8 Fun Ways to Photograph Your Child’s First Day Back to School

As the new school year begins for children in Austin and around the Hill Country, I thought I would share eight fun ways to photograph your child’s first day back to school this year!

1. Document the Details

Use a chalkboard or a letter board to write down details about your child’s upcoming school year: teacher’s name, school name, your child’s grade, their favorite subject, etc, or utilize your favorite photo editing app and write those details directly onto the photo. This will create a snapshot of their current school year that you can look back on later.

Due to the personal information shared on these types of photos, law enforcement recommends saving this fun photo for family only and keeping it off social media for your child’s safety.

For this young boy’s safety, all information on these photos is false.

For this young boy’s safety, all information on these photos is false.

2. Same Place, Same Pose, Every Year

Choose a consistent location such as the front door, your garden wall, or the front of the school, and take a photo of your child in the same pose each school year. This will allow you to see how they grow and change over time.

3. Highlight New School Changes

A new school year often means a fresh backpack, new shoes, a new lunchbox or water bottle, or a stylish haircut. Incorporate those details into the photos! These new school changes often reflect your child’s current interests and style. Imagine the collection of photos you’ll have at the end of their school career, showing their interests and styles over the years!

4. Back- to-School Traditions

Does your family have any special traditions around the first day of school, a unique way of marking the occasion? A special breakfast on the first day of school or an after school ice-cream treat? A back-to-school shopping trip for supplies and new shoes? Do you write a special note to your child for them to find in their lunchbox on their first day of school? Do you record their weight and height that day? Or read a special book the night before? Photograph those small traditions that mark the start of a new school year for your family.

5. Document Their Handwriting

There is sure to be academic improvement and growth during your child’s school year. Photograph or save a sample of their current handwriting so you can see how it changes and improves over the course of the school year!

6. Include a Book

Include a favorite book of your child’s, one that’s meaningful to them for the current school year, or a book you want them to take to heart, and photograph them with it. It could be a favorite story or a book that represents their learning goals. So much learning happens through reading! Encourage and document that!

7. Back-to-School Headshot

Amongst all the creative photographs, don’t forget to capture a simple headshot of your child on their first day. Focus on their expression, smiling or serious, and how they’ve physically changed since the last school year. Haircuts change, teeth are lost, grown up teeth grow in, toddler cheeks thin out - capture them now so you can see how they’ve physically changed since the school year began.

8. Speak Encouragement into Their Hearts

Tell them they’re amazing, hard working, and creative! Think about what your child’s strengths and God-given gifts are and tell them those words as you photograph them! You will probably get some great expressions as you say those encouraging words to your children, but more importantly you’ll be speaking confidence and love into their hearts, which will help them through those first day of school nerves and throughout the school year. They will probably remember those words all their lives.

Whether you start the new school year off with a bundle of creative photographs documenting their first day, or you simply snap a single photo of them standing beside your front door, I’m sure the photos will become cherished memories for both you and your child to look back on in the future. Here’s to a new school year with lots of learning, friendship, and fun!

If documenting the back-to-school moments overwhelms you, but you would still like to have those photo memories, book an Austin photographer for a “back-to-school” themed photo shoot of your children! I’m always happy to chat out ideas to see if that’s the route you want to go. Just send me an email!