Senior portraits were held October 19-22 in the rehearsal hall of the PAC. Seniors had the opportunity to do a traditional thing in a non-traditional year.  

These pictures were different from regular school pictures because “[We] cared about what we looked like for these pictures,” Katie West said.

“I love seeing the excitement in their eyes when they see their picture for the first time,” photographer Marty Pettit said.  

“For many students, this is their first professional dress up photo. Senior guys wore coats and ties while most of the girls wore a traditional drape,” yearbook adviser Shari Chumley said.  

Some seniors, especially the girls, spent a lot of time making sure they looked just right. Others just showed up.   

This year due to covid the picture-taking process was much different.

“We spent a lot of time sanitizing and cleaning between shots,” Chumley said. “The Golden Wave Media staff helped by signing people in and steam sanitizing the clothes after each photo. We also had to schedule the photos a lot more carefully, because a lot of seniors are not on campus now.”

It usually takes the yearbook class weeks to set up appointments for seniors to come and get their portraits.  This year, however, it took only an hour thanks to a user-friendly app called Sign Up Genius.

“Seniors were able to go to the website and sign up for a time that worked for them.  They were even able to change their appointments if necessary,” Chumley said. “The app even sent a reminder email two days before their scheduled appointment.” 

The seniors didn’t seem to notice the changes

“Covid isn’t really affecting it really, it’s just a lot cleaner,” Wriley Pegues said. 

Also, a number of seniors weren’t able to take their senior portraits due to COVID protocol. Makeup pictures were originally scheduled for November 17 & 18 but unexpectedly had to be postponed when the district decided to cancel all extracurricular activities and have all high school students do virtual school for that week. 

“So now we will have to have makeup, makeup photos. In the covid era, we have to be extremely flexible. We never know what to expect from day to day,” Chumley said.

To view and order senior photos, students and parents should go to www.martypettit.com, click on “shopping cart” in the top right corner and scroll to the bottom of the page and find the day they took their portraits. All photos can be viewed and ordered on that website.