Saying cheese for class photos online in pandemic year

For most students, a year went off just like that, without being able to catch up with their class mates in person even once due to the pandemic. So when it was time for the class photograph towards the end of the academic year, they were at a loss. Now, a studio in Kozhikode has come up with just the right solution: online photoshoot.

Namitha Premkumar, owner of the studio Phototec Colour Lab here, is the brain behind the simple idea. “One of the schools we have a tie-up with wanted to do something special for the class photos this year. The initial plan was to make a collage of individual photos. Then we came up with this arrangement of online classrooms,” she says.

The idea is for all students of a class to come online at the same time and their images are captured online by the studio in high resolution. A whole class fits in one A4 size photograph.

“We have finished the shoot for all classes of a school in Kozhikode recently and have now moved on to their branches in Thiruvalla and Kottayam. Even parents are excited about the shoot”, says Namitha, adding that an advantage is that distance does not matter. “It’s not expensive either”, she says. Several schools from different parts of the State have approached the studio, Namitha adds.

However, there is one catch. “We can't do this if the strength of the class is too high. The maximum we can fit in a frame is 36 people”, she says. In other cases, two frames are used.