To want to have two styles of class photo on offer if the school decides to move away from the trendy "shoes off" shot

[EddieStobbart]

Since DD started school three years ago the school has offered the "deconstructed" shot with the kids in various poses and no shoes on. I don't like it but that was the style on offer. One of the reasons I didn't like it was because the format is trendy at the moment and IMO the only things that should date in school photos are style points such as the groovy hair cuts and sea of brown polyester flares of my youth. What I really DIDN't want to happen is for the school to revert back to traditional style half way through DD's school career leaving us with two different styles of class shot on the wall and I suspected this might happen - what was another reason I didn't like the style.

I received a survey today asking for my view on the photos and if the format should be changed. In my response, I suggested that two photos are taken, one with rows on benches and the other with the kids shoes off etc so people who have had to have the latter style up to now could choose.

I appreciate that photoing classes of 5-11 year olds will be like herding cats but it can't be completely impossible to do this, can it?

DH thinks IAVVU and laughed at me a lot. I am pissed off. However, I would take being told IABU from the MN Collective much better than from DH so - AIBU?

There are schools that take photos of the class with no shoes on?!! Why?!!!!! It's school, not a beach holiday!

I buy the class photo every year (which is the traditional all sat in rows one here) and put it in the cupboard. It's not for us. It's for our kids when they're older to look back on.

Bloody Venture has a lot to answer for.

My children are secondary school age and I don't think they do class photos anymore (or the kids don't bring them home). At their primary they just did the standard stand on gym benches type photos. What happens when they take their shoes off? I remember doing a formal pic followed by a messing about shot at high school, I've got a couple of nice pics of people I can't remember anymore like that.

Just don't buy tyhem; they are all shit!

Who needs fifteen miniature pics of your DS, just so you can get two X large for the GPs and four large for aunties and uncles.

We stopped buying school pics years ago, as there wasn't a single pack that suited our requirements wothout leaving us with gazillions of prints that we didn't need.

It's quite liberating. that and they are hideously over priced (although I did have a pang at not having DC3's "first" school photo, even though the school take a ton of pics and plaster em on the website and we can have copies of them if we want)

Oh and ours do a montage styleee with five separate groups of about six children, all arms crossed and leaning on each other and the school logo in the middle above a group that includes tacher and TA. They make me want to slap the photographer and ask about their artistic integrity. Thank fuck we don't have shoes off; that would be a trend too far

I would just be pleased that they had got rid of the awful modern ones. Our school still has the modern ones, and they are ridiculous. They have to go in a roll tube because they are too long for a cardboard frame, and I'm not paying out for a glass one for something that will not be displayed. As said upthread, they are for the dc to look back on.

BigBird, that's true. I looked into getting an unframed version the first time when I had a "how much???" moment at the cost but there appeared to be no standard frames available for the dimensions so getting one made would have been the only other option - at the same cost. Obviously we don 't have to frame them - my school ones were just kept in the card frame they arrived in and bunged in a drawer - but these ones are so long they are rolled in a tube so have to be unrolled and the ends weighted down to have a look.

One of the survey questions was about the cost, I wonder what the response will be for that.

It's just occurred to me that I wouldn't have bought a framed version if the picture had been the normal formal photo that fitted in the square card frames. None of DD's individual photos are in proper frames

One year when DD's were in infant school they tried a different photographer who used what basically looked like a shed in the background and the picture was 'hazy'
The finished article looked like 2 kids stood in a bus shelter in the fog, 'twas hilarious

Mine get photos all through secondary - we bought one for DS, none for DD. Hers are all awful. This year was the worst, they had distorted every photo of their year - so everyone ended up with much wider heads than in reality. The school does it as it wants an up to date photo, and this way it gets one free; but this year I would be surprised if the photographers sold a single photo.

Sunny, was that deliberate or a cock up by the photographer? Very odd.