You've booked your Early Childhood Centre's Picture Day several months ago and the date is marked in your events calendar for this month. Whether you chose to have School Portrait Art - the Australian kindy portrait day specialists as your preferred photographers, or another childcare photography company - you'll benefit from these best practice tips and guide on how to manage your centre's upcoming portrait day.
If you haven't chosen your photographer yet, you will find this article called, How to Choose Which Childcare Photography Packages Suit Your Service, a very detailed exploration of all the factors, as well as the price, that you need to consider.
Preparing for your Early Childhood Centre's picture day starts with exporting your service data. Your communication with your families and your educators is the next most important factor. During the two-week pre-portrait day launch period, posters need to be hung, further reminders sent and portrait day needs to be addressed in your team meeting.
What to Do One Month Before your Early Childhood Centre Portrait Day
Your photographer will be in touch around one month before picture day however you can pre-empt knowing they will be seeking your service data to prepare their system.
This is a list of enrollments, including their full names and which room they attend. (On what days is unnecessary)
Photographers understand that this information is sensitive and some centres do not like to provide any contact information for parents/guardians.
Having no email is workable, however, it is ideal if your photographer can have this contact information so that all communication can be sent directly to the guardian's email. Having everyone's email means no family is left out of any notifications if they forget to pre-register. Contacting families directly is particularly important for supplying each child's unique Passcode to access their individual portraits after Portrait Day.
In saying that, the alternative is when families pre-register their interest in having their child photographed. As parents/guardians register they themselves provide their contact details to the photographer. But remember, with this method, it is up to the service to ensure all families are provided with the preregistration link and take action.
As you can imagine, some families forget completely to preregister or leave it until the very last minute which means they miss the opportunity to provide any additional notes or requests for their child to assist the photographer on Portrait Day.
So plenty of reminders from you the centre management will enhance your families experience of Portrait Day.
Here are some quick tips on how to provide your centre's Data to your portrait photographer.
- Do not supply a PDF, the photographer needs a CSV (Excel) file to be able to import the data fields.
- Include each attending child's full name + room as a minimum, ideally, add the parent/guardian's name and email also.
- Uncheck any additional data fields if possible, if you are not sure how to control your roll data export don't worry, we will discard it. Your families will not be spammed or contacted in regard to anything else apart from Portrait Day.
- Provide a separate list of staff and their rooms, all staff are photographed for inclusion in the group composites, you will also be supplied with these files and prints for your walls.
- Highlight any staff who have children at your service so they can benefit from a Team Discount - if your photographer offers this ;)
If you Haven't Reached Out Your Photographer Will Contact You
Your photographer will provide you with a pre-registration link to supply to your centre's families. This is a link to a form parents/guardians fill in as pre-registration, here they can communicate directly to the photographer any special requests for Portrait Day.
Warm your families by dropping into your StoryPark updates (Or whatever CMR you use) that the Portrait Day will be on the date + day of the week next month.
Let your families know that if Portrait Day is not their child's usual day of attendance, they are welcome to bring their child in to be photographed.
Siblings from outside the service are also welcome to attend if you book with School Portrait Art. Note, this policy is entirely up to your unique service, we are flexible and can remove this from our communication if you prefer not to offer this.
We find when siblings come in the morning, there can be a slight "peak hour" early on at drop-offs, but not overwhelmingly. An advantage of booking School Portrait Art is that the photography team works in one area of your yard without moving around. This slight influx of visitors becomes more manageable as the stationary team works fast. Families adore having a photograph of all their children together.
Mums love to bring in their schoolies and young babies for inclusion in a sibling portrait together. Our qualified teams are skilled at working with all age groups and capturing these special dynamics in the life of your young families.
Two Weeks is Plenty of Time To Get Your Daycare Ready for Portrait Day
Posters will arrive approximately two weeks prior to your portrait day and this is the official "launch period". If you have not communicated with your families prior to this time, don't worry, two weeks is enough time to get everyone at your daycare on board, both staff, and families.
Ensure you hang your Posters at the front door/reception and one on the door of each room so parents/guardians can clearly see them.
The posters are another touch point to remind families to add their children to the portrait list, School Portrait Art has QR codes on these posters linking to the pre-registration form.
A reminder for families to preregister in this period helps boost registrations and your photographer can finalise their length of time working at your centre.
Here is a Quick Tip about Pre-Registrations when choosing School Portrait Art as your daycare photographers.
Regardless of registration every child attending the service on Portrait Day will be photographed for inclusion in the room composite. Ideally, no one is left out if their guardian has been overwhelmed with life (Hey, we understand it happens to all of us at times!) and forgotten to preregister.
In saying that, unregistered children will only have 1-2 portraits taken, whereas families who indicate their interest in professional photography will have a complete collection of 10-15 photographs to choose their Portrait Package from.
Late registrations can be handled on the day, and just quietly, if a child arrives in an unusually gorgeous outfit but they are not on the registered list the photographer will use their experience to note that the parent/guardian most likely wants a complete collection. This is at the photographers' discretion and we won't have any way of communicating with the parent/guardian so don't rely on this ad-hoc method.
Be sure to Communicate with your Educators and Leads about Portrait Day at your Team Meeting
This point on communication is huge, informing your team of their expectations impacts how Portrait Day runs.
Nothing is worse than missing team members because they attended one day of a two-day shoot and didn't realize they needed a portrait themselves, or left for lunch, and by the time they returned the photography team has left. Bummer!
Make Portrait Day an important topic of discussion when all your team is together so that any questions can be answered and everyone is on board with clarity.
Here is the quick tips lists of what to cover during your 1 week prior Portrait Day team meeting.
Inform all educators they are required for an individual portrait for the room composites. The children love having their special educators in their yearly photographs. When you book with School Portrait Art the service will also be supplied a set of printed copies for display and the digital files for backup.
Be sure to let your staff know what day is for team portraits if you have a 2-day event. Also remind them the photographers are busy and that it is their own responsibility to ensure their inclusion by approaching the team. Remind staff not to leave for lunch or breaks without being slipped in for a portrait.
Ask for their cooperation with the photographers on Portrait Day with identifying children, ensuring children are clean with clothing and wiped faces before sending them to be photographed and helping keep note of who has been photographed - your photographers should supply room leaders with a backup list. We understand this is the "ideal" and not your team's responsibility, however in our experience team leaders who are involved or keep a note of this never have any children that were "accidentally missed" or marked as absent on the photographers' records.
It is ideal to inform your team of the basic conditions of the photographer you have chosen so they can answer some of the parent's questions and at the very least not provide misinformation.
When choosing School Portrait Art the basics are:
no prepayment is required,
the photographs will be live to view and order aprox 14 days after Portrait Day,
parents/guardians need to preregister their child to be photographed however go talk to the photographer (on the day) to slip your child in if you missed preregistering,
and siblings are welcome (or not according to management).
