13/10/2026
This is a long post, but very important one ❤️
📸 SCHOOL PHOTOGRAPHY, AI AND THE £9.50 PHOTOGRAPH
WARNING . . . MAKE A BREW ☕️ ITS A LONG ONE!
Every year, around school photography season, the same negative news stories seem to appear about the cost of school photographs.
Normally, we don't pay them much attention. Today's news is tomorrow's fish and chip paper, or digital fish and chip paper these days!
But this year, we feel it's time to say something.
Partly because Jenny has got her knickers in such a twist about it that Nikki has decided we need to respond! 😂
But mainly because we're now seeing reports of parents openly using AI to remove photographers' watermarks from school photographs rather than purchasing them.
As a small, independent photography business, we wanted to share our perspective and perhaps explain a few things that people might not realise about how school photography actually works.
First of all, we don't believe school photographs are expensive. Our professionally photographed and printed school portraits start at just £9.50.
To put that into perspective, here's what a typical day photographing a primary school looks like for our team. Some schools are considerably bigger, others much smaller, but the minimum number of staff we need to deliver the photography day remains the same.
⏰ 4am: Our alarms go off.
🚐 5am: We're at our studio, collecting and loading the equipment.
🏫 7am: We arrive at school, unload everything and begin setting up our professional photography studio.
📸 8:30am: We start photographing younger siblings who don't attend the school, brought in by their parents before the school day begins.
📸 9am: We begin photographing the pupils, working through the school.
🥪 20-minute lunch break, if we're lucky!
📸 3:30pm: We finish photographing.
🚐 4:30pm: Everything is dismantled, packed away and we're leaving school.
🏠 6pm: Back at the studio to unload all the equipment.
😴 7:30pm: Finally home!
That's a 15-and-a-half-hour day for our team of photographers and assistants.
And at that point, we haven't earned a penny from selling those photographs.
Something many people don't realise is that schools don't pay us to attend and photograph their pupils.
We provide the entire service at our own expense, and our income depends entirely on parents choosing to purchase their photographs.
And it's not just the photography day that we provide at no cost to schools.
🏫 We supply individual pupil photographs completely free of charge for schools to use on their management systems, helping them meet their identification and safeguarding needs.
📸 We provide staff photographs.
🪪 We produce staff ID badges.
🎁 We donate raffle prizes and support school fundraising events.
❤️ And we regularly help schools with additional photography and other requests wherever we can.
These are all services and contributions that we provide without charging the schools.
They take time, equipment, staff hours and resources, but they're part of the relationships we've built with the schools we work with.
Before we even arrive at school, we've already committed around £700 in staffing costs alone.
That's the cost of the minimum team we need to run a professional school photography day, whether we're photographing a smaller primary school or one with hundreds of pupils.
And that's before fuel, equipment, insurance, software, editing, printing, payment processing fees, VAT or any other business expenses.
Some schools will generate considerably more in sales than others, but our basic staffing costs remain the same.
So imagine we photograph a smaller school and the total sales come to £1,000.
We've already committed £700 to staffing alone. Then there's VAT to account for, any contribution to the school, and all the other costs involved in producing and delivering those photographs.
Suddenly, that £1,000 doesn't look quite so impressive!
And that's the financial risk we take every time we walk into a school.
Not every parent even opens their child's gallery, let alone purchases anything. That's absolutely their choice, but it means we can spend an entire day photographing children whose images may never even be viewed.
We're fortunate to have a particularly high percentage of parents who do purchase their photographs once they've viewed them, and we believe that's down to the quality of the service we provide.
We don't simply turn up with a camera and take a quick photograph.
We create professional photography studios within schools, using studio lighting, backgrounds and equipment. We take time with the children, and our photographs are edited in-house by our own team rather than being outsourced overseas.
We want parents to receive photographs they're pleased with and want to purchase.
We also believe school photography should be inclusive and accessible to every child. ❤️
Some children are comfortable in front of a camera straight away. Others need more time, reassurance, a quieter environment or a completely different approach.
Our team is experienced in working with children with additional needs, and we make adjustments wherever possible to ensure every child has the opportunity to be photographed in a way that works for them.
We employ professional photographers and assistants, all enhanced DBS checked, and invest in training, safeguarding and creating a positive experience for the children we photograph.
And all of this happens before a single photograph has been sold.
Once we're back at the studio, the work continues.
Thousands of photographs need to be backed up, sorted, edited, checked and uploaded to secure private galleries. 💻
Parents need to be given access to their photographs, orders need processing, questions need answering and prints need producing and delivering.
Then there are the costs involved in running the business.
💷 Staff wages and employment costs.
📷 Professional cameras, lenses, lighting and backgrounds.
🚐 Vehicles, fuel and travel.
💻 Editing software and secure gallery hosting.
🔐 Data protection and insurance.
🖨️ Professional printing, packaging and delivery.
💳 Payment processing fees, including additional fraud protection through Stripe.
📋 VAT and general business running costs.
