The Taking Of The School Photo

Back in the last millennium, the annual "School Photo" was a Big Thing. Firstly a letter went home to parents warning them of The Date. Please make sure your child is in correct school uniform. A notice would go up in the staff room, listing what time each class was due to line up outside the school hall. Do not keep the photographer waiting, we need to get every pupil photographed. And then a few weeks later, the 'proofs' were sent home along with instructions about payment.

Somehow this was so important, a record of your presence in that class, in that particular year. But as time has gone by, and cameras are so much cheaper, and it costs nothing to take a picture on your phone, and everybody is posting pictures on Facebook, Instagram and blogs, maybe it isn't the occasion it once was.

In the Hospice the other week, Gill asked me to prepare some family photos for display at the Post Funeral Tea [so they have something to make them smile, she said] 

As I laid the pictures out on a sheet of black card, I was conscious of the 1960s primary school ones all being posed in a similar way. Sat at a table, right arm across the desk, and an open book in front of her, in black and white. We have a similar one of Bob.

But there was very little consideration given to the fact these were being taken 'for posterity'. My mother was desperately upset that my primary school didn't warn parents. So on The Day, I went in wearing a second hand cardi two sizes too large, with the cuffs rolled over like donuts because the sleeve were so long.[I'd had some sort of ketchup related accident the night before, staining my regular cardi] My brother had fallen and cut his head, so the teacher combed his fringe over the wound, and caught the scab, so it was raw and bleeding. You can see the pain on Adrian's face. And as for 'smile please!" when you've just lost your front teeth...

By the 70s and 80s things were colourful. That's my sixth form picture [Dad had that on his desk for years] Backdrops and lighting were much better. Gillian often sent me Julian's school photo. The format always seemed the same, one large and four small copies of the same picture. One for the wall, two for grandparents, and two more to give away.

They have also got more relaxed about photographing siblings together - I always felt that it was unfair if you had three children, and were expected to pay three times as much. In the 'noughties' artistic shots against plain white backgrounds became trendy too.

I have absolutely no idea if there is an official school photo day at Rosie's school. I suspect there may have been a Class Picture taken last summer. But we have so many pictures now, why would we pay our for another?

Nowadays school photographers are very high tech, and everything is downloadable, payments are cashless. So teachers do not have to hand out the envelopes on a Monday, nag children on a Thursday, and count in the money on a Friday.

Did your school do one of those huge panoramic ones with everybody in it - staff seated at the front, classes in rows behind them balanced on forms and benches and the Top Year at the top? 

Do you have school photos of your children or grandchildren [or yourself]? Do they evoke happy memories? or recollections of dreadful teachers and uncomfortable uniforms?