School Photos
 

My granddaughter, Laura, brought hers home today. The sample comes in a double folder, a photo of her on one side and a class photo on the other, both a good size. The one of her alone is the best she's ever had taken at school and the class one is very good too so we want to buy them. Guess how much, just for those two? £18.50! A set of 4 small (tiny) individual photos is £8.

There can't be many parents who will say no, they don't want the photos. I suspect even the parents of a few children in Laura's class, who look a bit peculiar on the group photo (God love her, you should see the expression on Victoria's face), will buy the set to avoid hurt feelings. I feel as though everyone is being well and truly ripped off.

Re: School Photos
 

When I was at school my mum always bought a big school photo and my Grandma always bought a little one.

You don't seem to be able to just buy the one these days, they all come in packs........it does make it expensive, doesn't it?

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Why not scan them and get them for free?? Do you not get the full size photos to check out these days?

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No, you just get a tiny thumbnail of a thing.

It also has 'sample' accross it to stop people scanning and blowing them up.

Can't blame them I suppose.....their business must have taken a battering since the arrival of scanners etc.

Re: School Photos
 

I suggested this to Laura's mum but, of course, you don't get quite the same finish with a photocopied picture. Good idea for any "extras" though.

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Pooh! I don't know why anyone, especially in this day and age, would want a class photo. I know I objected, but lads always wanted. When I was at school , would have had no interest in having a class photo.Thing is, digital photography being so easy, why are we still asked to pay such exhorbitant prices?

Why can't the schools take piccies themselves to raise school funds instead of lining someone elses pockets?

Re: School Photos
 

we didnt get proofs of his last lot, they were available to view online, all you needed were the codes the school gave you, its all a bit posh lol

Re: School Photos
 

Actually no, Lilly, my printer is a scanner and photocopier too so it copies at full size and the samples haven't got the word written on them. They just don't come out with the glossy finish of the originals.

I know what you mean about photographers losing trade but they'd do better to sell more for less profit per unit.

Re: School Photos
 

It looks like things vary then from photographer to photographer.

Ours have the word 'sample' written accross them, yours don't and emamum views hers on a website. :D

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Would laminating not make any copies look better? Ian went through a phase of taking loads and laminating them and they look pretty good:)

Re: School Photos
 

I've still got one of those wide, panoramic photos of Lymm Grammar School - the whole school - in, I think, 1979. My elder daughter and my son are both on it, she was 15 and he was 14.

I believe somewhere (I suspect at my 2nd big brother's Blackburn house) is a similar photo of Paddock House Convent Grammar School, circa 1956, with 13 year old me on row 3. :D

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An ex boss of mine, showed me one of those old photos, he is on each end of it , lol!

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I miss class photos...used to make it much easier to do birthday invititions and christmas cards lol Just had a massive kerfuffle with ty having to rememer everyone in his class lol

Re: School Photos
 

Our primary school doesn't do class photos of every class, just reception and year six.

They do photos of children with their brothers/sisters and individual ones too if requested.

Re: School Photos
 

Hang on, I'll stand up for teh photographer here.

He had to go to the school, spend all day taking the pictures on equipment that probably costs £2K upwards. Then he has to crop/post process etc them all ( 300 kids/school), print samples for each child(again 300 with no guarantee of a sale), compile sets with child and class pictures in, wait 2 months for orders, then print them at full photo quality, frame them in the frames he has bought and again package them up for you. He also knows you are likely to buy 1 set, scan them and print your own for grandma etc.

In all honesty I reckon its not badly priced. teh technology and product is not what you a re paying for, its time and expertise

People think that cause they have a 8 megapixel £80 digital camera that they can take good pictures. Thats not true. There is an art to taking pictures and there is a world of difference between teh quality of a 80 quid point and shoot and a 16 megapixel digital camera with a very expensive piece of glass on the front.

Re: School Photos
 

Maybe not technically brilliant, but in a lot of cases, certainly more interesting than saying "Sausages" to a camera!

My daughter was asked to do this, and she has a lisp. She will probably be forever embarassed by that photo!:)

Re: School Photos
 

Caz, this is why the school could not take the photos themselves for school funds. :D

Re: School Photos
 

Wait 2 months for orders? No, they've got to be in, with a cheque, by Monday the 10th - 4 days time. Frames? Just cardboard folders, You want a nice frame? Go to Boots and buy one. Time I may agree with, though what the hell else would he be doing with his time if not going to schools? Expertise, not so, it's the equipment that makes the good print and that equipment isn't used, solely, for school photos.

Re: School Photos
 

Why? you mean coz not technically brilliant? :D

See my last post.

Ya gotta agree, most photos taken with a pessy run of the mill digi camera, are better coz they are interesting! They are photos of people as they are, not posed saying stupid things, but doing what they do. everyone can take reasonable quality pics these days with camera or phone, which is why they resent paying these prices.

Re: School Photos
 

It's actually illegal to copy photographs. The copyright remains the photographers at all times, even if it's your child and even if you buy a print that's all you're actually buying - a print. You can't copy them without the photographers permission, which of course, you won't get unless you buy the digital disc which they sometimes sell as an option - then you can reproduce.

If you take school pictures to a photocopiers then they should refuse to copy them because that means that they would be breaking the law too. Scanning them and sending them in email is also against the law.

