to be hacked off about school photos?

[twirlymum]

DD is in year 5, DS in in the nursery at the same school.
School photos were last week. I had the option of having their photo taken together, which I thought would be nice.

The proofs came yesterday.
As well as the one together, they also had photos taken on their own, so I have three proofs.
The one of them together is quite nice. DD's hair looks a little bushy, but it's ok (especially as DS can be a horror when asked to sit still).
The one of DD on her own is beautiful, and her hair looks ok (even though the photos were taken minutes apart!).
The one of DS on his own is the best picture I have seen of him. He is smiling, and looks angelic .

For one photo it is £11.50, for two it's £15.75 and for three it's £17.75. BUT this only applies when you have two or three of the same picture. I've just phoned the company, and had a bit of a moan, and mentioned that I think it's very expensive anyway. The woman told me that it's the school's fault, as they have different prices available, DC's school has chosen the most expensive package.
So now I will have to pay almost £35 for three 7x5 photos. Plus £2 per picture for p&p as they don't combine postage.
I know I don't have to buy them, but they are nice (for a change!)

UKcanuck

The reason 10x7 pics are provided is because 10x7 closely matches the shape/format of the image screen on the camera. If 10x8 was supplied there would be a lot of cropping (eg missing feet/tops of heads).

10x7 prints are usualy in a 12 by 10 mount, for which frames are readily available. 10 x 7 frames are alo readily available.

As an occasional contributor to this forum , I've noticed that when I give a poster a reasoned reply to a point they've raised, they seldom acknowledge the fact.

Strange, that

Hi,

We run a school photo busines, and to hear you all complaining about photo prices is sad.

You all seem to forget about the equipement needed to shoot a portrait session. Fuel costs,
Paper costs and lab printing etc. Wages tax to pay and someone to do the post work on the class panoramics.

Out of every £100 pound taken did you know that £20 goes to the VAT man. £20 goes to the school in commission, £26 goes in printing/mounts/postage.

Then from that comes out rent for offices/Wages/bills/fuel/Vechicle costs. Then if there is a profit the Inland revenue has a cut.

It seems to me you all put a price on the paper in your hand.

Granted some Photography companies have togs that dont care what they churn out. But we dont let the kids go untill we have them smiling or laughing.

Forgot to say we do 3 pose proofcard so you can choose your fave or have all on a cd and print as many as you want. Als we do all prints in frame sizes. we ask our parents what they want and provide it. sorry about the prices but they are going to higher every year with oil going up and paper pulp shortages from south America.

I just don't buy them anymore. DD just started secondary school and I took some great photos of her, in front of a nice background all smart in her new school uniform. The official photo came home and it didn't even really look like her cos she wasn't smiling. I used to feel guilty ("what kind of mother doesn't like a picture of her own child "kind of guilt! LOL) but having a drawer full of photos you don't really like that much is pointless.

AND I DON'T CARE WHAT ANYONE SAYS ABOUT PRICE OF PAPER, INK, OR PETROL THEY ARE TOO EXPENSIVE AND THE PACK SIZES ARE TOO RESTRICTIVE.

YABU (although I mean that sympathetically). School photos are important fund raisers for the school. I think you either don't bother, suck it up and pay out knowing that it benefits the school and ultimately your own children, or make your own arrangements to get them done privately. But moaning about it is a bit unfair; the real moan should be about how annoying it is that schools have to resort to fundraising at all!!

I take my own photos.

My son beside the same bush in the garden just before he goes to school a couple of times a year.

10 x 8 truprint £2.

I have taken some photos for some friends too.

Give it a go you will be surpriseat the outcome..

YANBU. DD had her photo done at nursery recently and it was a really sweet photo, and, as someone else said, cheaper than going to a studio, but there was only one fixed price package of £27 for which you got heaven knows how many different sized photos and some bookmarks. Since I'm a LP, with no close family, all I needed was one for me and one for my parents, so I'm £27 down and have a cupboard full of unused photos! Bah. They have us over a barrel, don't they?!

We do single photos. no need for packs if you have no need for them.

Get us in your school and we let you have what you want for free.....

but serious, the big firms have so many togs not all of them care that the child smiles or not. We only let the ones out with smile or laughing. you want to see the chracter not a wax work....

Snapper. I'm also a photographer freelance. Done nursery not primary generally I'm well received but it's laughable reading these comments on how little the profession is regarded. Try photographing 60 kids under 4 in 4 hrs getting them to relax and perform. Then the admin work printing costs commission etc. It's not an easy job and school work is not well paid for the hrs involved. I also do weddings and in comparason they are very well paid BUT I only have one chance to get it right so IMO I deserve every penny

Good to see Kbear does not give a stuff and is only interested in what she gets out of everything. Bet she pays crazy money for a designer label that is 40 times over priced for what it really is worth.

don't be ridiculous

The only designer clothes I buy are George from Asda! I just think they are overpriced and I like a bit of value for money and they ain't it! One time our central heating was up the swannee and I was skint and remember feeling bad cos I couldn't afford £34 for school photos of my kids. That is stupid.

If you want a run down of me completely before you judge me, I help with fundraising for the school and wade out heaps at the school fete to make up for it.

