Smile, Honey! It’s Picture Day!
Me, in fifth grade. Back when you got a free comb on picture day.
The other day, both boys came home with the familiar order form and info sheet in their backpacks: Gear up, mom and dad, it’s almost Picture Day!
I hate picture day.
To be precise, I don’t hate the day itself, since I’m not, literally or otherwise, in the picture. True to my meanness and aversion to being a Joiner, I don’t even volunteer to herd kids to the all-purpose room or comb hair and fix bows.
What I hate is the form itself (murky, impenetrable); the packages offered (many choices, none of which make sense); and even the modifications you can make to the packages offered (again, none of which make sense, because none of them modify the packages to the point where they make sense, at least to me). The packages all cost too much for what they include. In the last year or two, the company’s started offering what seems like a great advantage: a photo CD of your kid, so you can (gasp!) download and print or have printed your own shots. But guess what? You can only buy the CD as part of a package. The most expensive package, the one that includes something like three 8X10’s (I’m sorry, does anyone aside from a few grandparents, my own parents not included, even want an 8X10 anymore?).
Those packages also include weird sizes. You know how a standard photo size these days is the nice, desk-top-frame friendly 4X6? No such thing here! You can get 5X7s, of course, and those anachronistic 8X10s, but no 4X6’s.
But hey, how about eighteen inch-and-a-half by two-and-a-half inches? Really — 18 of them?
Gah. I won’t go on. And in case you were wondering if I was protecting the innocence of the company in question, I’m quite happy to name names. It’s LifeTouch. And they come back in the spring!
My question is this: Why do we fall for the pitch?
These reasons not to fall for it are obvious, but bear repeating:
We all have cameras now. Many of us have very good cameras. Even our cheaper cameras take good pictures. That was not always the case, of course. On my desk right now is a 5X7 black and white photo of my grandmother with my dad, when he was two. A photographer came to the house and persuaded my normally quite frugal grandmother to spring for some photos. He must have plied her with that age-old effective strategy: “But Madam, you look so lovely in this photo! So youthful! And your son! How adorable!” All of which is true, but you know. My point, though, is that these old-time traveling shutterbugs had one major ace in the hole: that set of photos of my dad at 2 are probably the only extant photos of my dad at two. Want to know how many photos I have of Daniel at two? So do I.
Here’s that pic of my grandma and dad:
Brooklyn, circa 1938. And this was probably an outtake of the day's photo session!
Everyone we know takes pictures of our kids. Lots and lots of them. I challenge you, right now, to compare a stunning unposed shot you probably have tucked in an album, with one you had taken at Sears Portrait Studio, or its equivalent. I took Daniel to Sears exactly one time for photos, at 18 months. I felt like I should — other moms shlepped to the photo studio on a monthly basis! The shots are cute, of course, with my baby’s wispy curls that are no more, his chubby feet and sweet baby face. But I don’t even have that in a frame. What I do have framed? A shot we took of him at 9 months, on a park bench near where we used to live. It’s so… perfectly Daniel:
This is exactly how Daniel still looks, minus the chub.
Whereas the Sears shots? They’re Sears shots. No more, no less. And certainly no essense of Daniel.
And yet I’m writing the checks to Life Touch. This is the last time, though. I’m doing it because it’s James’ kindergarten year, and because as the second son he’s gotten short shrift photographically, even given our shutter-happiness. And because the grandparents do still like them.
Next year, all LifeTouch is getting from me,I promise, is just enough for the class photo. Then I’m going to spend some time sifting through the four gazillion shots either I or my relatives take of my sons, find the best, and make copies (for cheap! Online!) for the grandparents. There. Done.
School photos are an anchronism. And as my friend Sandra pointed out, unlike when we were kids, you don’t even get a free comb anymore.
October 7, 2009 @ 2:48 pm
Oh my cuteness, that picture of Daniel is so ridiculously adorable. That pic is worth 1,000 words (and 100,000 Sears shots).
