Kindergarten photography made easy

We’re always looking for stories of kindergarten life – it’s the best way to give prospective whānau a glimpse into what kindy is like.

You’ll want to make sure your photos show your kindergarten in its best light, and in order to get the most out of the images, they need to fit the needs of specific channels like Facebook, our website, kindergarten pages, and online newsletter stories.

Give your submission the best shot by covering off a few simple things:

Set up your shot right

Kidsfirst has so many different platforms now, and they all need slightly different image shapes and sizes. Taking a photo in landscape gives us more options in terms of how we can use it, and also means you can get more in your photo. We can always crop what you send us, but we can’t include what’s not there. Got a date/time stamp set on your phone or camera? Please turn it off before you take photos to send to us – it gets in the way of the image, and can be hard to crop out.

Check what is – and isn’t – in shot

Sometimes, we get fantastic photos but can’t use them because there’s something a bit odd going on in the background. Given the height of tamariki, close-up butt shots are not unusual, but always unattractive. Sometimes, the angle of a photo makes it look like a health & safety breach, or as if something dangerous is going on – children near water without an adult in sight, or, a classic is when the angle of the shot makes it look like tamariki were jumping off a high roof, when in fact they were very close to the ground.

Check the looks on faces and the story the photo is telling

An apparently disinterested visitor to the kindergarten receiving a gift from a child looking the other way, sad or bored looking tamariki, or children clearly not engaged in the activity being depicted are features of just some of the photos we’ve been unable to use. Also, it’s important to make sure that what’s on people’s clothing is appropriate – we’ve had to ditch some great content more than once because somebody was wearing a baseball hat, or t-shirt featuring an alcohol brand, or other content that is not appropriate for a kindergarten environment. And, please ensure the heads of tamariki aren’t cut off in your shots.

Get close up and know where the action is

The days of perfectly posed, still children are long gone, but we still need to make sure that every photo tells a clear story, where it’s easy to see what’s going on, and that it focuses on the activity you’re looking to showcase.

Send us a few options

Taking a few snaps of the same scene is always a good idea – there’s a better chance something in the batch will work. If you’re having trouble uploading multiple images, or want to send video files, head over to WeTransfer, a fast, easy, and secure way to send content that many kaiako use.

Here is a quick "How-to" guide to submitting photos via WeTransfer, and through The Connect website.

Think strategically

Try to align all of your content (written and visual) with the ideas behind BetterBecause wherever you can, and make sure it reflects or includes the features that make your kindergarten different or special from your competition.

Check the resolution

We receive some absolutely gorgeous shots that would be perfect for banners on individual kindergarten pages, large shots on the website, for use in the annual report, or elsewhere. While we don’t need images that big for Facebook or for use in a gallery, it’s disappointing when we can’t showcase great work.

Make sure that when you are sending photos to us, they are the original size that they were taken at, and have not had the resolution reduced during the process.

Photos compress for a variety of reasons. Most commonly, this starts with the camera. In the settings of your digital camera there should be an Image Quality setting. This will give a few options ranging from something along the lines of Low, Normal, Fine, High, Raw, Raw + Normal. These may have different names, but the gist is that Low will be the lowest possible quality of image, whereas Raw will be the largest and most versatile for editing. You’ll have to explore the camera settings you have and choose what works best for your teaching team.

On most smartphones/tablets the quality will be fine straight out of the gate. Transferring these to a desktop rather than emailing straight out of the device will reduce the chance that the files may become compressed and be of a poor quality.

The higher quality image settings you have, the larger the digital file will be.

Emails compress images, which reduces the quality on the receiving end. To prevent this from happening, WeTransfer, or the Connect Submission page are the perfect tools to use. It also helps to check the size of a file before you send it. If it is below 1MB, then it will probably be of poor quality. The higher quality image settings you have, the larger the digital file will be.

When you take these photos from the camera into the computer, they should be about 1MB to 10MB. Anything larger will be too big to email, but you can send these in a number of ways – using this guide here.

Just the photos, please

Sometimes we’ll receive images embedded in a Word document or PDF. These are always too small for us to use, as Word doesn’t allow us to extract the image file on its own – so please send us the original images with the information about them as separate files.

Ready to submit? It’s easy

Visit the Story Submission page of this site. You can upload multiple documents and images, or, if you have an especially big file or a large number of images, put a note in your submission asking us to contact you, or WeTransfer them to us. Check out the how to section if you’re unsure how to do it.

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