The Thistle staff’s annual photo shoot is an epic tradition at Northern Highlands Regional High School. This year was no exception. They photographed masked students with smoke bombs for their “Up in the Air” theme.
Going the Distance is a blog series about embracing yearbook challenges, available on the Balfour Blog. Throughout the year, we’ll feature advisers and reps from around the country.
This school year marks my 11th year as both a teacher and a yearbook adviser, although with the pandemic and hybrid teaching, it certainly feels like year one all over again! Every year, we try to tie in a unique photo shoot that relates to our theme. (See the ball photo shoot for the 2018 yearbook.)
Usually, we hold these shoots during Spirit Day and we get a good amount of student participation and lots of images to use throughout the book that reinforce our theme. This year, for obvious reasons, our theme is "Up in the Air." Our staff brainstormed this theme over the spring through a virtual staff meeting, and when it came time to come up with a photo shoot idea, one of our students suggested we look into smoke bombs. We quickly did some research online and saw how amazing these images could be, and it was overwhelmingly decided that we would pursue a smoke bomb photo shoot opportunity for all students. Not only did it visually represent our theme, with the smoke literally being "up in the air" but students would also be photographed in masks so we could also make a connection to the virus being in the air.
Since we are hybrid this year, rotating the school on to campus in thirds, we have no Spirit Day to capture everyone at once, so we had to schedule three separate photo shoots and have students sign up in advance for time slots to allow for social distancing. We held a "test shoot" at the end of August that will appear in our "Summer" section of the book, and another shoot in September that will appear in our "Fall" section. Being that we are working chronologically this year, we hope to include another shoot in the winter, and again in the spring so that our smoke bomb photo shoot images can appear throughout the book and change over time with the seasons.
We are using red smoke bombs from Enola Gaye, which give each student a 60-90 second window for photos. With each shoot, we get better at determining the best way to capture the smoke effects. I would be remiss if I did not also give a huge shout out and thank you to our principal for always supporting our yearbook program. Especially during such a difficult and stressful time in education, we are so happy to still be able to provide our students with a fun and unique yearbook experience. We are also so proud and excited to win national recognition from Balfour for our 2021 theme, once again leaving us with the question we face at the end of every school year... "How will we top ourselves next year?!"
Doreen Albano is the co-adviser of the yearbook with Mary Lardiere at Northern Highlands Regional High School in Allendale, New Jersey. This is her 11th year teaching advising. You can follow the Thistle yearbook staff on Instagram: @NHYearbook.
