Whoof - you aren't kidding, and it only gets worse. We end up buying only the cheapest base package, although when my kids were in daycare, they hadn't yet started picking our pockets that early in life.

My daughter's daycare has professional photos taken not once but twice a year - in the fall and spring (in a little over a week in fact - just got the flyer yesterday.)

I love the whole concept! As a full time working mom it's just one thing less I have to schedule during the year. We've been lucky that the school pics have come out gorgeous and unique as any mall studio. And daughter is relaxed because she's in a known environment with her beloved teachers who can get her to smile better than me dragging her to a strange place.

I will always treasure the first daycare pic at 5 months - how they managed to get her to stick out her tongue at the camera I will never know.

I usually shell out the money for the full set. It's money well spent and at the end I will have 8 professional photos of my baby growing up from 5 months to 5 years.

Erin, you experience has me rethinking the school portrait process.

It is a drag taking Baby to the mall studio.

We have thousands of digital snaps at home, and I have generations of photos on disk,film, slides and even further back, dagerrotypes. Know the photos everyone wants to see ? It's the candids, while the pro posed snaps get tossed to the back.

I've go lots of digital pics but they just live on the computer and I never get around to printing them. It's like once I got a digital camera I stop having physical photos. Only pictures I have printed since the baby was born is her professional pics. (She'll be 4 in two weeks.)

As for the photos everyone wants to see you obviously don't know my mom, because she only displays the professional photos, the candids are all nice and good to send her, but "when is she going to get an updated 'real' picture?"

It's really each to their own and the professional photos from daycare really work out well for my family.

Good points. As for prints, we rarely print ourselves. What we do is show slide shows on the TV and computer, and we have purchased digital photo frames for various family members and periodically send them a flash card with hundreds of pics. We also maintain a web site at smugmug.com, where we post shots monthly.

My son's daycare does the same. I agree that the pix are great. However, we soon discovered that twice a year was too much for us. So we now only do it once per year. The other times, we just tell the school not to take his photo. The pictures are more expensive, but when you weigh in the convenience, they're worth it.

All this balanced input was great.

I decided to skip taking the "school" photo at the daycare.

We are daycare photographers and try our best to offer a variety of backgrounds and products for our customers.

It is difficult to get great photos of children. What a photographer thinks is a great smile or expression might differ than what the parent would want.

We take a dozen or so photos of each child and let the parents decide which one they want in their package. This way, they get to find the one that they like, not the one the photographer or digital editor selects. We think that it offers the best option for the parents.

Greenscreen backgrounds are nice too, since we can offer several backgrounds to the parents. After all, most parents aren't going to agree on the same background.

I am sure that they are photographers in all markets that agree with our methods...offering proofs to let the parents decide the pose, offering a number of backgrounds for the parents, etc.

What I don't like is the company that gives away "FREE" t-shirts, etc. to get the business, but then charges the parents more than $ 100 for the same package we sell for half of that. That free t-shirt just cost $ 50!

Taking these photos is really demanding but I'm sure that if the parents purchase the portraits and decide exactly what they want, in the long run they will be priceless.

During the course of my school picture taking career I've had four occasions when we've taken photos of a student or faculty member and that person has died or been killed within a few days of the photo day. Those photos were very priceless.

We are daycare photographers and try our best to offer a variety of backgrounds and products for our customers.

It is difficult to get great photos of children. What a photographer thinks is a great smile or expression might differ than what the parent would want.

We take a dozen or so photos of each child and let the parents decide which one they want in their package. This way, they get to find the one that they like, not the one the photographer or digital editor selects. We think that it offers the best option for the parents.

Greenscreen backgrounds are nice too, since we can offer several backgrounds to the parents. After all, most parents aren't going to agree on the same background.

I am sure that they are photographers in all markets that agree with our methods...offering proofs to let the parents decide the pose, offering a number of backgrounds for the parents, etc.

What I don't like is the company that gives away "FREE" t-shirts, etc. to get the business, but then charges the parents more than $ 100 for the same package we sell for half of that. That free t-shirt just cost $ 50!

Taking these photos is really demanding but I'm sure that if the parents purchase the portraits and decide exactly what they want, in the long run they will be priceless.

During the course of my school picture taking career I've had four occasions when we've taken photos of a student or faculty member and that person has died or been killed within a few days of the photo day. Those photos were very priceless.

We are daycare photographers and try our best to offer a variety of backgrounds and products for our customers.

It is difficult to get great photos of children. What a photographer thinks is a great smile or expression might differ than what the parent would want.

We take a dozen or so photos of each child and let the parents decide which one they want in their package. This way, they get to find the one that they like, not the one the photographer or digital editor selects. We think that it offers the best option for the parents.

Greenscreen backgrounds are nice too, since we can offer several backgrounds to the parents. After all, most parents aren't going to agree on the same background.

I am sure that they are photographers in all markets that agree with our methods...offering proofs to let the parents decide the pose, offering a number of backgrounds for the parents, etc.

What I don't like is the company that gives away "FREE" t-shirts, etc. to get the business, but then charges the parents more than $ 100 for the same package we sell for half of that. That free t-shirt just cost $ 50!

Taking these photos is really demanding but I'm sure that if the parents purchase the portraits and decide exactly what they want, in the long run they will be priceless.

During the course of my school picture taking career I've had four occasions when we've taken photos of a student or faculty member and that person has died or been killed within a few days of the photo day. Those photos were very priceless.

We are daycare photographers and try our best to offer a variety of backgrounds and products for our customers.

It is difficult to get great photos of children. What a photographer thinks is a great smile or expression might differ than what the parent would want.

We take a dozen or so photos of each child and let the parents decide which one they want in their package. This way, they get to find the one that they like, not the one the photographer or digital editor selects. We think that it offers the best option for the parents.

Greenscreen backgrounds are nice too, since we can offer several backgrounds to the parents. After all, most parents aren't going to agree on the same background.

I am sure that they are photographers in all markets that agree with our methods...offering proofs to let the parents decide the pose, offering a number of backgrounds for the parents, etc.

What I don't like is the company that gives away "FREE" t-shirts, etc. to get the business, but then charges the parents more than $ 100 for the same package we sell for half of that. That free t-shirt just cost $ 50!

Taking these photos is really demanding but I'm sure that if the parents purchase the portraits and decide exactly what they want, in the long run they will be priceless.

During the course of my school picture taking career I've had four occasions when we've taken photos of a student or faculty member and that person has died or been killed within a few days of the photo day. Those photos were very priceless.

We are daycare photographers and try our best to offer a variety of backgrounds and products for our customers.

It is difficult to get great photos of children. What a photographer thinks is a great smile or expression might differ than what the parent would want.

We take a dozen or so photos of each child and let the parents decide which one they want in their package. This way, they get to find the one that they like, not the one the photographer or digital editor selects. We think that it offers the best option for the parents.

Greenscreen backgrounds are nice too, since we can offer several backgrounds to the parents. After all, most parents aren't going to agree on the same background.

I am sure that they are photographers in all markets that agree with our methods...offering proofs to let the parents decide the pose, offering a number of backgrounds for the parents, etc.

What I don't like is the company that gives away "FREE" t-shirts, etc. to get the business, but then charges the parents more than $ 100 for the same package we sell for half of that. That free t-shirt just cost $ 50!

Taking these photos is really demanding but I'm sure that if the parents purchase the portraits and decide exactly what they want, in the long run they will be priceless.

During the course of my school picture taking career I've had four occasions when we've taken photos of a student or faculty member and that person has died or been killed within a few days of the photo day. Those photos were very priceless.