Why You Should Remove Your Backgrounds – Part 2

Why You Should be Removing Backgrounds

From All Your School Photos

If you’ve been debating whether or not you should start removing your backgrounds before selling to parents, you’ve come to the right place. In Part 1 we discussed multi-purpose poses and how giving parents background options increases sales. Today, we’ll discuss a few more reasons why background removal is essential in today’s world.

PERSONALIZATION

Giving parents the ability to choose their own background is great, but having options that parents can directly relate to or recognize is even better! To help win contracts, why not offer to have your photographer take a photo of the school to use as a unique background?! You may be thinking, “why don’t they just take the portraits directly in front of the school?” Well, we’re here to remind you that weather is unpredictable. No high schooler wants to spend an hour in the morning doing their hair for picture day only to have it ruined by wind or rain.

Another idea is to take creative photos of local landmarks. For example, everyone in Montreal recognizes the olympic stadium, so it’s a perfect landmark for our local studio to offer as a background.

Speaking of the Olympic Stadium, this is the perfect segue into another reason why you should be removing your backgrounds…

PARTNERSHIPS

A few years ago our school photography studio here in Quebec, Green Apple Studio, developed a partnership with 3 major sports teams: The Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Impact, and Montreal Alouettes. For each of these backgrounds sold, $1.99 gets donated to the respective foundation. Parents don’t mind paying a couple dollars extra if they know it’s going to a good cause, and it may even entice them to buy extra images…$$$! Partnerships also open the door to offering exciting contests to participating schools, like we did when 5 kids got to meet the Montreal Canadiens and participate in the official team photo.

There are so many local and even international organizations who would love to reach thousands of young minds. As school photographers, studios and labs, we have the perfect reach to help these companies raise awareness for their cause by educating students. 36Pix jumped on the opportunity to partner with Philippe Cousteau to create a unique brand catered to younger children: Ocean Champs.

Ocean Champs characters are fun and make cute backgrounds to raise awareness and educate students about the ocean. Proceeds from these backgrounds go to Philippe’s non-profit organization, EarthEcho International. Aside from becoming top sellers at our own studio, these Ocean Champs backgrounds are available through our partnership with Fotomerchant (contact Fotomerchant to learn how you can offer these adorable and fun backgrounds, as well as other premium backgrounds!).

TRENDS

Trends affect everything, including school photography. And as we all know, trends are constantly changing. Do you really want to buy new backdrops every couple of years so that kids don’t bring their parents photo proofs with a background matching their parent’s school photos? Didn’t think so. Well, it’s MUCH easier to shoot on a green screen or another solid color and simply update your digital background collection each year.

FASHION DISASTERS

The final reason we’re going to cover is fashion disasters. No, we’re not talking about loose-fitting jeans which are making a comeback (excuse me while I go cry under my pillow while having a flashback of wearing bell bottoms on a rainy day), we’re talking about the subject’s attire clashing with the backdrop. The highlight of a school photo is, of course, the subject. We want the subject to stand out from the background, not camouflage into it. Yes, using a proper backlight can help, but having a contrasting background also helps.

SUMMARY

To sum up, removing your background before parents buy their child’s school pictures will allow you to offer them more personalized backgrounds, give you unique partnership opportunities, help you save money while keeping up with ever changing trends, and allow parents to choose a background which highlights their child and that they’ll be proud to hang on the wall.

If you don’t already use us for background removal, you can submit an image for free testing and we’d be happy to have a discussion with you.