school photographers

[Beauchamp]

What is it with school photographers that they can't seem to take a decent photo?
They usually get the DC in focus but otherwise the photos are awful. eg the latest class photo isn't even centred.

[ColdFusion]

We have good photographers - //www.pret-a-portrait.net. I have bought my picture.

[thecockyfoxreturns]

Ours are lovely but expensive, £10.50 for one single 10×8 (the only size you can really put on the wall). So with 2 children that is £21 even before we have bought for the grandparents.
There are more expensive packages with more photos but they are smaller.

[Beauchamp]

£12 here for the worst photo, I have ever seen of DS. (7x5 that is... anything else costs more!)

I'm not remotely artistic, but honestly i could do better any day of the week. Somehow he looks like he's got a hunchback and maybe he's missing a shoulder! Plus he's not even in the top half of the photo!

[alwaysonmymind]

This will probably out me due to the complaining I have done but the family photo of my children appears to have been photoshopped or edited, and not in a good way

[okthatsweird]

School photos are always pants I got in so much trouble with my mum when I was younger because my hair was always sticking up on them and cost an absolute fortune. I stopped buying them sometime ago and just take a photo of Dc at the beginning of the school year for the photo album then go to a decent photographer in town for a nice, relaxed portrait picture for our wall which is quite pricey but we put £2.50/week aside all year until school photographs are due then have them done it's definitely worth the money.

[Sparklingbrook]

I hate school photos. I now take a full length picture of them both in their uniform at the start of each year with my own camera.

I think school photos have had their day TBH. They look so old fashioned.

Saying that I don't display pictures of people in my house anyway.

[ColdFusion]

They seriously do not have to be old fashioned. Have a look at //pret-a-portrait.net.

They take 10 - 15 pictures of your LO in a variety of poses. It's the same service you would get a fancy studio.

[BackforGood]

My dcs' photos have always been good. Massively overpriced, but good portraits.

[Pachacuti]

That style's starting to date now as well, ColdFusion. And you've obviously missed the annual threads full of simmering hatred for the p-a-p style of class photo (my personal favourite: the poster whose DS appeared twice in his class photo, in two different groups of children).

[Sparklingbrook]

They are a bit better Pacha but not keen. Ds2 once had a bizarre one where he had to take his shoes off and his feet were in the foreground. Horrible.

[Pachacuti]

Last year's I-hate-the-trendy-white-backgrounds thread

Another one that ran on into this year

[Gunznroses]

Our latest school photo has ds1's head looking like its superimposed on his neck. Its a joint photo with DS2 and for some reason they decided to take it with both boys touching heads at an angle just to convey brotherliness its damn awful!

[cartoad]

They're expensive and bad here too.

however the ones that really get my goat are the class ones where they put them into little groups then photoshop them into a big long picture that you can't get frames for so have to buy expensive ones from the photographers if you want one. Much better when they put them standing in old fashioned format that you could have a 7x5 or 10x8 print out of that you could put into an album. I don't really want to have the pix of the rest of the class on the wall but the long photos are a pain to store if you do decide to have them.

ds1's school did the long photos but this year they offered the option of a small photobook with each group photo on a different page, thought that was quite nice, easier to store, space to write stuff on the back of photos, etc etc.

ds1's infant school did a nice thing for leavers - one of the parents was a good photographer. She spent an afternoon at the school, took pix of all the friendship groups (it was a nice day for ds1's year so they were all taken on the climbing frames and in the playground, they had lots of fun doing it) then individual pictures of each child, so there were probably 2 or 3 individual pix and 3 or 4 group ones that had your child in.

All the pix were then put on a dvd and it was sold to raise funds for the school - think it was less than a fiver. If you wanted to print out one of the photos from the dvd you could, but even with the cost (say at Boots or Photobox) and the cost of the dvd it would still cost less than one school photo. I thought it was really reasonable and if half the kids went for it (I suspect more than that did) then that would have been nearly £500 towards school funds so a win-win all round.

I know photo companies give the school's commission on the photos they sell - but I would be surprised if they made that much on the whole school's orders. Now just need to convince them that they need to rethink their school photo strategy - not going to be an easy task!

[mummytime]

Well the ones for DDs school this year are the worst ever. They have compressed everyone's heads. So their heads look short from top to bottom, but wide from side to side.

Even the most beautiful woman in the world would look ugly in them.

Fortunately it has happened to everyone's, and they are so bad they are barely recognisable. Otherwise with sensitive teens it could cause all kinds of neurosis.

[BopsX3]

My DCs had their photos taken last week. I was allowed to take DS3 (9mo) in so he could get in the photo with DS1 and DS2 which I thought was a nice idea.

Haven't had them back yet though so no idea what they look like

I'll let you all know when I get them.

Last year though the photos were awful. The flash from the camera must've been really bright as you couldn't really see DCs. Their faces were white against a white background and all you could see were their eyes and hair. This happened to everyone and hardly anyone bought them

[difficultpickle]

ColdFusion ds's school uses that company and we got school photos this week. The worst I have ever seen. Not just of ds but of all of his group. I've only seen his chorister and house ones not the individual ones. All of them have dcs grimacing rather than smiling. They have also been put into random groups which of course may not be the photographer's fault but I'm not going to buy a photo of ds with three random other dcs who aren't even in the same year as ds. He is a very photogenic child and I struggled to recognise him.

They also did house photos and they were dreadful too.

I'm hoping the individual class photo may be better but I'm not holding my breath. Last year's photos were done by the same company and were very good so I guess it very much depends on the individual photographer. The photos are expensive and this year I won't be buying any of them.

[Gunznroses]

Bisjo - Your ds with other random children not even in his year?
Utter madness, that is indeed appalling. I wanted to so much buy this yrs photo as its DS1's final yr, but its so so awful. Im going to book a proper one with a studio.