Samantha reached out last spring about senior portraits for her son, Hayden.  When she mentioned that he’s in the Firefighting program at Tri-Tech, and would love to incorporate his gear, and/or a fire station, I got excited.  This sounded epic!

I had an idea about which fire station would have the best light, so I got in touch with the City of Richland, who put me in touch with the Fire Department, and then the crew at Station 74 (shout out to Joe, who was amazing!), and it was a go to shoot at the fire station!

This was one of the most exciting things I’ve done in a while!  I was imagining we’d just shoot in the driveway in front of all the garage doors, but they brought out the big truck with the ladder, parked it in the driveway and we just got to have fun, be creative, and try out all the angles!  Fire trucks are WAY bigger in person than you might think (and SO shiny!)!  We had SO much fun!  We got to open the compartments, use the axes as props, hang on the rails…We even got to go up on the rig, on top of the big ladder and get more images on top of the truck.  Samantha and I kept making excited faces at each other, like “Is this real life right now?!”  EPIC indeed!

To finish out the night, we did a quick wardrobe change, and went down to the Yakima river for a few more traditional portraits. 

Hayden is such a humble guy.  Turns out he’s scored some fantastic work-based internships with the county fire district, and has such a bright future!  He’s going places!  Probably on a fire truck!

Hayden, you absolutely killed this photo session!  I’m so happy to have met you, and I just can’t wait to see what your future holds.  Good luck with the rest of your senior year at Richland High School!