How to get better school photos
School photographers have a tough job. They’re shooting hundreds of kids in a very short time, only allowing for one shot (or maybe two if there’s a blink) per kid. You get what you get, and a lot of the time what you get is a fake smile, a wary look, and something that doesn’t REALLY feel like your child. We buy them because they’re a milestone to be preserved, and sometimes they’re good for a laugh, and the grandparents want their wallet prints. But we end up putting them in the scrapbook or the file folder corresponding to the appropriate grade and leaving it at that.
The benefit of school photos is that they’re quick and relatively inexpensive, we don’t have to do them ourselves, and they provide a record of what our kid looked like at that age. What if we could have all of that AND receive images that we want to display on our walls and that capture a piece of WHO our child is?
That is the aim of my Better School Photo Days. Each kid gets a 10 minute session - enough time for me to interact with them and photograph a few different expressions, but short enough to be pretty painless. You will receive an online gallery of 3-5 images in color and black and white for you to download and use however you like.
Siblings can be booked back to back and we’ll have enough time to do some sweet photos of them together in addition to their individual images. Those images will also be included in your gallery. All photos are taken at my Shoreline studio on a black backdrop, keeping them classic and versatile for any home decor.
Send me an email to learn when my next Better School Photo Day will be. And if your school is in need of a photographer, I do that, too! You can get more info on my work in schools here.
Three tips for making Better School Photos a success:
Make sure your kid has a clean face, tidy hair (or hair that reflects your child’s personality, and is wearing something they feel great in (remembering photos will be basically from the waist up - no need for painful dress shoes or stiff pants they hate).
Avoid even the mention of “CHEESE” before or during your child’s photos. I’ll be working to get a real, natural, non-cheesy smile from your kid, but that’s harder if a kid has been prepped to say the coagulated dairy word.
Sit back and relax. Kids can smell parental anxiety. If you are calm and happy, that goes a long way to help them feel at ease. I can handle pretty much whatever your kid throws at me.