Portrait of a (senior) portrait

Staci

If you're going to be a high school senior this fall, it's likely that you've already completed a time-honored tradition: senior portraits .

Senior portraits have evolved from the traditional head-and-shoulders shots marking a student's graduation year to full-blown fashion shoots expressing a student's personality. Mine were somewhere in between.

I was a latecomer to the senior portrait party. Two months into the school year, I still hadn't had them taken. My father owned an advertising agency and suggested that one of his staff photographers take mine. "It's just a yearbook picture," he reasoned.

There was no reasoning with 17-year-old me: impetuous and hormonal and on the cusp of adulthood. I didn't want a photographer with a different point of view to document the end of my high school days/the beginning of the rest of my life. I wanted photos that looked just like everyone else's.

Eventually, my dad relented. If I remember correctly, my senior portraits cost a couple hundred dollars.

Seniors today might pay closer to a couple thousand dollars. Of course, there are more options now than there were in the late ‘80s. A friend or parent with a digital camera, an eye for detail, and some knowledge of Photoshop®  can produce professional-looking, personality-filled senior portraits at a fraction of the cost.

Class of 2008, what are you spending on your senior portraits?