Lack of funding is the main reason for poor school photos. Many schools don’t have the money to hire professional photographers or pay teachers enough to purchase basic supplies. The school photo booth can only take a few photos per student. Professional photographers will charge a lot so they won’t use them. Instead, they will use a cheap photographer who can do a decent job but is unlikely to deliver a professional-quality photo. The photos may not even be the same as the student’s real appearance.
But even though taking a school photo isn’t considered cool anymore, many parents still have a hard time making their children look good in them. Many parents think it’s the responsibility of the school photographer to take a good picture of their children, but most of the time, it’s not their fault. It used to be uncool to take pictures, but nowadays, it’s almost uncool for kids, and even worse for them when they have a lot of adults harassing them.
After the first photo is taken, the second portrait is taken. Eddy looks in the mirror and panics, but Ed tries to calm him down, but can’t say anything good about the picture. While waiting for the next frame, Eddy slumps over a music stand, but he doesn’t show the photo to his friends. He then shows his friends the photos in his locker. In the process, he has a moment of clarity.
Ed finds the copier, and places it in Eddy’s locker. He then goes to lunch and returns to the locker room to find pieces of paper with copies of Eddy’s photo in each locker. Then he speeds through the rest of school, giving Edd a giant stack of photos. Edd is left wondering what happened to his photo. It’s a moment for self-discovery.
Although school portrait retouching has been around for a while, it is becoming more common. Teenage girls are increasingly using Photoshop to enhance photos. A travel blogger took to Twitter to criticize the process. An outraged mother took to TikTok and condemned the practice on social media. A mother in Tampa, Fla. noticed her daughter’s missing freckles on her daughter’s school photo. The school photographer offered to do a basic retouching of her daughter’s photos. The freckles were removed.