It's due to digital cameras taking over film the ratios have changed. Why not buy a new set of frames. Loads of nice cheap ones about these days

"It seems to me you all put a price on the paper in your hand" er, yep,Lyndipops, life's like that.

Why wouldn't you want to get whatever you can out of things? What a strange thing to say. Things are expensive enough as it is, and if I can save £20 here and there, I will.

I agree with Kbear. I don't buy the photos anymore either.

Our school package has a dvd / file sharing option. So you can buy the image and print it how you want and as many times as you want! Still expensive, but I don't feel as ripped off as we go in early have one taken of the 3 dd's all together (they are noramally really lovely about getting a good shot and print out several proofs). I ignore any single ones that come home as if I buy it for one dd I have to be prepared to do it for all the dd's.

I think she means I deprive the school of the thruppence ha'penny they earn from it, after they have paid the photographer and the tax man (obv). I think she is just trying to convince me that it is a value for money option, when it just isn't. My digital camera and Boots is far better value and I have £32 left over from the £34 I would have spent on school photos to spend at the summer fete/book fair/christmas raffle.

We must agree to differ.

Do not want a run down of any one thanks. Just tired of all the negativity from people running photographers down. As they seem to think it is easy to do themselves. Or that photographers are raking it in. We're not.

Bet the chap who fixed your boiler was not cheap either.... but you pay for his knowledge, experience and training. and solving the problem and fixing it.

Boiler repairs are'nt cheap. Everything has hidden costs that you do not see in the product. What ever it be, cars, fridges, clothes even food.

As you said... thats life!

Not every likes those professional styled portraits, I quite like a nice smiley face of my two sitting on the wall in the garden. I'm not slagging off photographers but I can't take it seriously when you say "oh but you don't realise costs are involved" or whatever it was. I don't know what costs are involved in transportation of food either but I can moan when the weekly shopping bill increases dramatically.

I respect your skill and talent for a nice photo BUT I need to be warm and have hot water, I can live without a photo in the drawer. It's not personal, it's reality, I couldn't afford it but I felt guilty and that's what this whole thread is about.

Lyndi. Well said

There are lots of cowboys out there now using digital cameras no experience shooting weddings and charging a fortune! That makes me so mad!

If you don't like your school photographer get together and complain to the school that you want a change. We are not all the same honest. Same as not all plumbers are con artists etc etc

Can you scan them into your computer or are they watermarked?

FabbyChic, what plumbers? Why would you want to scan a plumber?

Tell you what Kbear, give us the details of the said school and we get in you can have FREE pics or cds for all the years they are at those schools.

I even know some good plumbers.....

Some firms seem to be cottoning on to the cost issue - DD3 came home from pre-school with 3 proofs, 2 really cute and one OK. One of the options was a royalty free CD for producing your own images - think it was about £35/£40 for up to 3 images which I thought was OK as I can then print off loads of copies for relatives from an online photo company, thinking of getting one on a drawstring bag for her to take to pre-school.

Only slight problem was the ratio on one of the shots - I could just about get the whole image into a 5" x 7" by wiggling it around, don't know what size it should be ideally.

But we have a succession of crap photos of DD2 looking bizarre. We keep the proof card for posterity but some of them I wouldn't share around, which is pretty good going considering she is (IMO) a photogenic child.

Snapper99: "As an occasional contributor to this forum , I've noticed that when I give a poster a reasoned reply to a point they've raised, they seldom acknowledge the fact."

Don't quite see how you can state that in the same post in which you offer the reasoned reply, but consider yourself acknowledged.

To clarify, I understand why a 10x7 size is available; what I (still) don't understand is why a 10x8 size is also available, but only as part of a multi-package. The 10x7 can be bought singly; the 10x8 cannot. When the company was contacted to ask if they could supply a 10x8 singly, they refused. So like other posters, I either pay over the odds for photos I don't want or need, or have no photo at all. That was my point. I'm not against anyone earning a living or making a decent profit; I'm against the lack of logic.

And I have 10x8 frames with which I am perfectly happy and despite 10x7 ones being available cheaply, can't see why I should be forced to change for something that is down to the supplier's intransigence.

I have been reading this forum with great interest, and would like to share my opinions with you as my husband runs a school photography company.

I sort of agree that school photos are too expensive, the school take their cut and of course so does the tax man etc.
So why does this topic keep coming up, why do some just scan the pictures.

School photography companies need to start to care for what we actually want.

A long long time ago in the 50's and 60's the school pack was in its prime. It worked then, why?, because the family matched the pack.
One large, two medium, four small. What we used to call the nuclear family.

come on, move on, in this digital age, why can't we order what we want from all the proofs given to us from all our kids. In other words, build up our pack with multiple images and to the sizes we want, at the discounts we expect from the "traditional" packs.

I have over the years ended up buying packs of photos to serve my extended family and often been left with photos I simply don't need or want. This has also included hundreds of "FREE" bookmarks and tiny photos that just seem to bulk up the product.

If the service was a little fairer, I would have ordered a selection of photos and not bothered with a CD and all the hassles involved with printing at home or trying to figure out a machine in Tesco's.

My Husband is very passionate about this and finally put a new service into action. What's more its a far greener product. To be fair we have been digital for over ten years now and this should have been done by the big companies.