We at school-photos.co.uk believe we bring something different to your school photography: better images, lighting, products and services for happier parents and flexible working methods that minimises school administration. We offer products and services others do not - mixed image packs, very advanced data association, personalised products, pose choice, long term image storage, 'day in the life' of your school, virtual tours etc. We do not ask for long-term contracts - we prefer schools to stay with us for all that we offer. A very detailed photo day preliminary page is available for photo day preparation. Our excellent service means we are never more than a call, SMS or e-mail away, we respond rapidly and you communicate directly with the photographer.

We believe our photography is of a higher standard than parents have come to expect from school portraiture. Our technical skills are second to none and we take pride in how our portraits are lit. We believe a soft, gently side-lit image makes for a more three dimensional face and, together with a 'glossy' hair light, is more visually pleasing than the flat, frontal lighting prevalent in the industry. We are proud, professional photographers; not jaded sub-contractors who are keen to leave as early as possible. We are friendly, fun, welcoming, patient and age-appropriate with pupils for relaxed, better expressions. We know parents and guardians will be pleased with the difference.

We offer parents exactly what they want and have been demanding for years - the ability to choose different images for their packs. We know this because every pack that we have sold has been a multi-image pack. Any pack can be filled with any image a parent has a passcode for, even our cheapest packs. We do not employ 'forced upsell' tactics and we know this is appreciated by parents - one recently commented 'with this one pack, I can have every image, thank you so much!'. Other school photography companies either do not provide this at all or reserve it for top price packs (i.e. a forced upsell).

We minimise the administration of your school photography as much as possible and to your preference. Everything is detailed in our preliminary page available on request, so there will be no surprises. Our standard photo day operating method is: information sheets with unique codes handed out as the pupil is photographed, with online only ordering and school collection or home delivery of purchased orders back to parents. This means there is no distribution of paper order forms and no cash envelopes (with all its implications for 'cashless' schools). Other options might include include zero admin (online only ordering with home delivery only) or the traditional paper order forms and cash envelopes (only if requested by the school). To minimise enquiries to the school, we provide exceptional customer support, a detailed Parents' FAQ page, info slips for your reception, returned orders are pre-sorted into classes / forms and we offer images that are fully compatible with your school database.

We have found online only ordering has had no adverse affect on turnover, perhaps because of the new attitudes brought about by the pandemic. All online images are passcode protected and parents can only see children for whom they have a passcode. Visitors can set up their own account, can tag their 'favourite' images (simplifying mixed pack creation over multiple children), track and view all previous orders, basket retention across devices, purchased downloads always available, live preview of different backgrounds etc.. No child has any personally identifiable information on their gallery images. Our system is under our control and on our own servers - we do not use any third party or systems hosted outside the UK. Please ask for a sample code to view our online gallery system for yourself.

We believe in being transparent with our commission level for all schools and parents to see. We normally offer schools a commission of 25% profit share for your school funds. This is higher than the industry standard of circa 15% or less, does not vary over time and we pay commission on every sale (some don't pay commission at all for online sales, external siblings or below certain sales thresholds). We never take your business for granted and we never ask for locked-in, multi year contracts - we want schools to make a positive choice for school-photos. We are very confident that we can improve your school photography and its return and would very much welcome a meeting to discuss.

To minimise your administration and make school photography more straightforward, our preferred working method is now to offer schools a paper free / cashless system whereby parents only view and order their images online. Info sheets with the pupil's unique passcode credentials (to securely view their proof images online) are handed to them on photo day for distribution to parents at home time. Secondary pupils receive theirs while having their pictures taken. Benefits of this system include: no initial return of proof cards necessary, no first distribution of proofs to pupils by teachers, parents view images sooner, it speeds up the whole system, no cash held by the school and it's more environmentally friendly.

Our studio equipment enables us to shoot either 'head and shoulders' or proper multi-pose portraits. For all pre-school and nursery (under certain preconditions), we can photograph using three styles: head and shoulders, full body (sat on hip) and led down on stomach on a full white background that extends under the pupil. Our standard primary and secondary pose is for various head and shoulders and three quarter length portraits taken against a green screen system to give parents a choice of backgrounds. We take as many photographs of your pupils as necessary to ensure we give parents the greatest choice.

Green screen photographs are now very popular when photographing school pupils for their head and shoulders portraits Pupils are photographed in front of a green screen that is then extracted from the photograph so that parents can choose their own background from the many available to them. Our online system allows purchasers to preview their images with their favourite background and to add multiple image with different backgrounds to their packs. This means that school administrators are no longer responsible for choosing the dreaded 'this years background' for the parents.

