10 Questions Every School Director Should Ask Before Booking Picture Day Photographer
Every spring and every fall, a director somewhere in Leon County opens an email from a photography company they have never spoken to, with a contract attached and a date already circled. “Picture Day” is just one more thing on a very long and full to-do list, the director signs the contract. Running a school means holding a hundred small fires at once, and picture day feels like the kind of thing that should just take care of itself. Over the years of photography preschools, elementary schools, middles schools and high schools around Tallahassee and Thomasville, GA: picture day is not a vendor task. It is a day when three hundred children are each handed a small experience, and every single one of them takes something home from it. Sometimes what they take home is a photograph their grandmother frames. Sometimes what they take home is the memory of a stranger telling them to sit still and say cheese while they try not to cry. Before you sign your next “Picture Day” photographer contract here are ten questions to ask.
Who, specifically, is coming to my school?
Not which company. Which person. Larger companies rotate photographers across a region, which means the individual who walks into your building may never have met you, may never come back, and may be photographing four schools that week. As for a name. Ask if the same name will be there for retakes in the spring. There is a real difference between a school that has a photographer and a school that has their photographer.
Have you actually worked with this age group?
Photographing a hesitate three-year-old and photographing a self-conscious seventh grader are two entirely different skills, and neither of them has much to do with photographing an adult. A four-year-old will not respond to instructions. They will respond to a person who gets down at eye level and is genuinely delighted to meet them. Ask what the photographer does when a child is not smiling. The answer will tell you almost everything about the photographer.
What happens if a child cries?
Children are children and they will cry. Some morning, some sweet little one is going to melt down in your hallway, and how that moment gets handled matters more than any other thing that happens that day. For me, the answer is: we stop. We let them come back later with a friend. We let them stand next to their teacher first. Nobody rushes the student and nobody makes them feel like they have ruined anything.
How much of the school’s staff’s time will this take?
This is a practical question, and it is fair to be blunt about it. Ask how many classrooms will be disrupted at once, how long each class will take, whether the photographer brings help, and what the teachers actually have to do. A well-run picture day should feel like a slightly unusual morning, not an evacuation drill. I ask directors for a class order in advance and give teachers an approximate window, so nobody is standing in a hallway waiting.
What do parents have to fill out?
If the answer involves envelopes, cash, and order forms sent home in backpacks, know what you are signing up for. Somebody in your front office becomes the collection agency, and that somebody is not the photographer. With MMP offers online galleries only with no upfront purchase requirement. The parents see their child’s images first and no purchase is required.
Are the galleries private?
This is the question I wish more directors asked, and it is genuinely a safety question. Every gallery at MMP is password protected, so a family sees their child and only their child. MMP has a process of gather all information ahead of time before the “picture day”. As the director at your school, don’t be sky in asking how identities are handled, how codes are generated, and who has access.
What does the school get?
Most schools need individual portraits of each child, maybe a class photo, staff portraits, and high-resolution files for yearbooks, newsletters, ID badges and website needs. As whether those files come to your school at no additional cost or whether they show up later as a line cost. With MMP, the school receives one image of each student, one image of each staff, if needed, and class photos (separate photo day is required), Other items are available for school needs and additional cost is provided ahead of time for badges etc.… Do not hesitate to ask ahead of time for cost.
What will the pictures actually look like?
Ask to see a full gallery from a real school day, not a portfolio of the six best frames from three years of work. Look at the ordinary children, the one squinting, the one with the wild hair, the one who has just lost both front teeth. Do they look like themselves? Or do they look like they have been arranged? Ask whether the backgrounds will look dated in ten years. Trendy set photograph beautifully in October and look like a costume by the time that child graduates.
How quickly do families see their images?
Momentum matters. Galleries that arrive months after “picture day” are forgotten. Galleries that arrive a few weeks are shared with family members and ordered from.
Is the photographer local?
Even though this is the last question to ask it is equally as important all the above. This question matters because of the “what if” something goes wrong. I have lived in Tallahassee for over twenty-one years. My own children have gone through Leon County Schools. If your gallery has a problem, I am not a support ticket in another state. I am a mom across town who will fix it, and who will very likely see you at Walmart on Saturday. That accountability is not a marketing feature. It is just what it means to live where you work. Community matters to me.
Middle School Fine Art Portrait
Whether you book with Marlo Moody Photography for your next “Picture Day” or someone else, I hope you find a photographer who sees your students the way you do. Not as a roster to move through, but as three hundred distinct little humans, each one worth knowing for the few precious minutes they are standing in front of a camera. That is the whole heart of what I call Fine Art School Portraits: simple, special, school pictures. No forced smiles. No stiff poses. Just each child, capture honestly, in a way their family will still love looking at twenty years from now.
Middle School Images
If you are weighing your options for the year ahead, I have also written about Why hiring a local school photographer matters, and about What I mean when I say I want to See Children as they ARE. I would love to chat over video or phone call to discuss my services and how MMP can be your next School Photographer.
