We love working on the yearbook. It is a blast combing through all the photos of summer and putting them together. I even enjoy plugging in the mug shots as a way of seeing everybody’s smiling face again. There are always a few who look so trendy; I’m old enough to know that those are the photos that will cause that very girl to blush when she’s back as a counselor 10 years from now. Seen it happen many a time!
In this age of click-and-view photos, instant news, and Snapfish albums, many people don’t understand why it takes so long for their yearbook to come. We start getting calls from June campers in about July.
But our book is the old-fashioned kind. We don’t have a template; we start with a blank page, and select themes and layouts. Then we select, size, crop, place, and convert into black and white each photo.
The most time-consuming part is when we don’t have an essential photo—of say, the swim team, or week #3 Braves O’ the Week–when we have all the other teams and all the other weeks’ braves. When that happens, we have to stop and search for or solicit a photo, or find some art, or piece together a collection of mug shots, or otherwise create an illustration.
Finally we submit this huge amount of data to our printer in Kerrville, Joe Herring. Just that act of data transfer is quite the undertaking, requiring some expertise in such things. Joe prints the pages and collates them, and then shows us the proof. This doesn’t happen overnight, by the way! When we have approved it, the printed pages go on pallets by freight to the bindery in Austin. Binding all those books takes a while, and Joe swears that each time you call to inquire they move your project to the back of the queue.
The best part though, is the finished product. When old campers come by to see us, they always go to the yearbook to find themselves. “Look, honey! Here I am!”
And we are proud, relieved, and excited to report that the book goes to Herring’s first thing Monday morning. The major part of our work is finished. So we have been enjoying the process, the book is definitely in the works, and now we AND our campers are impatiently waiting!
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