Hello reader! Are you a senior mom or dad preparing your child for their last year of school? It seemed like all those years of schooling went by fast, didn’t it? One moment, you’re carrying your sweet, bouncing baby in your arms, watching them smile up at you when you make them laugh, and sitting by their side whenever they cried. Then time blows by so quickly, so quietly, and you watch your teenage boy or girl walking up into the school bus, back-pack strewn over their shoulders, turning around only once to smile and wave at you from the doorway of the bus before they step into their final year of high-school.

Time is short, and sometimes it can get away from us. That’s why you should invest in portraits of your kids while you still have the opportunity to capture memories of them while they’re young. As a high-school senior myself, I can tell you that getting professional portraits of your high-school seniors now is more important than a lot of moms and dads realize.

In this article, I want to show you the importance of investing in senior portraits of your kids. Click below to contact us for your child’s senior portraits.

How will Professional Senior Portraits Benefit Us?

My dad, Tim Ray, has heard this question from clients before. Really, though, it is a good question. How will it benefit you? 

One way you and your senior will benefit from investing in an experienced photographer is that your senior boy or girl will have professionally done photographs for their school yearbook, college, and for their resumes when they apply for a job. Think about it, if you were an employer at a workplace, interviewing possible employees and looking over their resumes, would you hire someone with a poorly taken iPhone photograph consisting of bad lighting, graininess and a pose that made them look bad, or would you hire the possible employee with an excellently composed, professional photograph consisting of flattering lighting, a pose that brought out their amazing features and that made them look like a pro? Think about it. What would be your first choice?

Parents and Grandparents, This is Important

Having Professional photographs of your kids while they’re young will also benefit you. Parents and grandparents of the senior can order professional, tangible wall portraits made at a professional photographer’s lab, the portraits of which will be customized specifically to grandparents’ and parents’ individual tastes by the photographer’s—and their portrait lab’s—expertise.

Can you imagine seeing a professional portrait of your senior boy or girl on your wall? Everything about it is something that you love to admire every morning when you wake up. It’s a well composed picture, it brings out your child’s unique features, and it shows all of the youthful facets of their personality. Years in the future after they have already graduated, whenever you look at your child’s portrait, you can see your boy or girl growing up, you see everything that makes them special, and you can see how they resembled you when you were young. With an IPhone snapshot or a badly composed camera image stored on an Instagram account, Facebook or the ICloud, you most likely won’t have a tangible picture of your child to keep for generations and to share with your family. 

Remember, IPhones can break, social media platforms can become outdated, and instagram photos can be lost. You don’t invest in an IPhone when you buy it from the store, but you do invest in portraits that will last for generations when you invest in photography from a professional photographer.

But Will My Senior Ever Use Them When They are Adults?

• 

Trust me, it may not be important for them to have good pictures of themselves now, but it will be in the future. Do you have old portraits of family members in your house? Maybe you have them displayed proudly on your lamp-stand, perhaps you have them in an album somewhere or hanging up in a vintage frame on your wall. 

Someone had to take a portrait of them, and if they hadn’t, would you be able to see what those older family members looked like when they were younger? Would you be able to look at how youthful they looked, how their eyes sparkled at the camera, or how they resembled you or another member of your family? 

Now, picture your child as an adult with children and grandchildren of their own. Can you see them showing their children portraits of themselves from when they were seniors graduating high-school? Can you see the sparkle in their kids’ eyes when they exclaim, “Mommy, you looked so beautiful!” There is value in having those portraits of your senior. You won’t regret investing in that for your kids.

Why Shouldn’t I Just Take My Own Photos of My Senior with My Phone?

First, an experienced professional photographer who has been in the business for years understands the importance of lighting, exposure, aperture width, shutter speed, proper angles, different lenses, and light sensitivity when he is taking a portrait of his client. All of this information learned over years is memorized and will be taken into account when he is photographing your senior, so that the most artistic results can be achieved for you. Every child is different, and a professional photographer will pose your child and adjust the lighting of a scene in such a way that your senior will look phenomenal. You can’t pose a girl the way you pose a boy, right? Everyone is different. Everyone is unique. Everyone is beautiful (or handsome) in their own way.

Second,  A professional portrait from a photographer’s photo lab will last generations because they print wall portraits on a special type of expensive paper. This special paper is professional archival photo paper which is only available at your photographer’s choice professional lab, and the printing of any photograph is done by actual skilled printers. Because these special photo labs only cater to professional photographers, you can’t get the professional grade archival paper that lasts for generations from an IPhone picture. Even though it appears to be more expensive to purchase from the photographer, it is well worth the investment when you consider how beautiful the images will be and how stunning your child will look in their photographs. You and your senior boy or girl will not regret it.

Professional Photographs Versus an iPhone Picture

Comparing the second image to the first, we can see that not only does the IPhone snapshot consist of bad lighting that tinges my skin orangish, and makes my eyes appear discolored and unhealthy, but it makes other features of my face look distorted. Look at the first image again versus the second. In the IPhone example, doesn’t my forehead and my nose appear much larger and unbalanced compared to my other features? This is because the lens on an IPhone camera is wide-angle, and a wide-angle lens causes subjects to become more distorted than they actually are. A professional, when he or she is photographing his client, understands how to use different lenses to combat distortion, so that your senior will look normal, undistorted, and absolutely fantastic in their pictures.

Now, look at the unaesthetic backdrop in the iPhone example. Believe it or not, it is the same backdrop as in the first professional example, but the depth of field is much greater. This is because you can’t adjust the settings on an iPhone camera, and, thus, you can’t blur out a bad background. A professional knows how to adjust the settings on his camera so that the best results can be achieved of your child in any situation–bad background or good.

If you are interested in learning more about Tim Ray Photography and our senior portraits, click here to contact us for your child’s senior portraits!