Middle Class problem, but AIBU?!

[Maffy]

Apologies... Nancy Mitford would be proud.

However, my DC's school insists on polo shirt top buttons being done up for school photos.

They have no ties, it is a primary school, there is no school policy about it, and no children do up their top buttons normally.

Yet for every school photo, all my morning requests and pleading from DC goes unheeded. My DC come home upset and are captured for eternity looking like Bolsheviks.

AIBU?!

I honestly don't know why school photos are still a thing. In the past when good cameras were rare and expensive, sure. But it's not like there's a parent out there who doesn't already have 1000 photos of their child and a good number of their child in school uniform.

I feel I should point out that the school staff spend bloody ages straightening collars and sorting hair, in the younger years we stand behind the photographer trying to coax out their real smiles, I'm 90% sure there's some filter on the cameras that make kids look like zombies.

If it helps, the school photographer did our new ID badges this year, I made him show me the photo he took of me and retake it because of my quadruple double chin, it was ok, not great but good enough to go on an id badge and not make me sad. Photos came back, its fucking hideous. A drunken selfie would actually be more flattering.

Nancy Mitford would never have dreamed of sending any children to a school that did not have children wearing ties, I surmise. Presumably with black shirts.

My dd always looked great in school pics. My dgd on the other hand always looks like a banshee 😂 pulled through a hedge backwards! But they will insist on taking the pics AFTER lunch when she's been in the playground behaving like a female Dennis the menace 😂😂😂😂.
She does this weird grimace too. No idea why because normally she photographs really well with a beautiful smile! 😩

15-year-old dd has cropped hair and wears polo shirts and men’s shirts with the top button done up and looks awesome. Think you’re a bit old-fashioned OP. MC twaddle.

School photos are great to have to blackmail them with when they are teenagers ... dd always had a ‘Wallace and Grommit’ smile in hers. Then later a searing serial killer stare.

Remove the top button so there is no button to do up

I had a run-in with the Tempest woman that did DD's photos every year a good while back because despite a note from me she insisted every sodding year that DD1 remove her glasses.

DS's school has a photographer that seems to think he's doing model shoots. We bought last years for the first time because it was so funny. Think full-on mean and moody face, standing side on, hands in pockets and head turned to look right down the lens. His best friend (a girl) had one where she had her arms folded and her head tilted down, but her eyes looking up to the camera. It was like a (bad) promo shot for something. They're hilarious.

*When I say run-in, she started it. She had a pop at me as head of the PTA because hardly anyone was buying photos and she was a "generous contributor" to the school. We had slightly cross words about the glasses issue. Another parent was blunter and told her if she didn't take shit photos people would buy them.

Noones said what's wrong with the top button? It looks neater I'm a school top surely than all ruffled. Surely you would nt go to the lengths of removing a button to look messy...?

Why do teachers brush their hair? Whhhhy? Honestly, DS2 looks awful with his hair brushed, and he also refuses to wear a jumper, so every year the photo would come back with him not looking like him. One year he was even wearing someone's school cardigan.

Why do they think we'd want to spend a comparative fortune on a photo that looks nothing like him?!

I applied for a job with Tempest, many moons ago. I didn’t get it because I was clearly too talented a photographer!

Just think that their school photos capture who they actually are, not the picturesque image of them you want them to be. Who knew children were actual human beings.

DD’s have never captured who she is. The photos I take of her when she’s not looking do, but the Wallace and Grommit grimace she does when asked to smile for no apparent reason, don’t.