Retakes Required after Photo Foulup

The family-owned company, Creative Imaging, returned to Campolindo to retake students’ yearbook photos on October 3.  The return was necessary when it was discovered that many of the photographs taken on the original date were missing.

According to yearbook adviser Paul Verbanszky, “Creative Imaging had a software glitch of some sort and a large chunk of photographs just disappeared and additionally, some of the names were mismatched to the people so when they submitted the preliminary mugshots to us, it was all messy.”

This meant yearbook students had to spend long hours sifting through picture files to figure out who was who. Verbanszky said the class eventually told the company the photos were “all wrong.”

After the yearbook staff contacted Creative Imaging about the missing and mismatched photos, the company returned to retake the approximately 100 pictures lost and as well as photographing additional students who did not attend the 1st photo session. In total, Creative Imaging took roughly 150 photos in approximately 1 hour.

Sophomore Lauren Miller was among the people waiting in line to have their picture retaken. She said was confused at first because she already had her photo taken on Cougar Day and had an ID card.

But according to Verbanszky, even though they already received her senior portrait for the yearbook, Creative Imaging needed to retake any photos that were mismatched for the transcripts and the attendance software, Aeries.

Miller said she missed a lot of French class because the line was so long.  She also complained that the notification for the retake did not allow her enough time to be prepared.

Senior Mariella Crudele also had to get her photo retaken, even though she already had her ID photo and her senior portrait. “I didn’t really care, it didn’t really bother me that much because I didn’t have like a test or anything during that period so it wasn’t that big of a deal,” Crudele said.

Photographer Kelly Trapp, who has worked with Creative Imaging for 15 years, said, “I’m sure [the students] weren’t happy about it.”

Overall, the problem with the photos slowed down the yearbook significantly. “Usually by this point, we’re already organizing the profile photos for the pages of the mugshots, so we’re gonna be pushed back a little bit so we basically had to find other pages to make up for the ones that we would usually enter at this point in November,” said Verbanszky.

However, Verbanszky noted that “Creative Imaging was very good about understanding that the mess-up was on their side so they were fixing it.”