🏫 Contributions back to schools and support for school fundraising.
And that's before we consider some of the other choices we've made about how we run PhotoJENIX.
We use a trusted local professional print lab rather than outsourcing our printing overseas. The cost of photographic paper and professional printing has increased, but supporting local suppliers and maintaining the quality of our products matters to us.
We plant a tree for every school or nursery setting we photograph as part of our commitment to reducing our environmental impact. 🌳
And now we've had to introduce yet another expense.
We've recently invested in additional image protection and screenshot detection software, which alerts us when someone takes a screenshot of a photograph in their gallery and allows us to identify the account involved.
It doesn't necessarily mean someone is intending to remove a watermark, but with the increasing use of AI to do exactly that, we've had to take additional steps to protect our work.
The software also provides warnings and reminders that photographs haven't been purchased and shouldn't be copied or used without permission.
And believe us, this software isn't cheap! 💸
It's incredibly frustrating that we're now having to spend even more money protecting photographs that we've already invested considerable time, effort and money in producing.
That's another cost to our small business, simply because some people think it's acceptable to take photographs without paying for them.
And yes, we can be alerted when screenshots are taken.
It's a rather sad sign of the times that we've had to invest in this technology at all.
And after all of that, parents can purchase a professionally photographed and printed school portrait from £9.50.
So no, we don't believe that's expensive.
We completely appreciate that not every family has spare money for school photographs, and we would never want anyone to feel pressured into purchasing something they can't afford or simply don't want.
But there is a difference between something being unaffordable and something being overpriced.
And there's an even bigger difference between choosing not to purchase a photograph and using AI to remove the watermark so you can keep it without paying.
We've also seen a comment from a parent suggesting that because the photograph features their child, the photograph belongs to them.
Actually, that's not how copyright works.
Under UK copyright law, the copyright in a professional photograph generally belongs to the photographer or the business employing them, unless ownership has been agreed otherwise.
Being the parent of the child in the photograph doesn't automatically give you copyright ownership.
Removing a watermark using AI doesn't change that either.
And yes, photographers can take legal action where their photographs have been copied or used without permission.
We're certainly not interested in spending our days chasing parents through the courts over school photographs. We'd much rather spend that time doing what we love.
But it's important that people understand this isn't simply a harmless way of saving a few pounds.
What genuinely flabbergasts us is that people are openly discussing doing this, almost as though it's something to be proud of.
We're a small, independent business. We're local people employing local people. We're parents ourselves. We have families, bills to pay and mouths to feed, just like everyone else.
We understand the pressures of everyday life, but what we wouldn't do is take somebody else's work simply because we'd rather not pay for it.
We're all encouraged to shop local, support independent businesses and look after our communities. Surely that should extend to respecting the work those businesses produce?
You don't have to buy a school photograph. But please don't take it without paying for it.
There's also another consideration that concerns us.
When parents upload photographs of their children to third-party AI websites to remove watermarks, do they know where those images are going, how they're being stored or what they might subsequently be used for?
We invest considerable time and money into keeping children's photographs and personal information secure, so we'd encourage parents to think carefully before uploading those images to unfamiliar platforms.
We're not asking anyone to feel sorry for photographers.
We chose this profession because we love what we do, and we're incredibly proud of the business we've built and the relationships we've developed with our schools, nurseries and families.
But we do think it's important to recognise the value of the work involved.
Behind every school photograph is a team of real people, professional skills, years of experience, significant investment and a considerable amount of work that most parents will never see.
There are days when, once we've accounted for all the hours involved, the financial return to us as business owners barely amounts to minimum wage.
Like any small business, we need to make a profit. That's what allows us to employ local people, invest in equipment, improve our services and continue doing what we do.
And amusingly, I'm not going to lie, Jenny did warn me when we first ventured into school photography that there was absolutely no money in it! 😂
But here we are, knee-deep in it now, so what do you do?
We spend most of the year swinging between:
“Woohoo, we're making money! Let's buy a van!” 🚐🎉
And approximately five minutes later...
“Oh, the HMRC bill's arrived. Better sell the van!” 💸😂
It's called high-volume photography for a reason. But we've always believed that high volume shouldn't mean compromising on quality, standards or the way children are treated.
We believe it's possible to deliver school photography professionally, ethically and with empathy, while still making every child feel like an individual rather than just another photograph on a production line.
And that's exactly what we're trying to do.
Even if Jenny does occasionally remind me that she told me so! 😂
AI is changing the photography industry incredibly quickly, but it hasn't changed the value of the people creating the photographs.
We don't expect every parent to buy their child's school photograph.
We simply ask that the work behind those photographs is respected.
And perhaps, rather than asking why a professionally photographed and printed school portrait costs £9.50, it's worth considering everything that goes into providing one for that price.
Anyway, that's our perspective from two women running a small, independent photography business in the High Peak.
And yes, Jenny's knickers are still in a twist! 😂
Nikki & Jenny 📸
PhotoJENIX | Just Be You