October 7, 2009 @ 4:15 pm
At our school it’s even worse…The class photo is just a compilation of the individual portraits taken on photo day! So if you don’t get an inidividual photo (and pay for some form of package to go with it), you don’t get the class photo (or to BE IN the class photo, I assume).
Bah. Humbug.
October 7, 2009 @ 4:40 pm
This is a case of an irrelevant industry with too much arrogance to realize it’s irrelevant. They need to improve their product/skills to keep up with the SLR camera competition, not try to hammer you into submission via guilt.
We run into this a lot with show choir competition. Some guy comes in and buys the rights to photograph the day. He sells the photos for exhorbitant fees and gives the music program a sliver. And he has the power to ban our SLRs from the theater … the parents who have already sunk thousands into Brandon’s costume, travel fees, dance classes, etc. But now they have to pay to get ONE photo of him that a stranger took randomly.
But the parents know the routine. The parents know what expressions they want and when. The parents are concentrating on just Brandon and not the entire group, as the official photographer is. If he would spend his time finding unique angles, creative shots, and do a good job, he’d still sell his photos and not be threatened by the other 40 they also took of their son.
Yah, this is obviously a sore spot with me, too. LOL
October 7, 2009 @ 5:51 pm
Oh my goodness, I could not agree more! I hate hate hate those horrible photos. Last year we opted out of the soccer photo. I just flat out refused to order. And since you could not get the ‘team’ picture unless you ordered a complete package, I took my own camera and when the team was sitting under a tree and relaxing, I snapped away.
I’m tempted to order nothing but the class picture this year if it’s available on its own. Every year I put together a photo book for my son thru iPhoto. I do a title page with name of teacher, etc. then candid shots from the school year. It’s a much better keepsake than those ridiculous class pictures. And it shows him enjoying school activities and hanging out with his friends. What more could you want?
October 7, 2009 @ 9:08 pm
Denise, I wrote about opting out of school photos a month or so ago, because I feel the EXACT SAME WAY–the packages never make any sense (how come you can’t just get 3X5s and a couple 5X7s and none of those lame, unuseable mini-wallets?) and the photos are usually awful. A few years ago my kids’ school actually sent home huge packages of photos–unsolicited–saying if we kept them we’d owe Lifetouch $65 or whatever, or we could pick and choose which we wanted to keep (but only in a configuration that fit an existing package, of course) and pay for those. Of course, whichever ones we sent back would be THROWN AWAY. It burned me up. The manipulation….the ridiculous cost…the WASTE. UGH.
This year I just ignored the order form. I am a mean mommy. Though I will say our school is now using a company other than Lifetouch and its packages, while still impenetrable, seem more reasonably priced.
October 8, 2009 @ 10:21 am
Oh, I think they realize how irrelevant they’ve become. This year the school sent the form home on opening day and said the money was due the following day. The pictures were taken a couple of weeks later. They probably knew that if we had a chance to think about it, we might not spend as much.
October 8, 2009 @ 11:19 am
I am willing to hop on this bandwagon. Besides the irrelevancy (seriously, I just don’t need more pictures of my son – and he always looks nothing like himself in those pictures anyway), the ordering form is just too, too confusing. We opted for just the class picture this year – which LifeTouch offers at my son’s school. Perhaps because it is an urban school with lots of poor kids? Could they be offering different overly-complex package options to different demographics?
October 8, 2009 @ 11:38 am
Oooh, Molly, a conspiracy theory! It may well be true that there are different package options for different school districts. I’m in a relatively affluent district (there’s a big range, but overall these are people with both time and cash to spare), so maybe we are not given the small-print cheaper options. One thing I’m glad of: with soccer photos, we don’t have to pay anything and we get a team photo, which is all I want anyway. Taking good shots of them on the soccer field is actually really easy!
October 8, 2009 @ 4:03 pm
I have just stumbled across your blog today, and I am so happy I could cry! Finally someone who gets it! I survived three months of maternity leave, just barely. I knew I had to return to work when I ordered a pasta-pro on ebay.
Thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!!
