Carly is absolutely adorable. She’s always smiling. When you’re around her she makes you want to smile too. Photographing her was fun and amazing. But finding out a little bit more about her was even more amazing.

Carly has a passion that drives her and it’s something that leaves a mark on your heart. For being so young (relatively speaking) she’s experienced a pain that is still very raw. Earlier this year her best friend, Jeff, also a high school student at GBHS, committed suicide. It was a shock to his family, his friends and his community that knew and loved him. For Carly, it left a huge hole in her life and she misses him still. But she has turned the experience into and amazing outreach for suicide awareness in the community and it’s an amazing and incredible expression of her love for a young man who left his loved ones too soon.

Jeff left a gift for Carly—a dream catcher. It was important to her that her senior portraits include it. I asked Carly to remember him while I photographed her with it…and it brought a genuine, beautiful smile to her face which was captured forever while remember Jeff that day in a country field, beneath the warmth of the sun.