Some of my favorite galleries are the ones that capture a relationship you don’t get to see every day.
At their school, there’s a pretty special tradition where seniors are paired with kindergarteners to be their “Senior Pal” throughout the school year. The idea is simple: the senior gets to be someone their little buddy can look up to, encourage, and learn from while the kindergartener gets a friend to help guide them through one of their very first years of school.
And that’s how Charlie and Rhett met.
Charlie was Rhett’s Senior Pal, and the two got to spend the school year making memories together. One was just beginning his school journey, while the other was getting ready to wrap up his. Somehow, in the middle of those two very different seasons, a sweet little friendship was made.
And now, looking back at these photos, it’s crazy to think about how much can change in such a short amount of time.
Rhett has moved on from being the little kindergartener, and Charlie has moved forward in his own academic journey as well. These photos are officially a little piece of a chapter that has already passed.
That’s one of the reasons I love photographs so much.
They freeze the things that we know are going to change.
The little smiles. The way they interacted. The personalities they had at that exact point in their lives. All of those tiny things that seem so ordinary in the moment become the things you’re most thankful to have later.
I loved getting to capture Charlie and Rhett during their Senior Pal year. Not because it was some huge, elaborate milestone, but because it was a simple reminder that some of the sweetest friendships can come from the most unexpected places.
A senior and a kindergartener might seem like an unlikely pair, but for one school year, they were buddies — and that’s pretty special to me.
Here’s to Charlie and Rhett, the memories they made, and a little Senior Pal friendship that deserves to be remembered.
