While everyone knows that mapquest estimates are always a tad on the long side... anyone that's been in business for any length of time knows that it's always best to under promise and over deliver.
So when Maurita Sietsema showed up with her awesome daughter, Madison some 35 minutes early for their 1 p.m. senior session... I wasn't surprised.
What I was surprised with was the fact that they booked in the first place.
Credit where credit is due here... One of my very best clients EVER... is Conrad's Jayne Bryngelson who visited me most recently with her senior daughter, Denelle, last summer.
And as these things go, one mom talks to another mom... satisfied senior mom tells future senior mom that they HAVE to check out Stewart Photography... and BAM... we have a new client.
But from 90 minutes away?
A good friend in the business, Wayne Chamberlain, told me 15 years ago that sometimes you're not a saint in your own back yard.... and just when you are lamenting that very fact... someone, who clearly had numerous options close by... feels compelled to drive over 3 hours roundtrip to have YOU do their senior images.
Can there be any bigger compliment?
Humbling to be sure.
So, big props to my friend Jayne are in order, to be sure. I'm informed that in a previous life, Jayne and Maurita were in a young mom's club in Hampton... so they go way back... and now they have daughters that were photographed by the same schmuck. :)
We enjoyed sharing that connection back and forth throughout the early part of the session. But that wasn't our only connection.
Why you ask?
Well... Hampton-Dumont High School also is the home of one the finest educator/coaches in all the land in the form of Dan Aalbers.
Mr. Aalbers just happens to be one of my very best friends ln the world that dates back to our college days at the Central University of Iowa in Pella.
Word is that Madison will be taking the grueling Pre-Calculus course with Aalbers in the fall... and all I can say is that she'd better be awakened real early by a bare-bulbed second-brightest-light-in-the-universe type light every day in order to study enough to keep Instructor Dan satisified. ;)
The other prerequisite is that she MUST have a nervous knee-bob going during every exam... and I'm not so sure that she shouldn't pronounce all her T's as D's (i.e. button should be enunciated as "buddon") and she would be best served to haul fellow Bulldogs around town in a mini-truck with a homemade camper on back and affectionately call it "house-on-truck."
Ok... enough of a trip down memory lane with one of my all-time favorite guys and all the inside jokes that make my time at Central College so memorable... because in all seriousness... Madison is already the neatest gal that anyone will ever find... and if she hasn't had a class with Aalbers yet... I can't imagine that she won't come out even more awesome afterwards! ;)
I would be foolish to think that Madison would have ended up in Montour, Iowa without the help of my soldiers on the ground in the form of Jayne and Dan... so I owe them both a big thank you. I hope I lived up to expectations... and I thank both Maurita and Madison for allowing me the opportunity to not only make her once-in-a-lifetime images.. but also for letting me reminisce about a couple of close mutual friends.
Go Bulldogs! ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment