The yearbook is a place to memorialize one’s school year; from sports pages to student life, every page changes.

This change includes the senior portraits, which have gone from a traditional headshot to a three-quarter photo.

Rather than getting a simple headshot from the shoulders up, seniors get to choose a body shot from the knees up with poses that differ from standing up with our hands on our hips, to hands on our sides, to our arms being crossed. It gets boring looking at simple headshots every year, so getting the choice between three different shots makes the senior section creative.

The three-quarter picture is a change and change is not a bad thing. If we start with little things like this then imagine how amazing and different our yearbook could be. One thing that is concerning with the three-quarter pictures is that people claim that they look awkward with the poses that they have for us. If they gave us a bigger option of poses to pick from, maybe people would like them better.

Change is always uncomfortable at first but people will get used to this after a while. One thing that I like is how we can see everyone’s different outfits. This is just another way to show off our fun unique personalities. With all the different poses that we get to pick from, this provides a cluster of different personalities to spice up the senior section. We are also going to be unique and different than some other schools, no senior section will be the same. Even on our campus, if the senior three-quarter portraits continue on throughout the years, then no senior section will match from the year before, there will be a different amount of the same poses and a different order to them.

Kids will get to show off their personalities in different ways for the years to come.  

We can also project a confident look with how we stand. I think that as young adults we are looking for ways to show our confidence and find a new way to project a mature essence.

Another thing that is enjoyable about the new pictures is how different we are than the rest of the classes. All throughout high school, we are blended in with different grade levels and this is a chance to be different, as we are the seniors and we are moving out of high school. This was a place where we were just looked over but now we are being noticed and we are being different than everyone else.

When we look back at our yearbooks in 10, 20, or 30 years from now, we can see how much we have changed, from our hairstyle to how we dressed.

Being different is not a bad thing, showing that we as seniors are moving onto a new level in our lives can start with something as simple as moving on from the classic head shot, to a more mature portrait. The new portraits give us a mature presence. As the senior class is moving out of high school, we are also moving into an adult world, where having a professional portrait of ourselves can come in handy, with things like job profiles, or business cards. Being able to take a mature portrait while in a studio setting can create personal experience that can come in handy in the professional world. As a whole the new senior portraits bring a unique and fun vibe to the senior section while keeping that mature level of confidence that the senior class holds. This is new change and even though some students do not like it or find it weird, it is different and unique. We are always getting told to be different or to be unique, so why not change our yearbook pictures to be as different as we can?

The school yearbook, everyone’s favorite thing to drop a hot seventy-five dollars on at the end of the year. It’s a lasting memory for the previous year, and for seniors, high school entirely.

The senior yearbook photos have been up for debate in terms of their new design ideas, a three-quarter length shot will replace the previous shoulders-and-up photos.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s always nice to try something new, but sometimes it honestly isn’t. The senior yearbook page has always looked sharp, including a perfectly-manicured design and a picture directly of the student. Unfortunately for the 2017-18 year, Perry has decided to do away with our classic design. This year’s seniors will no longer have a professional portrait, but rather will be replaced with a student’s knee caps.

In addition to this change, I’m assuming the page layout will be changed as well. More pages will be necessary or the pictures will be minimized. Either way, the aesthetic of the three-quarter shot is atrocious to begin with. Pictures from the knees up look awkward. It will be like a bunch of Gumby’s but striking slightly different poses.

This leads us to another point, everyone will be doing something different. One boy could have his arms crossed, while one girl could have her hands on her hips. It’s just strange and unorganized. With the head shots, the only thing you had to worry about was if your face looks contorted, but now you’ve got to worry about your whole body looking contorted — from the knees up anyway.

And that could lead to another issue too, some people are just not comfortable with making their body the main statement as well. Obviously, most people are insecure with something about themselves, whether it be their voice or weight. This is one major factor that makes the three-quarter shots such a negative; students should love their senior headshots but that could be ruined for them because they don’t feel confident with how their picture turned out. Why should we turn an important memory into just another thing for students to nit-pick their flaws from?

In terms of clothes, why did having to plan an entire outfit become a task harder than solving a Rubik’s Cube? The dress code was vague: obviously nothing promiscuous — not that that hasn’t stopped anyone before — but why do I find myself waiting in a dress to have my picture taken and see other girls wearing jeans and a cute top? Now I feel like an overdressed idiot, and the yearbook will feature some students going to the Met Gala while the rest to the movies. If they expected this to work, which it clearly did not, the dress code should have been a lot more specific. Perhaps this is a problem only the ladies faced, as Lou Coopey explicitly told the boys a suit jacket and tie was the way to go. If we had just stuck to the headshot no one would have to worry about this, simply making sure one’s shoulders we covered.

Wouldn’t it have been nice for the seniors to have a say? I mean, sure it’s not like the school is required to, but it would have been an appreciated sentiment. Of course the yearbook is for everyone, but let’s be honest, its significance lies with the seniors. There’s the nice spread of yearbook photos with each student’s activities listed by his or her name, and countless pages of special dedicated pages the graduates.

Change can be good, but not in this instance. Let’s just go back to what we know works and cover those ‘caps.