For my full-time job I just spent a few hours working on the high school graduation section. To save the sanity of newspaper editors everywhere, here are a few tips for parents with high school students.
Kerrigan, Class of 2014.
Have a professional photo taken of your high school graduate. This isn’t a plug as a photographer, this is a request as a newspaper editor. Your “high quality” photo from your camera phone will look grainy and of poor quality when it is printed on newsprint, which already makes the sharpest of photos look muddy. These low quality photos also make your son or daughter stand out (not in a good way) and takes a significant amount of time to edit the photos to get as clear of a picture as possible for publication.
Submit a headshot, a photo from the waist up. You may have a beautiful background that you want to show off, but in the newspaper or yearbook, where your photo is generally printed in black and white, people want to be able to see the students’ faces. That full-body shot may look great blown up on your wall at home, but in a 2×3 inch photo in the paper, it looks TINY. Aubrey, Class of 2015.
Avoid submitting photos taken at weird angles. While they can be really creative shots, the graduate leaning among 30 other students with photos of them straight will look odd. Also, don’t use a photo of them lying down. Photos are generally cropped to be a tall shot, so submit a vertical photo to have more control of how the photo will appear in the publication. When I have to crop it, I may chop more than you would want, especially if it’s at the end of the list and I’ve been at the task for a while.
Class of 2015 by Fresh Inkling: Aubrey, Austin and Carlee.
