How to Take School Year Photos

One school activity teenagers can choose to join is the school yearbook committee. Committee members are responsible for taking photos of each class all year long and then assembling them in a book. It is usually done like a scrapbook to make the yearbook more memorable and fun. Then the committee contracts with a publishing company and has the yearbook published. Yearbooks are then sold to the students to cover the printing and photo costs.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Digital camera
• Software program for the photos
• Notebook
• Pencil

1. Get a calendar of the school year. Mark down in your date book all of the dates the school has memorable events, such as field trips, special events and sporting games. You are going to need to attend these functions to collect pictures. If you cannot attend one of the functions, assign the task to someone else on the committee.

2. Take down the names of all the people in your pictures. If you don't know the person, then find out who they are. In a notebook write down the picture number. That is the number on your camera. You could write it 3/24 or picture number 3 out of 24. This will keep your organized when you need to put captions with your pictures in the yearbook.

3. Gather sports teams and various groups within the school together to take planned photos. For instance, if you have a chess club, then visit the club on a day when everyone is present and have them stand together for a group photo. Make sure you include an object that will let viewers know what kind of club it is. You could have the chess players stand in front of a chess board. Get the sports teams when they are in uniform and you won't need an object for them.

4. Snap candid photos. These are photos that no one is expecting and they are often hysterical. These photos add comedy to a yearbook instead of just the serious club photos. To get these, you just have to travel undetected throughout the school and take pictures. If you have a digital camera, you can just delete the ones that don't come out the way you want them too and try some more. Go inside classrooms, outside on the fields and in the lunch room. You may find a kid with spaghetti hanging out his mouth or a teacher scratching his head with his pencil.

5. Take a picture of the school building itself. Make sure you get the school's name in the picture. You can take the picture as the school bell rings for dismissal and all of the students are leaving to get on the buses.

Tips & Warnings

• You should keep in mind that all the pictures you take are meant to be memories. Think about what kind of memories you want to have when you get older and concentrate on taking pictures of that nature.
• Take more photos than you actually need. It is better to have extra then not enough.
• For any incriminating photos, you will need to get the person's permission before publishing. You don't need a lawsuit on your hands.

Resources

• Life Touch Yearbooks