Re: School Photos
 

I always purchased my son's school photographs, they were always better than ones I could take myself, and have got better and better. Can't understand why I have only one of my daughter .. maybe they weren't doing them very often then .. :confused: Or possibly, she wouldn't let me if anything less than perfect, and she thought didn't do her any favours .. :rolleyes:

Just wait until your children graduate from Uni .. didn't get these due to the cost ... sure they were about £50 ! My brother took some of my son in the grounds of the University and came out rather well, although not quite the same as studio surroundings, but I was pleased with them anyway, even though his robe was a bit sqew wiff (no idea how to spell that !) on his Master's one :D

Re: School Photos
 

Even down to things like having the photo put on a cake at Asda infringes copyright. In fact the reproduction issues of copyright material are more stringent than the reproduction issues of humans :rolleyes:

Re: School Photos
 

Expertise I am afraid is right. It takes a good photographer to get the right angle, positioning and capturing that spilt second that the child is 'at its best'

Frames - Even those cardboard ones cost money you know. how do you expect the photographer to know what type of frame will suit everyone, they can't so they use a common base denominator.

The sort of cameras and lenses and printers and PCs required to do all this work is horrendously expensive and he can't just have one, he needs a backup as well in case he has a problem on site and even at home. Its also not the sort of job that he has a constant stream of work, he has to make it when there is work there. what % uptake do you reckon they get at teh school, I would be surprised if its much over 50%.

Then there is employers and employees tax, premises(if not home based), NI, and dare I say the dirty word "Profit". and there is the risk that no -one will buy his picttures due to teh "credit crunch" or other outside factors.


I think people are quite unfair at what sort of overheads it takes to do this sort of work professionally.

And the biggy, If you are happy with 'your' picture of little johnny in his uniform then don't buy the school one! No -one is forcing you.

Re: School Photos
 

I seem to remember learning about copyright a couple of years ago:rolleyes:

Re: School Photos
 

Mmm, yes, I seem to remember you learning about copyright a few years ago too. ;):D

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And if all the photo's are sold he takes well over 5 grand for his work, less obviously for those not sold. I wonder how much actual time will be spent doing and what the processing costs will be?

I will guess at 1 week's work and £1000 costs and he makes £4000. Only a guess of course.

Re: School Photos
 

I've just been doing some sums and I think that you two are way out with quantities and costs.

Take my kids school for example - 240 pupils - allowing for families i.e. brother and sister photographed together = 150 'shots'.

150 shots - then assuming roughly half take it up with an average spend of £15.

75 x 15 = £1,125.

So the photographer makes approx £1,125 per school - assuming that some schools are bigger but many smaller than St Mary's.

There are usually two staff there - photographer and assistant - and I would imagine it can take up to a week's worth of admin including making up samples, putting them in frames, bagging them and sending them to the school plus when the orders come producing the finished results.

Two people, plus premises and equipment - £1,125 for a weeks work for two people doesn't go that far.

Re: School Photos
 

In the case of Laura's school there are about 200 pupils. Our particular order is going to be £55 (the other nannie and granddad are ordering too). This is quite an affluent area, so I'm pretty sure there will be a good many orders of well over the £18.50 for the 2 standard shots, but there are parents of children at the school who are not very well off as well as the better off ones.

What really annoys me is that a friend of mine has a daughter who teaches in Warrington, in a much "poorer" area, and their school photos are about 20% cheaper. I think it's the same photographer, though I may be wrong. The photographer must be making a profit out of that school or he wouldn't do it, so - he's making a killing here. ;)

Re: School Photos
 

Thats a good point that. Some parents won't buy the minimum, others will but extra so maybe saying one sale per child is near enough for our estimates.

Re: School Photos
 

Maybe the school itself is adding more of a commision on ? does anyone know what sort of percentage the schools actually make on these ?

Re: School Photos
 

I was going to write a big essay post on this, but pretty much everything I was going to say has been covered allready.

your forgetting aswel the years of training that most professional photographers go through, at their own cost (in most cases) I'm in my 5th year studying the subject, (doing my BA) and it's cost me thousands... my Degree cost me around £3000 just in fees...

and my BA is costing me another £1200, This money has to be recouped somewhere...

The cost to set up even a small business shooting schools etc will go into the thousands, there is so much kit and equipment you have to buy,
Camera body, lenses, transmitters/sync leads, studio lights, backdrops, bags and cases, batteries, photographic media (cards/film etc)

then you have to factor in transportation costs, and if your working with kids your going to have to have them police checks done,

as for output, not all photographers have in house printing... the "worked" images are often sent off to a lab for printing, which adds to the cost. then theres the admin side of things. I've worked in a studio that specialized in social and wedding photography, and the amount of time I spent trawling through orders cutting prints, mounting them and prepping them for sale could have been a full time job. So if the photographer hasn't got another assistant working on that he/she is using time they could be producing more work outputting previous work.

It's a hard job, it's not just "turn up set up some lights and press a button" people have to remember that it is a real job that requires real skill. And the people doing it have to make enough money from it to eat and pay the bills just like the rest of you!

:) This isn't a rant, btw...

Re: School Photos
 

Cheques have to be made to the photographer, not the school. As far as I know the school gets nothing out of it. My daughter is on the PTA committee and I don't think any contribution is made, to school funds, by the photographer. If there's another way for him to contribute, I don't know what it is.

Re: School Photos
 

The school benefits - whether it's given to the PTA or the school - there's a commission or a fee paid to the school or it wouldn't be worth the disruption of classes.

Re: School Photos
 

Thats where photoshop comes in ;)

Re: School Photos
 

You do get to know the price,The choice is simple,Buy or Don't,Can't see the problem.

Take your own.:rolleyes:

Re: School Photos
 

Just got tys...what a stupid time to be asking for money!! I want them but dont think i can stretch with it being so close to christmas!

Re: School Photos
 

They are always done in this term so you'll buy them for Christmas, Emma.