October 8, 2009 @ 11:23 pm
I’m still feeling guilty (actually not anymore, as of this moment) over not ordering High School graduation pictures of my son. We took plenty of pictures the day of graduation and we even have a video of the event (of course we edited out all the other kids getting their diplomas). In the pictures we took, our son look happy or genuinely relieved, I’m not sure which. In the “studio” shots he looked…there is no nice way to say this, he looked constipated. He is just not photogenic unless it’s completely candid.
October 9, 2009 @ 10:38 am
This post inspired me to write my own post on the frugal approach to class pictures. It will appear on my Suddenly Frugal blog on Monday!
Leah
Making Picture Day More Affordable « Suddenly Frugal Blog
October 12, 2009 @ 2:04 am
[…] rip off (maybe my mom did, too?). Why? Well, I think my friend Denise said it best over at her blog “Confessions of a Mean Mommy”: We all have cameras. Many of us have very good cameras. Even our cheaper cameras take good […]
October 13, 2009 @ 3:53 pm
Got our pictures! Along with the class photo I ordered we also got a “preview” of the photo they took of my son – he looks so f-in’ weird I’m really glad we didn’t spend money on a package. Oh, and we also got an 8X10 of one of his classmates. Lovely as she is, we gave it back to her. I thought this audience would like the mix-up.
October 13, 2009 @ 3:55 pm
I should clarify: my son is a very nice looking child. To make him look weird in a picture involved some work. They had him tilt his head and do a half-smile, an expression I have *never* seen him make before.
October 14, 2009 @ 8:30 am
Oh, I hear you, Molly! My older boy, in every professional picture taken of him, curls his upper lip under, making a weird smile. It’s like they look adorable, but not quite like themselves, in their natural-adorable state. Our picture days are tomorrow and Friday. I’ll report back…
Denise
October 15, 2009 @ 5:29 pm
For the most part, I absolutely agree with you!! Granted, my son is only a year old, but we got so much snail-mail spam for photo shoots over the last year, it’s insane. I’ve managed to take a bunch of adorable photos (some even looked professional) on my PHONE!! Although I will concede one thing…it’s worth it to pay Wal-Mart 20 bucks to get photos of the whole family. It’s probably never going to happen, cuz the significant other hates pictures, but for some reason I really want some professional shots of all three of us in the same picture.
October 15, 2009 @ 10:05 pm
I totally agree with you. It’s a scam. The sizes are never what you would want — and it’s a total rip off. Plus, the pictures are usually awful. My son looks cut in lots of pics, but he seems to look like ET in the school pics. I opted out this year — the minimum package was 35 dollars and I have 3 kids. I figure if I want formal pics, we can go to Kiddie Kandids and pay 12 dollars a sheet — we buy 2 sheets and we’re done. We’ve had good luck in the past getting a group photo of the three of them for a decent price. With them, they show you the pictures before you buy, so you don’t have to buy something that’s truly horrid.
October 17, 2009 @ 2:19 pm
This has been one of the unexpected benefits of homeschooling: No more school pictures! And no more feeling the like the “bad parent”, either, for not ordering bad pictures of my kids.
October 18, 2009 @ 9:20 pm
Yeah – My daughter is only in Pre-K and I already have vetoed the picture day photos. I take way better photos myself and I am not going to pay for icky school photos. I don’t care. It’s not worth it to me. I like my candid photos I take better.
October 22, 2009 @ 1:56 pm
School pictures are a sore point with me, too! At our school (private) they donate a tiny portion to the school, so we get letters home stating that it’s a fundraiser for the school. So I always feel obligated, but I only do buy once/year even though they come twice. Maybe next spring I’ll just write a donation check to the school instead. I’ve done that with other fundraisers and it saved me a ton of angst.
December 18, 2013 @ 2:39 am
We can’t to give out thousands of free combs anymore. Surely you’ve felt the economy now?
December 18, 2013 @ 2:41 am
If Lifetouch wasn’t here, you would all miss us when you don’t get a yearbook anymore.