Senior Pictures Remain Recession Proof

Back when I was in high school, taking pictures still meant developing film and pasting them into your photo album, taping them to the inside of your locker or tacking them onto a bulletin board. Yes, Gen Xers also documented our lives and our friends in copious photo sessions and had party pics, we just didn’t have the Web to internet to post and share them. It seems as though the traditional senior picture, which has always been a rite of passage, continues to be even in an era of digital photography and distribution. Yes, that funny, formal photograph where you contort your body and try not to look horrible, continues to be in demand despite hard economic times. Why? Parents want those pictures - with the same fervor with which they wanted those baby/child portraits with the cheesy backgrounds. According to this fun piece in the Kansas City Star:

Parents are shelling out hundreds of dollars - sometimes more than $1,000 - for senior pictures…

...McComas, who recently wrote a humorous online commentary on senior portraits for Connected Photographer magazine, told me that based on her experiences, “the parents of girls spend roughly three times more on their photo packages than boys.” Chalk it up, she said, to multiple outfits and multiple backdrops….

...the school photography industry appears to be recession-proof. At least that was the suggestion from Harvey Parido, president of the Professional School Photographers Association International, in an interview recently with McClatchy Newspapers.

Yes, that photo is my senior pic, wearing my BFF’s sweater, and no, that wasn’t a perm.