School Picture Day

So.  Sometime last month was School Picture Day.  Last year we had some issues with the school picture, and I was really hoping for a good one this year.


In an attempt to get you more committed to your kid's pictures, the company is giving you more choices.  Instead of the standard gray or purpley blue background, you can now choose different backgrounds, including electric green or muddy amber.  You can also choose a close up shot, or a horizontal shot.  Here's their example:

In their example I like the close up.  Oooh, she's cute!  She's got a great smile! I figured maybe a closer shot would show off my girls' charm and their sweet smiles. I chose pose #2, the close ups. 

 It's sort of close up, but not so much so.  
Fast forward to today, when the picture packets showed up in the kids' backpacks.  My girls don't want to wait for me to look, I can look after we've walked home, and off they go.  I don't want to make a big deal about it because I've already embarrassed Thing 1 enough with my telling everyone about her picture last year.  Can't wait to get home!  How-do-they-look-how-do-they-look-how-do-they-look!


Take into account that my scanner isn't working so well, and everything seems to be coming in dark with a smear across it.  But this is what I got.

The girls themselves look great.  Thing 1's smile is still pretty enthusiastic, but not off the scale.  Thing 2 looks great but the funny little scab above her eyebrow (I can't remember anymore how it got there) really shows up.  The scanner is making them look like they were assaulted by a spray-on tanner.  In reality the color is okay.

What I don't like is the extreme close up.  It isn't showing up so well in the dark to the side, but Thing 1's ear barely made it in the shot, and she has all these little natural curls around her face that were cut off completely!  Thing 2 also lost a bunch of hair on that side especially, though on the other side her curls got cut off too.  The girl in the sample was not in danger of having her ears cut off.  She also has a collar bone.  With my kids the collar bone is just a rumor and the rotating knives which cropped the picture are dangerously close to their ears.


I'm tired of having the School Picture be an endurance until the next one.  And since the kids' pictures are okay and what I don't like is the extreme close-up business, I decided I'd probably do a retake, just to get the camera out of their faces.  By golly, Yeah!  I'll get retakes.  Now they've got the looking cute part down, we'll deal with the stupid photographer.  When is picture retake day?
Snap!  November 16th.  We'll all be out of the country.  

So we get to live with the Uber Close-Up photos.
Sigh.
At least no one looks like they were hit with a frying pan.