Each month you will be required to submit photos of AT LEAST ONE school-related event, activity, class, or gathering. A MINIMUM of 5 GOOD QUALITY photos is required.

You may submit more than one event for bonus marks.

Look at a yearbook from the past few years to see examples of usable photos and events and activities that should be covered. Look at the calendar on my website and the school website to see what events, games, etc. are coming up.

In order to be useful, a photo needs to be GOOD! Make sure the lighting and colour are right. Make sure you’ve made any adjustments that might make the photo better. Make sure you export your RAW photos as a FULL SIZED .jpg (no size restriction). MOST IMPORTANTLY: make sure you are not handing in LAZY photos. Use your knowledge of composition techniques and pay attention to cropping and the background.

I generally can’t/won’t use photos of students unless I can see FACES. If you have photos of the backs of heads, or primarily the backs of heads, I won’t use it so it won’t count.

• Lazy photos from bad angles or with distracting/annoying backgrounds don’t count.
• Photos with terrible lighting don’t count.
• Blurry photos don’t count.
• Photos with unnecessary, excessive noise don’t count.

Here is a list of things you should remember before you go out to photograph an event:

• Check your equipment, does it all work? Is your battery charged?
• Arrive early, check out angles and sight lines – MOVE to find the best location
• Pay attention to the LIGHT available in the location. Adjust your position and your camera accordingly!
• Capture the action in the frame – faces and hands
• Use the “Rule of Thirds” to create appeal
• Look for frames, patterns, lines, and interesting shapes
• Wait. Events will happen. Be ready.
• Use layers / Avoid distractions – consider the foreground and background
• Shoot images in both landscape and portrait format
• Wait until the end so you can record reactions to the event

Photography is and will always will be one of the most important part of yearbook, without great photographs it’s difficult to create great content!

So make sure to take your time and pick the best photos possible for your yearbook.

The makers of our yearbook, Friesens, has provided some great tips for you to keep in mind when you are going out to shoot an event for the yearbook:

Yearbook starts with great photography. The pictures are what pull the viewer in to admire the great design, read the captions, and the copy. Improving your publication’s photography is not only about taking great photos it is also about choosing those photos to be included in your yearbook.

Ask yourself, what makes a photograph memorable to you? Is it the subject matter, the lighting, the colours, the composition, the emotion, or moment? If you can start identifying these characteristics you can better choose the pictures to be included in your book.

Some things to look for:

• Pictures in focus
• Images that follow good composition, rule of thirds, framing, lines, simplicity
• Showing people’s faces instead of the side or back
• Capturing connections or interactions
• We tend to have action shots covered but what about reaction moments?
• Good technical quality – understanding exposure, contrast, colour
• Telling a story with your picture
• Engage the interests of the viewer
• Better cropping of the image, get rid of the extra stuff, focusing on the subject
• Avoiding distracting backgrounds
• Better lighting/ camera settings
• Distance from the subject being photographed, get closer

1. Having 3 subjects in a photograph does a better job of filling the frame, telling the story and being a stronger composition than having 1 or 2 people. Think about all the people you could include or cover in your yearbook if your goal were to have 3 people in every photo.
2. If you are including photographs with only one person, they need to be doing something interesting or amazing to capture the reader’s attention.
3. Capture interesting moments and not just static poses. Look for photographs that evoke emotion or a reaction from the viewer. Subjects do not need to be looking directly at the camera.
4. To capture moments, train your students and staff to ignore the camera. Do this by always having a camera present. Take so many pictures that you start to fade into the background when moments or events are happening.
5. Reposition yourself to capture people’s faces. Figure out where you need to be and where your camera needs to be positioned to capture their face. If they are low, get low. Get out into the action if possible. Get your camera in close. Show the viewer a vantage point they may not get to see otherwise.
6. Learn how to control depth of field and use that to tell your story. Use a shallow depth of field to focus on a subject, blur out a distracting background, or use a deep depth of field to have a group of people in focus.
7. In a crowd or group shot, look for an ‘entry point’ for your viewer. Using an entry point draws the viewer’s eyes and then they can explore the rest of the photograph.
   Different entry points can include
   • one person turned towards the camera
   • focusing on one subject, and slightly blurring the rest of the crowd
   • having the main subject doing something different than the rest
   • use cropping to make the primary subject stand out
   • move in close and make the primary subject larger than the rest
8. Place or frame subjects using the rule of thirds intersecting points. By following this you contribute to your composition, but you also help the viewer identify the main subject of your photograph.
9. Think about foreground, middle ground, and the background of your picture. By doing this you create more of a 3-dimensional image even though the viewer is looking at a 2-dimensional picture.
10. Take lots of photos but mix up the settings, the light, the angle, the orientation, etc., so that when you get to the editing process you will have lots of selection to tell the story.
11. Get to the event early and stay after it is over. Get the complete story. Capture the moments before and the reactions after. Capture both the happy and the not-so-happy moments. As a journalist it is important for you to tell the story.
12. Look at great photography to get inspiration.
    • https://atpi.smugmug.com/
    • https://jeaphoto.smugmug.com/
    • https://unsplash.com
    • https://www.flickr.com/That is a loooong list of tips but start by incorporating a few at a time.