We all know them and we all hate them, the dreaded school photo. You put on your best clothes, you prayed to god that you won’t get a zit, maybe you even practiced you smile in the mirror before heading off to school. We all remember standing in line outside the school gym waiting for our turn to sit in front of the camera and try not to look like a noob, but it never worked, no matter how we tried. Did anyone ever get a school picture that they liked?
Your parents always loved them, they would buy that package of a 8×10, some 5×7’s and a bunch of wallet prints. The worst thing about the whole process is that you knew that 8×10 was going up on the wall to remind you just how geeky you really looked last year, the year before that, the year before that…A never ending line of looking your worst.
Really, if you sit back and think about it, there is no way around it, you just can NOT get a good picture out of that assembly line mug shot manufacturing plant we call school photo day. How is a persons suppose to relax when they are herded into a large room like cattle, then get sat down in front of a stranger with a camera and expect to pull off a natural smile in the whole five seconds you do get in front of the lens?
Well our southern neighbors have figured it out and they call it Senior portraits. Sure they still have class pictures, but parents in the US of A have decided not to limit themselves to that above mentioned assembly line way of portraits, they will go out and hire a photographer to get some good pictures of little Jimmy and/or little Suzy. Better yet, they can then take those pictures and submit them to the school to be put in the yearbook. Just image that, opening your high school year book and actually liking the picture you see!
Any ways, enough with the day dreaming. You may not be able to get a flattering image of your teens into the yearbook, but you can still get some pictures that will not embarrass your kids when you hang then on the wall.
Teen Vanity, that is what it is called up here in the Great White North. The biggest difference between Senior Portraits, or Teen Vanity as I will refer to them and your regular every day portrait is that it involves location sessions. Instead of a stuffy studio, like you would find at your local Sears, the photographer goes on location with the teen to a park, downtown, in an underground parking lot, wherever. The session can take upwards of 1-2 hours all with the goal to get a relaxed, natural looking portrait of the your teen, since you don’t have the clock ticking in the background and there is more interaction between the photographer and the teen, it produces a friendlier atmosphere…much better then “Next!”
All this is what attracts me to the whole Teen Vanity scene. Like I have mentioned, I do have an interest in fashion and editorial photography. I use to love the whole process of planning a shoot, going through make-up with the model and then creating some amazing shots. All of this and more is why I have decided to throw my hat into the teen portrait ring, but first I really need to show what I offer. That is why I am now offering a limited number or Teen vanity sessions for free.
If you are interested, the process will be fairly simple. Just contact me and supply a recent picture of yourself (if you are the teen in question) or your teen and I will be in contact. A model release will be needed so I can legally use them for my marketing of this service. In return you get a number of images on a DVD full sized, fully edited and ready for print. If you would prefer me do the printing for you, prints can be purchased at my regular a la carte rates.
So if you are a teen that is in desperate need of a portrait you are not ashamed to have your parents hang on the wall, or if you are a parent that is sick of those school pictures, drop me a line and we can talk about making some unique picture that everyone will be happy to show off.
About the image: I want to thank Ashley for donating this image of her graduation to the cause of eliminating bad school portraits. Luckily I was one of the rare people that had the chance to destroy all his school pictures, ensuring that they would not be around to offend anyone’s eye balls. But, because of this, I didn’t have any school portraits of my own to prove my point. I put a call out for a school picture, and Ashley was kind enough to email me hers… Thanks again Ash!
