Fall School Photos: A Canadian Tradition
If you log on to any social media app, you’ll see your parent friends posting dozens of adorable snaps of their children. With the quality of these smartphone photos, filters, and pre-sets, it’s almost like everyone is a professional photographer.
Even with this technology right at our fingertips, students and parents alike are still excited every year for the back-to-school tradition of fall photo day. Fall school photos go back many decades, and in the early days, most families did not have access to a camera the way we do now.
So why then, despite the increasing digitalization of our world, are school photos still so popular here in Canada?
Why we love school photos
Whether your child is coming home from school with a school portrait of themselves against the timeless blue background, or a more modern green screen option, it’s clear that the tradition of school photos is alive and well, and here to stay.
School photos represent more than just another photo of your child. These photos represent a child’s journey into independence; that is, when he or she is off making memories and doing things without their parent or guardian being around.
School photos serve as a professionally captured documentation of a student embarking on the journey of a new school year. By the time they finish high school, each student has 14 years’ worth of photos of themselves in a similar pose, completing the story of growth through their school-aged years.
The evolution of school photo day
Like with any art form, trends and fads in school photography styles have come and gone over the years. Even in just the last few decades, we’ve seen preferences change from the laser backgrounds – that were all the rage in the ’80s – to a wide range of green screen options. Green screen backgrounds are an exciting way to customize school photos, and let the students showcase some of their personality.
School photo products have changed a lot as well. What started out as just simple, printed photo sheets developed into fun paper products like calendars and montages, and now, school photos are incorporated into useful items like notebooks, mugs, and digital-only products.
In short, school photography has adapted to the times, using the latest technology to continue offering relevant and interesting products families treasure and use to encapsulate these precious school year moments.
The future of school photos
Through the rapid advancements of technology, school photos remain a popular mainstay. School photography fills a different need than iPhone photography does: leaving parents with a professionally documented memory of their child in their school years, a crucial life stage, and provides fun product options beyond the photo album (or rather, the smartphone photo gallery).
The school photo is a timeless tradition for students in Canada; paired with digital developments, the industry continues to offer increasingly innovative products to parents and students to bridge the desire for that traditional, year-over-year school photo with the desire for cool, fun items both students and parents like.