1: Planning and Communication
It's mandatory that every school designate a point-of-contact to help prepare, organize, and carryout the picture day. During the planning period, parents are notified so the students come prepared on the big day. We work with schools to organize the logistics of the shoot to ensure a smooth photo day with minimal class disruption. Things to discuss include: Location and setup for individual and group photos; time needed for setup; best date(s) based on school calendar; reshoots; schedule and timing for each class to arrive on set, preparation of student and class lists, and more.
2: Picture Day
During picture day we take photos of each class / grade as a group, as well as each individual student. We place special emphasis (as we hope you can see!) on capturing a genuine smile for each student. This takes a little extra time, and a few extra photos, but after all the planning and work to get to this point there is every reason in the world to take the time to capture a great expression that will be looked back on for life. To this end, for group photos, we always take both serious and "silly" photos.
With planning, we can easily take group + individual photos for a class of 25-30 students in less than 30 minutes.
3: Ordering
On or before picture day order forms are dropped off to school and delivered to students. We prefer this to happen 2-3 days before picture day as a final reminder to parents to have students looking their best. Once picture day is over, 4 photos are uploaded to a private portal for parents to choose the photo to order. This photo is also the photo usually used in the yearbooks and school data bases. We typically get the photos uploaded to the portal in about a week. After this parents have around 10 days to finalize their orders and return the order forms with payment to the school. We provide a box to secure order forms and a system to track orders. With 100s of orders organization is paramount.
Parents can choose packages with various size prints, or ordering only high quality digital images.
4: Delivery
Approximately 3 weeks after the ordering deadline we deliver packets of photos for the school to distribute to students. Deliveries are organized by class / grade and alphabetized making it easy work for admin to drop off to each class and teachers to pass out or add to student backpacks.