Help with high school senior picture

[Sistere]

Hi Kevster,

I understand where you are coming from. I was pretty sure I understood when I first read your post, but I didn't want to assume too much without asking you. So, cool.

To address your specific questions:

"then I got the idea to just take my own and they wouldn't be as good as if i had them professionally done, but it is better than nothing."

Well, in the end it all comes down to what's important to you and what you can be happy with. A lot of people are perfectly content with any and all pictures, regardless of whether they are pro or snapshot. I horde photos that my friends and I take and I have shots from years ago that look like a blind person took them (no offense to the visually impaired) but they are from a time that cant be relived, so I keep them. I would suggest that you give some real thought to 'whats good enough' regarding your SPs seeing these tend to be pretty important. Of course, whats 'important' completely differs from person to person. All I am suggesting, is that you draw a well thought out conclusion.

"These were taken on a 5 MP camera."

It's amazing what can be done on consumer cameras now. My fiance and I have four different photos that have won 1st place in photo contests out of 15,000 photographers that were taken on a 3 MP camera. I don't mean this to sound ego driven, it's only meant to encourage you in not getting caught up in the whole 'If it's not a million MP...800 megabit raw photo it will suck' mentality. Of course, use the best equipment you can for important stuff like SPs...borrow or rent it if possible. The photo I uploaded was taken on a Medium Format film camera I bought on EBay for a few hundred bucks. In fact, I will take this camera over most Digis in terms of ability to scan and blow up to monster print sizes.


"Also, when it comes time to print these.....What do you recomend?"

Man, thats a tough question. Again, as with the camera thoughts I have seen some nice prints done on consumer printers. From my experience, as long as you stay within the 8x10 print range (Maybe 11x14) you can get some pretty good quality on just about any of the newer ink jets. IMO, whats really important is paper. Invest the extra $ and get glossy or Matte (real) photo paper, don't settle for that $10 for 500 sheets crap.

And I can't speak for Kinkos universally, but at least where I live they are OK for copies but will ream you on prints. And in all fairness, they really aren't set-up for photography prints. I would call some local camera dealers and ask about printing services. In fact, I would do that over trying to DIY. After you put out the $$ on good paper, ink and blow through a few dozen sheets just trying to calibrate your printer profiles to your monitor...you could just have them professionally printed. Also check some online printing services as well.

Hope this helps.
Damien