Bethanie & Netania Chapman University 2019 Graduation Portraits | Orange, California
Back in January of this year, I got a Facebook message from my friend Bethanie who I haven’t talked to ever since I graduated college. It was an inquiry for a graduation session for her and her sister Netania since they will be graduating Chapman University in May. I didn’t know Bethanie was pursuing her masters at Chapman until she mentioned it to me! I first met Bethanie at UCR where we were both part of AACF (Asian American Christian Fellowship). Then post-grad happened and we’ve been living vicariously through each other’s Instagram Stories haha. Netania is getting her Bachelor of Science degree in Health Science with a minor in Psychology while Bethanie is getting her Master of Science degree in Health and Strategic Communication. Congratulations to both Bethanie and Netania!
Before our session began, I wanted to test the lighting so I took a single shot on my camera. I heard a second delay shutter and I thought to myself “this can’t be good”. I looked through the viewfinder and find that I can’t see anything through the lens. It was pitch black! I remove the lens from my camera body and find that the mirror is not in the right place. It is completely upwards when it is supposed to be down in a diagonal position. I try to put it down back to it’s original place, but it won’t stay in place and goes upwards. The mirror won’t stay down! Panicking, I call my friend Daniel who’s also a photographer to see what I should do in this situation. After trying a few things, Daniel suggested to hold the shutter button on my camera. When I did, I heard the normal shutter sound. I check to see if it is now working properly and it worked! My camera was back to it’s normal condition. At that moment I experienced a photographer’s worse nightmare. I hope none of you photographers have to go through that situation. But I’m so happy that it all worked out in the end. Even though our shoot was delayed by 30 minutes, we made up for it in the end.
Can I just say how spot on Netania’s facial expression is to Pikachu?! Also that is one of the best and creative graduation caps that I’ve seen.
After our photoshoot, we went to go eat kbbq and I got to catch up with Bethanie since I haven’t seen her in 3 years! As you can imagine there was a lot of catching up as well as a lot of reminiscing of our UCR days. I just want to thank Bethanie and Netania for choosing me as their photographer for this special occasion. I am still doing graduation sessions for the month of May and June. If you want to book a graduation portrait session with me, please click here.