In fact, I'm not sure we ever have.
Not that we wouldn't welcome more Hawks coming our way from CR... it's just an hour away and a little out of our core service area.
So, while we were flattered that someone was willing to drive an hour to get to us, it was time to dig a little deeper.
What was the story?
As is often the case, there's a connection there that helped Stewart Photography earn the business in the first place.
And one need not look much further than 3rd Street in Tama to figure this all out.
Main Street Styling sits on the aforementioned downtown Tama street, and the owner of the salon just happens to be the grandmother to our senior, Connor Nezerka. Back in the day, Connor's mom, Nikki (Thede) Nezerka worked at the salon as well. Add in the auxiliary issue that Connor first cousin, Mitch Thede visited us back in the summer... and now you have all you need to know about how in the world we landed this senior hailing from Cedar Rapids.
Naturally then, it would make sense for us to make a trip to Iowa's "Twin Cities" to trek around Mama Nikki's old stomping grounds to bang out some of Connor's senior images. In fact, at one point we were a short walk around the corner from Grandma Marcia's place of business.
Not surprisingly, Connor had well styled hair that made his photographer envious (not hard to do when you have none... but nonetheless...) But to take it a step further... the thing I'm gonna remember most about Mr. Nezerka wasn't his hair... but rather... his shades.
Armed with no fewer than four pairs of sunglasses, it was clear from the git-go that the eye wear was gonna be his thing.
Right out of the gate, before we even left the studio to run over to Tama/Toledo, were bustin' out the shades and layin' down some killer images. If he had it his way, he probably would have never taken them off... but experience tells me that Nikki had to see her baby boy's eyes in some (Ok... more than some), so we settled in on the some-with-some-without approach for the rest of the day.
Connor had a couple more tricks up his sleeve on this day, however, as he was armed with his saxophone and his crossbow as well, so we covered lots of ground before calling it a session.
In the end, we had our "in" to get him to come our way, but regardless, it may have been just as easy for the Nezerka's to use one of the myriad of options closer to home. So with that being said, I would just like to thank them from the bottom of my heart for choosing to come back "home" for this special occasion.
I sinceriously appreciate it. :)
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