I recently found myself looking back through my old high school yearbooks. We had a friend over and we were recalling “the old days” trying to put names to the faces in our minds. As I flipped through the pages it occurred to me how special these books are. When I look through the pages, sure I see image from years past and words written by former classmates – but it’s the candid shots… the shots our yearbook staff photographer took that seem to tell the best stories.

See, when I was in high school one of the staffers took on the role as the official yearbook photographer. And it was his/her job to photographically document the year. At every event we would see our student photographer, camera in hand, taking pictures. Whether it was an awards night, a football game, or just a typical day at school – our student photographer was always around.

I think the benefit of this is two fold. One, it was someone we knew, a peer, so we felt comfortable and continued to be ourselves. If an adult we didn’t know had popped into the room with a camera we probably would have behaved very differently – so it meant our yearbooks are filled with real, genuine images of life as a high schooler back then. The second benefit is that the images reflect the year through the eyes of student. There are just some things that grown ups are not going to get. There are certain things that make your class unique. And an outsider is not going to be able to capture that like a student who is part of it every day.

Plus – the yearbook staff knows exactly how they plan to lay out the yearbook. It’s so much easier for a student photographer who is on the yearbook staff to be able to capture those images you know you need. A professional photographer coming in does not know the details of how your yearbook is laying out. Their goal will be more focused on taking pictures that may be purchased later… after all – they are a business and at the end of the day – they need to make money to keep taking photos for your school.

And today with everyone’s cell phones having cameras you can make it really easy to include real images of student life! Create a dropbox account students can load photos into or create a unique hashtag so that you have a quick way to search images for the yearbook and drop them right into your layouts. I honestly think this would make the yearbook even more exciting! Waiting to see if any of your images end up the final yearbook design!

Sure a professional photographer knows how their equipment works. They how to take technically great photos. They know how to light and pose you. But for yearbook photos – the ones that capture life as a high schooler – the images you students capture are going to mean far more to you in years to come than anything a professional photographer could take. So if you’re on yearbook staff and your school has a camera – grab that thing and start capturing life at your high school. Don’t have a camera? Use your phone. Years from now – you and your classmates will look back at these yearbooks and love that real moments – the ones that mean something to you – were captured!