MHS Yearbook Photo Tampering

Photo Company Digitally Altered Students’ Class Photos

The McKinney High School 2008 yearbook arrived to great fanfare on Monday, as it does every year. To understand the phenomenon that is the MHS yearbook arrival, it is important to understand the culture behind its creation.

The yearbook, quite simply, is a source of pride within the halls of MHS. It is a multi-time award winner - including the coveted Gold Star Award handed down by the Interscholastic Press League Conference (ILPC) - and is copied by other high schools around the nation. Hard to believe? Check out the inside pages of Hoover High’s yearbook (you know, the school featured in MTV’s "Two-A-Days" reality series). The creators of Hoover High’s yearbook name the McKinney High School yearbook as its inspiration, and indeed, it bears a very strong resemblance to The Lion.

So it was with a hint of suspicion that MHS yearbook advisor Lori Oglesbee received an e-mail shortly after the yearbooks came in from a mom who said something was wrong. Why, the parent wanted to know, did the yearbook staff take her child’s head and put it on another student’s body?

As it turns out, MHS students didn’t do it, but someone else did. Lifetouch National School Studios Inc., a Minnesota-based photography company, digitally altered 583 underclassmen photos. There are girls’ heads on boys’ bodies, logos removed from clothing, even some instances in which the photos appear to have been lengthened and stretched in Photoshop making it look as though some of the female students aren’t wearing shirts.

"I was wearing a sweater and a tank top in the picture, and when they lengthened the photo it looks like I’m not wearing a tank top," said sophomore Kate Petty, who also works on the yearbook. "My friends found it. Throughout the rest of the day people came up to me and made comments about it. It wasn’t a really big deal, but it was a little embarrassing."

Another yearbook staffer, Nelson Wilkerson, said the logos on his shirt were removed and his shoulders widened in his yearbook photo.

"I didn’t even notice the first time I saw my picture. I found out some other kids pictures were altered and that’s when I noticed that the shirt was messed up," Wilkerson said. "I thought that was crazy. Why would you want to take something out of somebody’s picture? That’s not ethical."

The problem seems to stem from uniformity of size. Oglesbee is adamant that all yearbook student photos should look uniform in size. She believes that the photographer taking the shots didn’t do the necessary work on his end and that someone tried to fix it using Photoshop later, apparently using any means necessary.

Oglesbee and her students are working through the weekend to correct every photo and get the book ready to print on Monday.

"I don’t know if anger has hit yet," said Oglesbee of her reaction. "First of all, I’m very hurt. My compassion and empathy for the students that were altered...I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be them."

After discovering the altered photos, Oglesbee made a phone call to Lifetouch on Tuesday. On Friday, the company flew in a senior representative, Dave Peterjohn, from Minnesota. He flew out the same night.

"I was hoping when this man came in they would say, ’We’ll make this right.’ They never did," Oglesbee said.

This isn’t the first grand mistake Lifetouch has made. Last year, the company called Oglesbee and advised her that when the film (Lifetouch doesn’t use digital equipment) was being developed, it was dipped in the wrong chemical. The company had to re-shoot the entire school’s class photos.

"I just think they didn’t want to have to come in this time and say ’We screwed up again,’" Oglesbee said.

As disturbing, according to Oglesbee, a Lifetouch representative told her that he, "didn’t know what my problem was, they did it last year and we didn’t say anything."

The mistake will cost $85,000 to fix. It is hoped that Lifetouch will pay for the re-print of all books, but, according to Oglesbee, the company sent a text message to her Friday night that said there would be no further communication between the two parties.

Someone has stepped in to help, however. Taylor Publishing, who is in no way at fault in any of this, has said it will work overtime to re-print the MHS yearbook. According to Oglesbee, Lifetouch representatives told her that the company would pay to have the book re-printed but has yet to give confirmation to Taylor Publishing.

"Taylor has been awesome. They said, ’We’re going to print this book and then we’ll worry about the paying [later] because we want the kids to have the right book.’ Everyone from the head person on down at Taylor has been asking me what they can do," Oglesbee said.

Hopefully not forgotten in all this is that yearbook staff tasked with cleaning up someone else’s mess. Students will spend days trying to get the book ready to re-print. The photo files have different names, so students will have to go through eight different folders with randomly assigned numbers for each photo, look at a chart, find the photo, scroll down, and drop the photo onto the page. Time consuming, especially when 583-plus photos must be fixed. Originally, it was thought that senior photos were untouched, but at least two of these to this point have been found to be altered.

The problem has left yearbook staffers Petty and Wilkerson with bad tastes in their mouths.

"The problem as a whole is upsetting because we put so much work into this yearbook throughout the year. We really start working on this yearbook as soon as the last one gets finished. For all that work to be messed up by the photo company is really upsetting and frustrating for us," Petty said.

"It doesn’t feel very good to know that we spent all this time to make a great book and to know that they went in and did something to make our book not the best that it could be," Wilkerson added. 

MISD high schools had already dropped Lifetouch as the photographer of choice for 2009, so there is no need to terminate the contract. Oglesbee, at this point, looks at the larger issue.

"I don’t think it was malicious. I do think they were trying to give me what I expected. I expected it to happen in the camera, but they didn’t want to tell me they couldn’t get it right again," said Oglesbee of the sizing situation. "You can’t go anywhere and find a code of ethics that has anything to do with any photography association, including the one that they’re a member of...everything they did would be unacceptable on any level with any code of ethics."