You will take several hundred photographs on graduation day. The professional portrait in the cap and gown, the one with your parents on the lawn, the group shot on the steps where nobody is quite ready. They are all worth having and they are all more or less identical to everybody else's.
What is missing from that set is a record of the people. Graduation is the last day a specific group of people are in the same place, and most of the photography from it is about the achievement rather than about them.
These 18 ideas are for the second kind of photograph - including the ones to take before the day, which is where the best ones come from.
Six to take before graduation day
The single most useful piece of advice here: the best graduation photographs are not taken on graduation day. On the day everyone is in identical robes, on a schedule, surrounded by families. In the weeks before, they are still themselves and still in the places that mattered.
The last night in the flat
Boxes half-packed, nothing on the walls, everyone sitting on the floor. This is the photograph you will want in ten years and almost nobody takes it.
The room, empty
A strip taken in your room after it has been cleared. Strange, slightly sad, and it captures something no group photo does.
The usual table
The café, the library corner, the pub booth where you always sat. Take a strip there before you never go again.
The walk you did every day
The route between halls and campus. It will become one of the most vividly remembered spaces in your life and you almost certainly have no photograph of it.
The all-nighter
Taken at 3am during the last deadline. Exhausted, unflattering, entirely accurate. Ages better than anything from the ceremony.
The handing-in
Immediately after submitting the final piece of work. The specific expression of relief in that moment does not occur again.
Six for the day itself
Cap toss, mid-air
Four frames catches the whole arc - the wind-up, the throw, the caps in the air, and everyone looking up. A single photograph gets one of those.
The gown, on and off
Frames one and two in full robes. Frames three and four with it half off and a normal shirt underneath. The transition back into being a person again.
With the people you actually spent it with
Not the course-wide group shot. The three or four people you saw every day. This is the strip that matters and it gets forgotten in the crowd of the day.
With your family
Specifically the unposed version. Four frames of your parents being embarrassing is worth more than the composed one on the lawn.
The scroll, doing something ridiculous
As a telescope, a megaphone, a sword. Everybody has the serious photograph of holding the certificate. Nobody has this one.
The end of the day
Late, tired, robes gone, makeup gone, shoes off. The honest closing frame of the whole thing.
Six for the group
Recreate the first-week photo
Find the photograph from the first week you all met and restage it exactly. Same positions, same expressions, three or four years older. Printed side by side it is the best possible graduation photograph and it is free.
Everyone's next city
Each person holds a card with where they are going. In two years this strip becomes a map of how the group scattered.
The rotating strip
One strip per pair, everyone with everyone. In a group of five that is ten strips and about fifteen minutes, and it gives each person something individual rather than one shared group shot.
One prediction each
Four frames, each person miming where they think they will be in ten years. Sealed and opened at a reunion.
The formation you always did
Every group has one - a pose, an arrangement, a running joke that appears in every photograph. Do it one more time, deliberately.
The last one
Taken at the actual moment of leaving - at the station, at the car, in the doorway. Nobody takes this because everybody is upset, and it is the one people wish existed.
Practical notes for the day
- Robes are dark and reflective. They absorb light and will make your face look underexposed by comparison. Face towards the light rather than away from it.
- Caps cast a hard shadow across the eyes in bright sun. Tip it back slightly or find open shade - the difference is dramatic.
- Outdoor midday sun is the worst light of the day. If you have any choice, shoot in the hour after the ceremony rather than at noon.
- Take the group strips early. By the end of the afternoon people have left with their families and the group never reassembles.
- Have one person responsible. Everybody assumes somebody else is taking photographs, which is why so many graduation days produce so few.
The lighting side of this generalises, and is covered fully in the photo booth lighting guide.
If you are graduating remotely, or people cannot come
Online degrees, distance programmes, families who cannot travel and friends who graduated a year apart all produce the same problem: the day happens without the people who should be in the photographs.
- A shared strip on the day. A booth link means someone in another country appears on the same strip as you, in the gown, on the actual date.
- The relay. Everyone who could not attend takes a strip with a message. Assembled into one album it is a considerably better gift than a card.
- Same prompt, different places. Everyone in the cohort takes a strip in their own home, doing the same thing. For a fully remote programme this is the group photograph.
The mechanism behind this is in why we built the shared booth, and there is more on remote celebrations in virtual birthday party ideas.
What to do with them
Graduation photographs have an unusual fate: they get put somewhere formal and then never looked at. The framed portrait goes on a wall at your parents' house and stays there for thirty years without anyone examining it.
The strips work differently because they are small and casual, so they end up in the places you actually look - a wallet, a phone case, a notebook, the inside of a cupboard door.
- Print the group ones and hand them out before everyone disperses. Once people leave, this never happens.
- Keep the before-photographs together with the day itself. The empty room and the last night are the ones that gain the most value.
- Date everything. Within five years you will not be certain which term it was.
- Send one by post to whoever moved furthest. It is an oddly effective thing to do.
More on keeping them in what to do with your photo strips.
The photograph nobody takes
Every graduating group has a last ordinary day - the final time everyone sits in the same kitchen, complains about the same things, and assumes there will be more of these. It usually happens a week or two before the ceremony and nobody notices it happening.
That day is the one worth photographing, and the reason it goes unrecorded is that it does not look like an occasion. There is no gown, no certificate, no achievement to mark. It is just a Tuesday.
If you are reading this before your last term ends, take a strip on an ordinary evening this week. Not on graduation day. That one is already going to be photographed several hundred times.
The booth opens in a browser, on a laptop or a phone, in about ten seconds.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are good graduation photo ideas?
The strongest ones are taken before the ceremony - the last night in the flat with boxes half-packed, the empty room after it is cleared, the café table where you always sat. On the day itself, four frames of a cap toss captures the whole arc rather than one moment of it.
What is the best group graduation photo idea?
Find the photograph from the first week you all met and restage it exactly - same positions, same expressions, three or four years older. Printed alongside the original it is the best graduation photograph you can produce, and it costs nothing.
How do you take good photos in a graduation gown?
Robes are dark and absorb light, so face towards your light source rather than away from it or your face will be underexposed by comparison. Caps also cast a hard shadow across the eyes in bright sun - tip the cap back slightly or find open shade.
When should you take graduation group photos?
Early in the day. By late afternoon people have left with their families and the group never reassembles. It also helps to make one person explicitly responsible, since everyone assuming somebody else is taking photographs is why so many graduation days produce so few.
How do you include people who cannot attend a graduation?
A shared booth link lets someone in another country appear on the same strip as you, in the gown, on the actual date. Alternatively, have everyone who could not attend take a strip with a message and compile them into one album - a considerably better gift than a card.
How can friends graduating from different schools take photos together?
If you attend different universities or graduated in different cities, you can wear your caps or stoles and connect in a shared virtual photobooth. The dual countdown captures both graduations in one continuous strip that documents both achievements side by side.
Sources and further reading
- Golden hour - Why light an hour after sunrise and before sunset flatters faces, and how to plan around it.
- Portrait photography - Established conventions for photographing people, which booth framing borrows from.