Katie & Katie at Baxter Gardens
I went to high school with Katie… the shorter one that is 😉… and we actually played volleyball together for all four years. When she reached out to me to take some portraits of her and her girlfriend, Katie, I was excited to see her again! My first thought was… oh that’s an easy name to remember… and then but how will they know who I am talking to? ha! As soon as I got to Baxter Gardens, the first thing I asked them was, what should I call you to differentiate. I ended up calling tall Katie by her last name, Shepherd, and it worked out great. So for the remainder of this blog post, Shep is tall Katie, and Katie is short Katie 😂.
Another challenge at this Baxter Gardens session was also that Shep is mostly deaf. This is my first time working with someone that is hearing impaired and I didn’t realize how heavily I would rely on Katie to relay the message for me. Typically when I’m posing my clients, I have them get into a foundational pose. Then I make small adjustments from there. Look at me, look at each other, kiss, twirl, laugh, whisper, etc… Most of the time after the first couple clicks, they are no longer looking at me for the further instruction. But in this case, when someone is deaf and isn’t looking at you, you can’t expect them to hear your further instruction. It wasn’t so hard because Katie would hear me and relay the message, but it helped me with some perspective of how heavily I rely on hearing for my job.
If you didn’t know that Shep wasn’t hearing, you would never suspect it. She plays it off like a pro. Katie was telling me how sometimes when they are with others she can tell by Shep’s facial expression if she understood what was being said or not. Sometimes she’ll relay but other times she can tell that it’s one of those things to just let it go. But everyone else in the conversation is clueless that Shep is just nodding and smiling and laughing with no idea what was actually said. I’m not sure how many times that happened with us during our session, but I’m grateful for Shep just rolling with it.
Like I said before, I went to high school with Katie. Honestly, she was one of my dearest friends and one of the few girls that I actually enjoyed hanging out with. Katie was so good at making anyone feel comfortable. No matter what the situation, she could bring in some humor to lighten the mood. She was the best setter I’ve ever played with and we meshed like peanut butter and jelly on the court. My high school days would honestly not be the same without her!
So thankful I got to spend some time with these sweet ladies at Baxter Gardens!
I’m a Knoxville Wedding Photographer that loves to travel…I shoot anywhere! Click here to contact me with any questions you have about pricing or booking! If you liked what you saw above, go ahead and follow me on Facebook or Instagram to see my daily updates of the latest sessions!
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