How to Get Your Teenage Son to Actually Show Up for Senior Photos
How to Get Your Teenage Son to Actually Show Up for Senior Photos
You've been thinking about senior portraits for months. Maybe longer. You picture something beautiful on the wall, something that captures exactly who he is right now, before everything changes.
He's heard you mention it exactly once and already has three reasons why it's a terrible idea.
I get it. I'm a boy mom too.
Here's what I've learned after photographing teenage boys who showed up skeptical and left actually kind of proud of how their photos turned out: you don't need to convince him to love portraits. You just need to give him a reason to show up that has nothing to do with portraits.
Start With What He Loves
This is where it all starts. Before we talk locations, outfits, or anything on your wish list, I want to know his thing.
Is he a hockey player? Does he live on the ice from October through March? Is he a baseball kid who can tell you his batting average for every season since he was nine? Does he play saxophone and stay late to practice even when he doesn't have to?
Because here's what I've found: the second a teenage boy finds out he can have photos that actually look like him, something shifts. I'm not talking about the standard "hold your stick and smile" shot. I'm talking about images that feel like a movie poster. Something he'd actually want to show his friends.
When a hockey player walks onto the ice for a session and sees what we're creating, he stops being a kid who was dragged to a photo shoot. He becomes the subject. There's a difference, and you can see it on his face.
That's the image that ends up on your wall.
Make it stand out
The Movie Poster Effect
If you've never seen what's possible with a senior session built around a sport or passion, let me paint the picture.
For hockey players, I rent private ice time. No public skate crowd, no distractions, just him on the ice with the kind of lighting and atmosphere that makes the whole thing feel cinematic. The images don't look like yearbook photos. They look like something a college program would put on their website — or something he'd low-key want to keep himself.
For baseball players, we find the field, the light, the angle that captures the kid who's been playing since t-ball. For musicians, it's about showing the real relationship between them and their instrument.
When I show teenage boys examples of this kind of work, they stop arguing. Sometimes they start asking questions. That's when I know we're going to have a great session.
Mom wants senior photos
Here's the other half of this, and it's just as important.
You have a vision. Maybe it's something more classic. Maybe you want him in a particular spot that means something to your family. Maybe you want a few frames that aren't about the sport at all, something that shows the kid behind the athlete.
I hear that. And I'll tell you something: once a teenage boy is already having a good time, once he's seen a few of his sport shots on my camera and realized this isn't what he expected, he gets a lot more willing to do the things that are on your list.
We start with his world. We end up getting yours too. More often than not, the shot mom wanted most happens because he's relaxed and forgotten to be annoyed.
That's the best photo. The one where he forgot he was supposed to hate this.
What You Actually Need to Do
Tell me about him before we shoot. Not just what sports he plays, but what he's proud of. What he'd want his friends to see. What made this year feel like his. I like to meet with my seniors and their parent(s) before our session. This gets that awkward first meeting out of the way and I get to talk to the senior myself so that I can figure out how to best draw him out in our session.
That's the information that turns a standard session into something he'll actually care about. And when he cares about it, even a little, you get something real. Something worth hanging on the wall.
Senior year goes fast. This is the last time he'll look exactly like this. Let's make sure we get both versions: the one that makes him cool in his own story, and the one that makes you cry when you walk past it in the hallway.
Both are possible. I promise.
Ready to book a senior session for your teenage son? Reach out and let's talk about what makes him tick. I serve families in Morrisville, Raleigh, Cary, Apex, Wake Forest, Holly Springs, and beyond — including on-ice portrait sessions for hockey players.