Our custom coded pupil data to image metadata system is unique. Each digital image has that pupil's full name, school, admission number and year or registration group embedded into separate IPTC data-fields and any / all of it can be output to the image filename for your DB auto import. We can also add any of the captured metadata as an overlay on top of your images - e.g. school database identity images can have pupil name and enrolment number displayed on the .jpg image itself. Our system has multiple benefits including richer data association, perfect accuracy, unlimited data, efficiency savings, rapid customer support, automated database importation and any pupil / staff member can have their photograph taken at any time during photo day and in any random order whatsoever. Importantly, all online gallery images have this rich metadata stripped. If your school has a specialised data requirement (unlimited alphanumeric to any metadata field or data overlay), please get in touch.

Given our rich data capture, we provide pupil identity images to the school for free in a compatible format to enable automatic importation into your school database information management system such as ESS-SIMS, Bromcom, Arbor, CMIS,, RM Integris etc. Pupil identity images are file-named according to your preference - usually as admission number, e.g. '001234.jpg'. Images can also have names and enrolment data overlaid on the photograph itself. Schools will need to contact their database supplier to see if an image importation licence is required and any fee they may impose on your school. Manual image importation is also an option...

Due to our rich pupil information data capture system, we are unique in being able to provide images in a format that enables easy manual importation. Pupil photographs can have names and enrolment data overlaid on the photograph itself and they can also be file-named and folder sorted as as '../7jw/Joe Bloggs.jpg' or just as '7jw-Joe Blogs.jpg'. Thus an administrator does not need to be able to recognise pupils, or laboriously sort through admission numbers, to be able to import and update images into database records. This saves a school the licence fee payment and should take no longer than 10 minutes per class of 30 pupils.

We fully support and endorse the principles of the GDPR and all other applicable regulations. Information that the school provides us, such as pupil data, is held encrypted and only ever used for the purposes of photography and customer service. We do not allow bots to crawl our photo ordering website (google search link). Pupil passcodes are randomly generated. Personal information is also only ever used for the purposes of their order. All data is held in the UK. No personal data is ever transferred to any third party without informed consent (e.g. a courier company). We will never ask for parent email data just to increase sales, unlike others.

Being small, agile and very open to suggestions, we offer products that other school photography companies simply don't. These products could include more than one image on each print (e.g. over a panoramic format), individual sizing for a particular frame, personalised text such as names, dates, logos and even messages for grandparents etc.. We also offer prints in common photo sizes, not unusual sizes like 10x7" or 13x10" for which it is difficult to obtain frames.

During photo day, we can offer staff photography for your staff board for free, correctly sized and titled for the pockets in common staff photo boards or can provide one for you if you do not already have one. We can also design and offer identity badges for all staff in a credit card style with holders and pull-free lanyards. Other school services we can provide include roller banners, motivational posters, environmental school portraits, day in the life images and even a virtual tour of your school with our sister site panophoto.co.uk. Commission payments can be used as credit towards all these services.

We can photograph whole class / school (primary) or whole year / school (secondary). Primary school classes can be photographed in the traditional three or four rows or can be grouped and 'stitched' together. For whole school, we can utilise your staging and benching or can arrange aluminium staging at cost if required. Modern alternatives for whole school photographs include: 1) Collage print of all 'head and shoulders' pupil photos above their name or 2) green screen 'composite' to look like a traditional full school photograph. Advantages include much less disruption, zero or little timetable cuts, no poor or naughty expressions, no weather problems, no staging issues such as instability and accommodates any number of pupils including the largest secondary schools. We can also photograph whole year / school groups in the traditional single photograph style using the magic of Photoshop.

School-photos also do proms! We photograph your prom in a very special way - utilising the same high quality lighting equipment and photography skills to capture quality studio portraits while harnessing the same highly automated working methods (with QR coded data matching). This makes your prom photography go very smoothly and efficiently. We find the best way to photograph proms is by using a 'pre-pay' style, whereby a small portion of the ticket entry price is paid upfront to school-photos and for which a unique QR code is provided to subjects as they are being photographed and images are online usually within minutes of being taken (given a good network connection). Scanning the QR takes subjects straight to their online photographs where they can redeem an online credit amount sufficient for one free digital image or as credit towards a more expensive item. Subjects and their parents can see and purchase even while the prom is ongoing.

School-photos has full public liability insurance and the photographer also has a DBS certificate available for online viewing by schools and parents. The founder also has a secondary school teaching background.

As school-photos.co.uk is based in South Wales and actively market to schools in our area, money spent in our area is far more likely to stay in our area helping to generate local employment and a healthy Welsh private sector economy exactly where it is most needed.