Senior portraits

Most American high schools want a yearbook headshot submitted between September and November of senior year, which means the photograph has to exist by August. Families who book in August discover that there is no room left to reschedule for weather, and that every other senior in the district had the same idea. June and July are quieter, cooler and give you a second attempt if the first one falls on a thunderstorm. The wider gallery — the one that becomes graduation announcements and hangs in a hallway — has no deadline at all and is often photographed again in spring.

Ninety minutes covers three locations and as many outfit changes as fit inside it, which is the whole point of the session length. Three outfits is the shape that works: one that looks like a school day, one dressed up, and one that says what the year was actually about — a letterman jacket, an instrument, a uniform, a dog, a truck. That third outfit produces the photographs families keep, and it is the one seniors most often leave at home.

Send the school’s photo specification when you book and the correctly cropped yearbook file is delivered alongside the gallery at no extra charge. This matters more than it sounds, because schools differ and they are strict: a fixed aspect ratio, a plain background, a head size given in inches, sometimes a specified drape or tuxedo. A beautiful set of photographs that does not meet the specification is rejected by a yearbook editor in about four seconds, and by then the deadline has usually passed.

The session belongs to the senior rather than to the parent who booked it, and the ones that go well are the ones where that is settled beforehand. A seventeen-year-old who chose the locations and the outfits is participating; one who was driven somewhere and told to smile is visible in every frame. Forty retouched photographs within five business days, a print release included, and from $395 agreed before anything is booked.