Our annual Open House offers our student reps (ambassadors) the opportunity to bring in a big group of friends and take “buddy photos”. Several reps brought really big groups this year. These are so much fun to photograph! The most popular group photos include: pyramids, pileups, giant group hugs, and – of course – jumping. I started doing these jumping photos many years ago with wedding parties and it was a natural progression to do these with families and high school seniors. You get some of the more lively personalities competing for the highest/best jump!  I’ve also found that squeezing people tightly together ALWAYS produces great natural smiles. (Of course you have to first ask if they all like each other – especially families ha ha!)

Something new we agreed to do this year was to go to a PARK and photograph one of our ambassador’s prom groups. I was told that there would be “from 20 – 50 kids” in this group.  !   Saturday dawned bright and sunny, but as the day progressed, the sky got darker and darker. Tornado warnings erupted in the nextdoor county. As Jack and I drove to the park, a cell phone call from Adam’s mother (who organized the photo outing in the park) diverted us to a restaurant and THEN (as we sat in the restaurant’s parking lot in a hail storm and deluge of rain) we got the call that the group was instead meeting at one of the girl’s houses.

When we arrived, there were nearly 100 people inside the house. The street was lined with cars as far as we could see. Somehow we got the group all posed nicely and all the parents took turns photographing the group. At the very end, the storm passed and the sun came out (good old Minnesota weather!) and we arranged the group for one last photo – outdoors!  

Jack videotaped the groups so that we could include this in the slideshow. I think this turned out to be a really fun project! Look in our Facebook album to see ALL the buddy groups and be sure to watch the slideshow.