Meeting Max Callaway...

It seems as though I met or knew all the players around this dude... but somehow, I had never actually met him.

The girlfriend, the sister, the mom,, the cousin, the aunt, countless classmates and even the partner in mowing crime... yet up until a few weeks ago, I couldn't pick Max Callaway out of a lineup if I had to.

Not that it's a prerequisite that I actually KNOW a senior before I photograph them, but with so much familiarity all AROUND the guy... it surprised me how he had eluded me this long.

The first hints of the Mystery of Max came a couple years back when a couple of members of BCLUW's Class of 2012 dropped his name here at the studio during THEIR sessions.

The first was Jacob Smith.  July 12, 2011 was the date of the first clue.  Mr. Smith told me that he spent a lot of time mowing lawns.  Harmless enough...  But then he took it a step further.   He didn't act alone... Jacob had an accomplice... and his name?   You guessed it.   Max Callaway.

The two grass-into-green entrepreneurs had ingeniously named their enterprise "Smithway Lawncare" and rumor has it that the very best mowing in all of the greater Conrad metropolitan area came at the hands of those two dudes.

The second clue came from Mr. Callaway's girlfriend.  (What good mystery doesn't include a twist with the love interest?)   Maddie Olson was just one in a long line of amazing seniors from that Class of '12 that summer... and as the session discussion often does... it turned towards the topic of girlfriend/boyfriend at one point.   And there it was again... That Callaway character.

I rubbed my chin.... Hmmmmmm.

Not long after that, my wife and I were dining next door at the World Famous Rube's Steakhouse when we were sharing a grill with a familiar looking couple, and over couple drinks and a few pieces of garlic bread I had inadvertently bumped into Max's parents, Shauna and Chad.  Mrs. Callaway had told me that she was wanting to do family pictures sometime, yet... a couple of years later... we had yet to ever do said portraits.

Coincidence?  Or just another calculated plot by Max to avoid me?  You be the judge.

The little sister card was revealed several times on the softball diamond dating all the way back to three summers ago when Olivia Callaway was just a seventh grader and showed promise even then in becoming the outstanding pitcher she now is.  Time and time again, sister Olivia surfaced over the past three years as the multi-sport athlete stands out for the black-n-gold all year long... yet, somehow I had missed out on pinning down brother Max.

Perhaps a accident provided an additional angle in my search to figure out this guy.  Not long after Maddie and Jacob had tipped me off as to our "witness protection" boyfriend and business partner, I had stumbled upon the unfortunately news that Mr. Callaway had been seriously injured in a motorbike mishap.  As things unfolded, I learned that while the injury was certainly very scary, Max would ultimately be fine long term.

Finally I had taken part in last year's Coaches Versus Cancer event at Conrad last winter where Max's cousin Ray was at the center of a fundraiser to support the fight against the dreaded plague that is childhood cancer.  I'm sure Max was there that night, yet SOMEHOW he eluded me.   Again... not surprised.

At long last Mr. Callaway could avoid me no longer as Mama Shauna turned over her son to the proper photographic authorities at Stewart Photography about a month ago. 

It was great to catch up with Shauna, and I got to connect a few dots from my childhood as I was informed that Max's grandfather, Byron Rhodes, was BCL's long time baseball coach, who on several occasions gave the Comet lineup to a young stat-keeper back in the early 80s.  That stat keeper would eventually become his grandson's senior photographer thirty years later.   Who knew?

But more importantly, I finally tracked down Max and got to know him a little better.   It was great to see that he's back up on that bike... still seeing Miss Olson... and even playing the game that his grandpa used to coach.

At long last, I had nabbed our man and brought him to photographic justice.  I'd like to thank all those involved in getting him here...  Jacob, Maddie, Shauna, Chad, Olivia, Shannan, Ryan, Ray and a slew of other undercover Comets.

A good detective never gets it done without help.