To feel sad that this is a thing - graduation photos.

[TravellingSpoon]

Booking DS's graduation photos along with his gown and mortar board hire.

As part of the photo package, you can pay £7.50 for teeth and eye whitening, £7.50 to have your complexion brightened, or a bargain for £12 for both.

AIBU to think its really sad to offer this? I understand that some people will feel unconfident about how they look, but something like this will reinforce that.

But then it would be “ you “

I wish I had this option for mine. I was very heavily pregnant in a heatwave and you can tell 🤣 is there a double chin removal option?

DS2 has just had his, unfortunately a bit spotty as I insisted he shave his straggly half beard off so he looked a bit more presentable, his Grannies are likely to put the picture up on the wall!
He was at quite a posh uni that has a strict graduation dress code which suits the gowns I think. You were allowed to wear national dress so there were a few more interesting outfits to brighten things up.

They offer those options here too.

It's a sad world we live in.

I think its sad too.

Wow 😮 didn't have that when my daughter graduated a few years ago ...sad isn't it 😥 that it's even an option !?

I've never liked any of DS primary pics and I didn't buy them because I felt they weren't an accurate representation of how he looked at that moment in time. I have plenty of others that took myself that capture him better.

The secondary school ones have been absolutely horrific and they managed to make the kids look awful. (Not just mine, I've seen DDs year 11 year book and they are about the most unflattering pics imaginable of almost all of them!🤣)

I’m so fed up of filters. Ladies on my Facebook feed, we all know you are doing it. Your partners look like children, and your children look like elves. I know them irl and you are all lovely as you are.

One woman is so heavily filtered that I didn’t recognise her at the school gates, and assumed there was some kind of blended family thing going on for a while.

We are not seeing enough normal skin tone, and we are internalising filtered complexions as normal. They are not. It is not helping anyone, least of all your teenage daughter, who is good enough in your family snaps just as she is (and filtering her is repeatedly telling her she is not!)

Agreed. If only I could get round to choosing some and getting them printed….

Great post!

Following on from my previous post though, I agree it's sad that you can have your kids pics (looks) "enhanced" esp as young as nursery or primary.
The reason I didn't buy the school pics was because I felt they didn't properly capture how they are, not because they needed to be improved in any way, if that makes sense...

Mine were not the best due to my bad planning, however I managed to edit some and add some effects so happy with them overall, although now I'm thinking of redoing some of them as extra photos.

Wish we had had teeth and eye whitening as an option. We had our graduation ball the night before and we were drinking until 4.30. Missed the alarm and just arrived in time to throw on gowns and have photos taken. I spent an hour and a half listening to some old fart waffle on about Shakespeare gasping for water.
I don’t look too bad on my photo but you can tell we are all suffering.

Omg that's awful

Awfully they offer this for some primary school photography. Disgusting isn't it.

Sorry - they offer teeth whitening for primary kids?

I believe for about three hundred quid you don't need to even bother going to University.
You'll be sent a graduation certificate, a photoshopped picture of you with a mortar board (teeth whitened, Oxford /Cambridge background etc. included) punt proficienty certificate, group debagging photo (pixelated).
All the time whilst claimed dole!
Not that I did that, of course.
Signed
Two Left Socks (PhD Bangalore and bar)

I don't have any graduation photos - it was a condition of me agreeing to attend - but if I had had some taken I would have at least wanted them to look like me.
I guess it has become the norm to touch up photos now though. When you can even do it on a phone, I expect a lot of people would complain if professional photographers didn't offer it. Wouldn't be my choice, but I there must be a demand for it or I guess it wouldn't be offered. It's a shame. If you see something as sufficiently important to be recorded for posterity, shouldn't it be real, rather than a photoshopped version of the event?

international school outside Europe- my children brought home their year 4 sibling photo and they had been photoshopped as standard. They are so awful they are hilarious. My son looks like an android clone version of himself with a weird smile, ultra smooth face and weirdly neat Lego hair. He looks battery operated! We often look at them for a laugh.

When DD's nursery photo was taken, she had a line of stitches on her face and was a bit bruised after falling a few days before. The photographer was able to edit that out, which we were glad of, because it was slightly gory to look at at that point!

However, he said he didn't offer touch-ups generally but was getting lots of requests for them - mainly smoothing complexion and whitening or straightening teeth.

My SIL got some kind of touch-up done on her hair in her graduation photo, and it looks AWFUL - really unnatural, as if her photo had been badly cut out and stuck on the background. Ugh.

Why not just hire a model to stand in for you?

Yes, it's awful

I'd been out partying until about 4am the night before my graduation. I could have done with this.

Is this through Ede and Ravencroft? I had the same options come up - I graduate from my PhD this summer. I DID go for the teeth and compelxion options though!

Mind you, thinking about it more, it's nothing new really is it?
Portrait painters have always enhanced their wealthy or important subjects' looks. (Especially if the subject had the ability to send the artist to the tower if they weren't happy, or at least to make or break their career!)
It's relatively recently that we got used to seeing realistic images of ordinary people I suppose. Things are going full circle except you don't have to be a noble any more. Henry VIII getting a shock that Anne of Cleves didn't live up to her portrait is much the same as a modern day online dating app uswr complaining that someone's profile pic isn't realistic.