BB’s school photo came home in an envelope inscribed with: “Every school picture tells a story.“

I’m not taking artistic license. The “tells a story” part was highlighted.

That sounds like a diplomatic disclaimer to me. I.e. if your kid’s photo came out odd, it’s the memory that counts.

Then I saw this post on one of our town’s social media pages:

“… I am jealous of my friends from the surrounding towns. Their kids photos seem to be taken with more care. Their kids are making good w expressions. They have great backgrounds and it appears they have slight fan moving hair. I’m not sure why our expensive town has such low expectations and chooses a vendor with limited output. Every year they seem to get worse.”

I watched baffled as everyone seemed to get on board.

Great backgrounds? You want lasers? I’ve got 1989 and 1990 for you. You want a photo with a floating head? See 1987. Hand on cheek? 1994.

School photos aren’t getting worse every year. They’ve always been terrible. The vendor knows this or they wouldn’t be pushing the “story” side of the photo.

If you’re really serious about getting good photos, you go independent. Then you can have gems like these:

Maybe I should get off my soap box, because BB’s photo came out ok. But rainbow cheetah print isn’t always going to be in fashion. If it even is now? She had her heart set on this outfit, high pony included.

I agreed precisely because it’s NOT going to age well and someday when she does a blog post with a collage of her school photos, this will be a winner. Although she really could have used a fan to get that one piece of hair back.