By the two entrances of the multipurpose room, there’s a stage with colorful theater lights above it, and although we call it a stage, it’s really just a small raised platform with stairs on the side. Soon, this stage will be filled with seniors. Hi y’all! It’s that time of year again for Community School for Social Justice’s senior family group photoshoot! For those of you not familiar with this tradition, at the start of every school year, CSSJ’s very staff photographers take photos of every senior family group. In the past, the school would hire photographers from outside the school. However, since this option proved to be very very expensive for inferior services, CSSJ decided to hire its own staff for the job to provide better photos with cheaper fees. When all of the different family groups arrived in the multipurpose room, the photographers asked some students to line up chairs required for the photoshoot. While the seniors were waiting impatiently for the photographers, they decided to pass time by playing catch and thanks to me, I found a football. This was a fun way to pass time that proved to be effective.
Anyways, the chairs from earlier were arranged in two rows, and the seniors were told to either sit or stand on one based on their height. The equipment the photographers used included two tall constant lights in the back, two flashes from the front, and the actual camera, obviously. All of the chairs were facing the camera and the seniors who were the tallest were told to sit in front of the first row of chairs. The shortest seniors stood on the second row of chairs in the back, while the seniors who were in between tallest and shortest just stood on the ground. It took our photographers a good two minutes to adjust lights and position each senior, we just sat there waiting for a bit. This is because everyone kept on being moved around and placed in different spots. After a good two minutes, it was finally time for all of the family groups to have their pictures taken. Everyone was bombarded with flashes of bright light, and it seemed like they took at least 100 photos before stopping including silly ones. But after all of that, they were finally done! Or so people had hoped. After all of the seniors took a photo together, it was time for the family groups to individually have their photos taken. In total, there are three family groups in this class of 2025. Each family group had decided on clothes they’d be wearing for the photoshoot. One family group decided to wear all gray, whereas mine, decided to wear all black with cool sunglasses. Anyways, I don’t remember what other family groups did, but my family group all had different sunglasses on, either brought from home, or handed to us by our family group teacher. My family group had taken a very serious family group and a not so serious one. Once we were done with our photos, we had all headed back to our family group room, and just chilled for the remainder of family group time. It was tiring, but a good rite of passage.
A rite of passage: Class of 2025 Photos
