who you are, where you want to shoot, how you want to feel in these photos, and what you want them to say about this specific moment in your life. I treat every session the way a film director approaches a shoot: with a plan, with intention, and completely built around the person in front of the camera.

When you show up on session day, I intentionally don't have anything pre-set up. The first thing I do is look at you — your coloring, your features, how the light is hitting you in that space — and build from there. Every setup is tailored to you specifically. This is not a one-size-fits-all situation.

The first ten or fifteen minutes are just us hanging out. Talking. I ask about school, about what you're excited about, about what's coming next. This part matters more than most people realize — because how relaxed you feel in those first few minutes sets the tone for everything that follows. My goal is for the session to feel like you and I are just hanging out for 90 minutes and then somehow at the end of it you have the best photos of your life.

From there, I run a quick five-minute posing class before we really get going. I'll walk you through where to put your weight, what to do with your hands, and how to think about your expression — including a technique I call the Covid smile, which is exactly as strange as it sounds and works almost every time. Once you're in a great pose with great light, I'll do something to get a genuine reaction out of you. Sometimes that's a direction. Sometimes it's asking you to "reticulate your eyebrows" and seeing what happens.

The session ends. Then, a little while later, we gather for the reveal.

What Makes These Portraits Different

There are a lot of photographers in Murfreesboro and Nashville. What I'm specifically offering is this: I believe that whether you love your photo or you hate your photo, it is always the photographer's fault. If you walk away thinking these are the best photos you've ever seen of yourself, I'll take every bit of that credit. If something doesn't connect — that's on me, not on you. You are not "unphotogenic." You just haven't worked with someone who knows how to photograph you yet.

That's the commitment I make to every senior I work with.

Areas I Serve

I'm based in Murfreesboro and work throughout Middle Tennessee — Nashville, Franklin, Brentwood, Smyrna, La Vergne, and everywhere in between. If you're in the region, reach out and let's figure out the rest together.