School Portraits

celeste · September 29, 2008

I am going to be shooting school portraits for a small school. They actually use some type of software...not sure what to build the yearbook themselves. I will be selling packages to help raise funds....I plan to give the yearbook staff a copy of the photos on cd. I want to know if I have to do anything different or if the yearbook software will resize for those tiny little pictures?

Thanks

sweet caroline · September 29, 2008

celeste wrote:

I am going to be shooting school portraits for a small school. They actually use some type of software...not sure what to build the yearbook themselves. I will be selling packages to help raise funds....I plan to give the yearbook staff a copy of the photos on cd. I want to know if I have to do anything different or if the yearbook software will resize for those tiny little pictures?

Thanks

I guess it really depends on what they are using. I did the photos and yearbook for my daughter's school last year and used Blurb.com. I was able to just drag and drop from either iphoto or smugmug, and the software resized to fit the template.

Caroline

celeste · September 29, 2008

So did you just shoot your pictures as you would a normal school portrait......about waist up? And if the software does not resize what would you suggest.

Scott_Quier · September 29, 2008

celeste wrote:

So did you just shoot your pictures as you would a normal school portrait......about waist up? And if the software does not resize what would you suggest.

Regardless of what the target software will or won't do, one rule of thumb that is almost always right is to shoot for what you need/want. In this case, you know what the target photos are going to look like (ignoring, for the moment that they will be small) - so shoot for that, plus about 10% for cropping. This gives the yearbook staff as much data with which to work.

celeste · September 29, 2008

Thank you. Very helpful. Do you happen to have any school photos/portraits that I could view.

sweet caroline · September 29, 2008

celeste wrote:

Thank you. Very helpful. Do you happen to have any school photos/portraits that I could view.

Here are a couple that I took today at my preschool. I used my D300, SB600, Softliter II with diffuser. I had to keep running from the sun all day. I think I shot something like 80 kids. I had a max of 5 minutes per kid, and I try to get at least three decent shots. I get to do it all again tomorrow! Then, I'll have big kids on Friday when I do my daughters' school (pre-k through 8th grade).
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Caroline

Scott_Quier · September 30, 2008

Caroline, these are quite nice

If I may, I would maybe suggest you get down on their level a little more. The "looking down on them" perspective is not as interactive as when the camera is more nearly on level with their eyes. You have a couple of examples of each in the set above - just for comparison.

sweet caroline · September 30, 2008

Scott_Quier wrote:

Caroline, these are quite nice

If I may, I would maybe suggest you get down on their level a little more. The "looking down on them" perspective is not as interactive as when the camera is more nearly on level with their eyes. You have a couple of examples of each in the set above - just for comparison.

Thanks, Scott,

I agree about getting down on the kids' level (I teach preschool after all). I usually try shots from a few different perspectives with each kid. Different kids will respond better to different angles. Yesterday, I was also trying to be mindful of sun in the background, so I had to shoot more with that downward angle than I usually like to . Our location was the courtyard at the church preschool where I teach, so we were limited when it came to finding good shade. All in all, I'd still rather do these outside than set up a mini studio inside. A lot of young children find the studio set up intimidating, and the parents like how different it is to have school portraits done outside.

Anyway, today I shoot more and I'll work harder at taking more shots on child level. Thanks for the input!

Caroline

SitterS · October 3, 2008

Caroline really nice shots of the kids.

Dave Clee · October 6, 2008

I would also be careful not to cutoff fingers and toes in your framing. If you dont shoot loose enough around the edges of your frame it will become even worse when the photo is cutdown to print sizes, 8X10, 11X14 etc..

Looks like you are on your way.

Cheers

Dave

sweet caroline · October 7, 2008

Dave Clee wrote:

I would also be careful not to cutoff fingers and toes in your framing. If you dont shoot loose enough around the edges of your frame it will become even worse when the photo is cutdown to print sizes, 8X10, 11X14 etc..

Looks like you are on your way.

Cheers

Dave

I know, those poor little fingers! Usually I crop those down into headshots before parents view them. I also take some a little further out. It's tough work when I have such a short time with each kid. This is the second year I've done the bulk school photo thing. It ends up being pretty good money, and I have fun, but I don't think I could do more than the two schools I already do. Okay, maybe if I quit my teaching job.

Thanks for the comments. I hope my posts are helpful to those who are just starting with the school portraits. I'm definitely in the trial and error phase.

Caroline

School Portraits

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