Hi Stephanie – the key is to hand pick the classes you go into, and also hand-pick some students for ‘staged’ photos during the day. Ask your heads of schools which teachers they would recommend and then make sure those teachers are on board and happy for you to come in to their classrooms – choose a range of subjects and age groups – make sure all your image permissions are in play and that parents know the images will be used for marketing purposes and then send out commms about school uniform etc. Putting together a run sheet is perfect – leave room for breaks and don’t make each different location too tight on your schedule – allow for a bit of extra time between each location – especially when you’re working with the younger kids. If you have the resource, it’s great to have a ‘runner’ who can go ahead to the next location and let the teacher know you’re coming etc and have another set of eyes to check backgrounds, uniforms etc. Take the opportunity to get great, natural head/shoulders shots of all your school executive staff members and anyone else that you might use in publications – eg subject heads – use the same background for each of them so you have consistency but choose a background that’s better than the one you’d use on ‘school photo’ day – maybe outside if the weather allows. Also use the opportunity to get shot of kids of all ages with your school principal. The better organised you are, the less stress it will be! Good luck with it all.
