Picture This: Sharing a link and a laugh

Picture This: Sharing a link and a laugh

Posted on April 28th, 2010 by Jeff McDonald

I’ve always thought my yearbook photo looked a little dorky, with the haircut and the glasses that were on the cutting edge of fashion back then, twenty-million-or-so-years ago. But then, along comes this post from aceonlineschools.com … and I get to thinking, “maybe my photo isn’t so bad, after all” … well … at least not as bad as SOME of what they’ve labeled “30 Awesomely Bad School Portraits.”

Those of you with kids will know … the school photo business has grown dramatically. Times were simpler in our day, with buggy whips, leeches and single photo shoots – a shot of your homeroom class, then a quick cattle-call of individual photos of each student. Now, school years may feature more than one shoot, and private studios have really taken their place in the process. And the simple head shot, taken with a plain background and no props, is long gone.

The one drawback to being overly-critical, or laughing too hard at this post from aceonlineschools.com is that, once upon a time, these photos captured – perhaps with laser precision – the youths’ views of their world, and their place in that world. It may have made perfect sense to them at the time. And I must admit, there were a couple that I appreciated … and, NO, I won’t tell you which ones. But today, those same youngsters might be hard pressed to answer Dr. Phil’s exasperated, “What were you thinking?” But then again, maybe they CAN answer, and explain something so obvious to them, and so lost upon us – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

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Jeff McDonald

There's a saying around here, something like, "I wasn't born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could!" That's me. I'm a 'dang Yankee from back-east' who settled in the Lone Star State after some extended stays in the eastern U.S., and New Mexico. I worked as an archaeologist for a few years before dusting off my second major in English, and embarking on a 25-year career in journalism. Since then, I've embraced the dark side of the force, and now work in PR for a community college in Midland, Texas.