All over the world school photos are loved by parents and equally often loathed by students. However, even this market is being transformed radically thanks to changed societal values and technology.
No longer do parents (who pay for these pictures) have to be reminded, every time they look at the images, of their progeny’s pimples, facial jewellery, weird hairstyles, etc. All they have to do when ordering the pictures is to pay a little extra and the offending item can be digitally removed.
However, it’s not just parents who are in on this game, image-conscious students are just as likely to ask for digital enhancements to their photos.
Some even hire their own personal professional photographer to take the photos. This is a growth business, especially in yes, you guessed it, the image-obsessed USA.
Teen health experts are up in arms over this, claiming that pimples and such like are normal and to remove them is pandering to an unhealthy social obsession with perfection that causes anorexia and similar disorders. And while the experts are probably right, they are fighting a losing battle and the changes in school photos are simply a reflection of a much wider social phenomenon.
In the US there are several reports of students spending up to $1000 on their high school graduation photos. This may sound absurd, but less so when you consider how much US families spend on getting ready for their school prom (graduation ceremony) plus what parents and students spend on special pictures and advertisements in graduation yearbooks. There is also a thriving market on eBay for second-hand graduation books and photos with one trader selling over 10,000 items in the last year.
While school photos are often a memento they can also be used by schools for security, identification and administrative purposes. SIMs, the school administration system sold by Capita, allows 22 authorised companies/photographers to supply images of students directly into a schools SIMs system.
When we started looking at this story we had assumed school photography to be a small niche market, but it’s huge. While the largest agency specialising in this area is
Tempest, we spoke with Carol Checksfield from Fotek, who have seventy full-time staff photographers who take the photographs for over 3000 schools per year.
Carol said the UK market was vastly different from the US and that in Fotek’s experience there was very little demand for digitally enhanced images from either parents or students. She said that the UK market for such services may eventually develop but for now UK parents and students were more pragmatic and less obsessive about having perfect images.
· www.htempest.co.uk
· www.fotekportraits.co.uk
· http://home.capitaes.co.uk
