Article about Senior Portraits

[morgandavis]

I saw this article in the local newspaper today. Thought I would share it with you all.

High school seniors want portraits that tell their story | The Des Moines Register | DesMoinesRegister.com

[BigFuzzy]

This should be shown to anyone, everywhere, who thinks senior portraits should look like the this:



Though, gotta admit that much of what I saw from Photojeania sucks. So over processed and fake looking.. ugh. Tone down the skin smoothing.

But the general idea of 'lifestyle' photos being something teens would be more into is clearly the direction/trend. Those photographers who pick up on it and market themselves well will be the successful ones.

The problem is that many teens/parents just don't know what options are our there.

Phamster is doing some amazing work on flickr with Senior portraits.. well, portraits in general and often with minimal lighting.

Thanks for sharing!

EDIT: yeah, only relevant to the US and the few others that actually do this "senior" thing.

[UlpilotSC]

Im guessing this whole fad is really dependant on your yearbook and what your school allows. In mine (uh oh, time to haul out the old repressed memory file), they only allowed the standard senior head shot with a suit jacket. The only difference in senior and freshmen shots was senior pictures were in color.
I understand now, in some places you can chose your shot. Parents can sometimes buy ads in the back of the book, and include the shot of their choice.
But wouldnt the popularity of this really depend on what you plan to do with it? I know a couple of girls who had senoir portraits done, "just to do it", but they wont be used anywhere other than facebook.

The plain "everyone looks the same" look does make for better use of yearbooks as mug-shot books, however.

[morgandavis]

I wasn't too impressed with the work of Photojeania either, but then again to each there own. I was a little taken aback with the comment about them using stock photography as backgrounds.

I know that for my Senior Portraits, we had to have a formal headshot for the yearbook. Anything other than that was up to us. We did some fun ones. The photographer had a little area out back that had a wooden foot bridge and a couple of fake walls, just to have different areas for the backgrounds.

[veritasimagery]

This was part of the article, too:

"School restrictions

Some area high schools restrict what type of senior photos can appear in their yearbooks.

At Johnston High School, senior photos must be a vertical head-and-shoulders shot with a solid dark background, said yearbook advisor Leslie Shipp.
Outdoor backgrounds are not acceptable, and the photos cannot show hands, arms or the whole body. No props are allowed.

Similar guidelines are enforced at Valley High School in West Des Moines, said Diane Hicks, journalism instructor and yearbook advisor.

"Generally speaking, we want to have a classy appearance in our senior portraits, so we are just looking for head-and-shoulders shot," Hicks said. "We're trying to keep away from backgrounds that are busy - it gets into one-upsmanship."

If seniors want to have specialty shots in the yearbook, they can purchase space in the "Grad Ad" section, Hicks said.

At Waukee High School, senior photos can be shot in a studio or with an outdoor background, said journalism teacher and yearbook advisor Kent Peterson.

'But for yearbook purposes, it has to be head-and-shoulders, JPEG format, no props,' he said. 'We had a problem a couple of years ago with people wanting to hold pet iguanas or their trombones. So, really, no props is the only hard-and-fast rule.' "


So, apparently there are still schools that won't allow anything but the "standard" portrait. I thought this quote was interesting: "and the photos cannot show hands, arms or the whole body." So they can't show hands or arms. Those would be some strange looking kids.

[RLucas]

Most of the senior trends you see aren't even for the yearbooks. These are personal shots that the students pay for to pass out to friends, put on Facebook, etc... They are usually done separately from the standard yearbook photos that the schools hire, such as Life Touch and companies like that. Around here anyway.


@ Al, I guess I really need to get my eyes checked, cause I thought our tastes were similar. From what I looked at on the Photojeania site, I quite liked what I saw.

[MrJones]

so I went on Photojeania to see what everyone is talking about.
I must admit they have some good ideas there and great photos.. it's their PP that sucks!
for example, the teeth are so white that you can just see it's totally fake, not to mention the skin smoothing.
it's unfortunate cause it seems they get pretty good raw material to work with from the photographers.

[BigFuzzy]

Originally Posted by MrJones

so I went on Photojeania to see what everyone is talking about.
I must admit they have some good ideas there and great photos.. it's their PP that sucks!
for example, the teeth are so white that you can just see it's totally fake, not to mention the skin smoothing.
it's unfortunate cause it seems they get pretty good raw material to work with from the photographers.

Luke, MrJones said exactly how I felt. They had good stuff until I looked for one second longer and noticed all the horrible eye, teeth and skinwork. Yuck.