This photographer sucks..

good grief. I understand the child limitations, but he sure didn't LOOK like he was at all out of sorts in the picture. he sure didn't LOOK like he felt he was being excluded.
for all we know, he is friends with all the other students and they get along just fine. So the school managed to hire some assembly line "photographers" that aren't extremely well versed in composition. wowzers...imagine that.

but seriously mom? your going to make your child a victim now? The kid looked like he was doing everything in his power NOT to be a victim of circumstance, and there you go, completely subverting everything that child has worked so hard to overcome to lead as much a normal life as possible. Oh, I understand as much as the next person. I have a special needs child, and i promise you, MY child will NEVER be a victim. My opinion would be that the mom grossly overreacted, and her crusade was to quench the fires of her own ego more-so than any legitimate grievance against her son, and in doing so, potentially did him far more psychological harm than any mediocre photographer could have ever done. Monstrous says I.
 
I've been a teacher (in more recent years with infants & toddlers with delays) but when I was doing school age classroom teaching our school picture day was assembly line at best. This looks like the set up was to center the kids on the bleachers - obviously nobody thought about how this would work if a child uses equipment and would be seated to one side - it was probably inadvertent not intentional to have the child who uses a wheelchair positioned somewhat away from the group.

The child looks like he might be leaning toward the bleachers but not knowing the child there's no way to know; his chair seems to have an arm rest on one side and controls (joystick) to operate the chair on the other side, so he may or may not always sit straight in it (I've known kids to sit different ways depending on what their condition is, what type of chair or equipment they're using, or to lean more when they're tired etc.).

I can understand the parents having feelings about seeing their child being seated separately from the group, and bringing some awareness to this might help awareness of including all kids; I don't think putting it on Facebook was the best idea, and bringing it to the attention of the photography company and the school might have been the best way to have something done about it. It seems like the school helped correct the situation by making sure the the photo was retaken and certainly this is something that could be taken care of easily enough just by doing what they did, seating him on the bleachers (or the group could have been seated differently on the bleachers). Now at least the photography company can think about other seating arrangements that could be used by their photographers in the future.
 
The kids should have been sitting 2 feet to their left, and the gap would have been erased. Why the need to be centered on a bench?
 
I spent almost 20 years married to a woman who had a terrible car accident that made her need the use of a power wheelchair very much like the one the boy was using in the photo. I can tell you from experience, a large power chair like that takes up a LOT of room, and will weigh between 200 and 350 pounds, and in virtually ALL cases, only the chair's owner will be capable of driving the thing. Many power chairs have been tuned to respond to very minute joystick movements, and "other people" can often not drive the chair without literally slamming it into nearby objects. The child is the person who drove his chair up to the side of the risers. The idea of removing the kid from his chair and sitting him there on the risers?? Uhhh, a seriously bad idea, on multiple levels I think. Depends on his actual condition. Who would assume liability if he were to be injured?

Unless the photographer had been trained in alternate posing strategies, and had different equipment, like short-length risers, apple boxes, etc., there's pretty much not much that could have been done if the idea was to go with the "traditional" kids-on-risers, teacher at the side kind of group shot. Building a group pose with that many people takes a lot of skill and understanding; on the opposite end of the skill level, simply having the kids stand in rows, on risers, is easy, and is what a typical Lifetouch shooter is going to do, day after day after day.

This whole incident is really bordering on ridiculous. I KNOW all about "wheelchair issues"; if the boy's parents had even a whiff of a clue, they would have addressed this issue and their concerns BEFORE the incident happened. If they are going to raise a kid who attends public school while in a wheelchair, they'd darned well better learn to be advocates for their child, rather than waiting for these kinds of issues to creep up, then raising a huge fuss. Again...they need to think ahead, and be proactive, and not reactive. Of course, the kid is seven years old; the entire family will continue to learn more and more about the trials and tribulations of wheelchair life among the larger able-bodied society at large.

Communication is the key; If a person has special needs, or concerns, then the parents NEED to make their concerns known, and not ***** and moan after the fact. They ought to feel very bad for their OWN part in this 'incident'. Seriously...they needed to take some responsibility, and look out for their child's special needs. If the kid had a peanut allergy, would they not speak up BEFORE he ate peanuts in the school cafeteria?
 
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The photographer could have been more creative no doubt, but think it was an unintentional mishap. Interesting story though and I'm reminded that there are people with a lot on their plates compared to me. No idea how I would react; until we walk in another's shoes.....
 
Why do I feel like I'm the only one wondering why every other child has their face blurred. I mean seriously why the need to blur their faces when names and the school and nearly all info needed to identify them is present within the article - you don't need to blur them to protect/hide them from whatever it is people think it hides/protects people from (esp as the whole articles is news anyway and thus generally safe from needing any permission slips).

As for the situation and keeping in mind the mentions about the group hired by the school from members here (Esp one who worked for the company - HI EROSE - hang around here more - we miss you!) It just looks like general low end, get the shots done simple formula photography. Yeah it ain't going to win prizes - the whole setup is to get the shots done and presentable for the parents. Heck chances are they had to pose dozens of classes comprising of dozens of kids that day. The photographer/camera operator was likely just following their trained and tested method. Heck when taking the shot the tiny distance between the kids and the one in the wheelchair likely didn't even appear to be all that great (being something that only appeared larger when printed on the photos - something an experienced photographer might well know but an inexperienced one trained to just do a single simple product style shot isn't going to be aware or trained for).

I'd just top this up to sensationalist news and leave it at that - nothing more to worry on and leave the kid/school/photographer alone. Yeah its not high class photography, but not every photographic venture has to be and by heck not every group/organisation can afford high class quality photography anyway.
 
I bet I can tell who's a parent and who is not here !

O.K., how is a parent supposed to react? Not only am I a parent, but I have a nephew who has that same condition. Sometimes I have to take him to the bathroom, which includes everything. I've fed him, dressed him, and tried to figure out what he is trying to communicate. Been there.
 
I bet I can tell who's a parent and who is not here !

O.K., how is a parent supposed to react? Not only am I a parent, but I have a nephew who has that same condition. Sometimes I have to take him to the bathroom, which includes everything. I've fed him, dressed him, and tried to figure out what he is trying to communicate. Been there.

To a parent, what is wrong with the picture is evident.

I too would have complained to the company. And if they had refused to do something about it and didn't even recognized the problem, I would have gone to social media also. To me, the escalation seems reasonable.
 
I bet I can tell who's a parent and who is not here !

O.K., how is a parent supposed to react? Not only am I a parent, but I have a nephew who has that same condition. Sometimes I have to take him to the bathroom, which includes everything. I've fed him, dressed him, and tried to figure out what he is trying to communicate. Been there.

To a parent, what is wrong with the picture is evident.

I too would have complained to the company. And if they had refused to do something about it and didn't even recognized the problem, I would have gone to social media also. To me, the escalation seems reasonable.

Okay, lets get this straight...

I don't think there's a single person in here who DOESN'T see what is WRONG with the image.

Parents or not.

What SOME of us are saying is that rather than accusing the likely 18-20something year old kid that took this picture of being discriminatory towards those with special needs, we're saying they're an IDIOT who has no idea what composition is, and yes, could have EASILY slid the class over... but didn't. Because he/she wasn't "trained" to do that, and unfortunately ALSO lacked the common sense to figure it out themselves *without* being trained to do so.

Like I said previously... unintentional lack of common sense. Not intentional discrimination.

Either way... the images does suck in that regard, but it's not discrimination. Just lack of talent. Or. Compositional skills. Or... logic, I dunno pick one.
 
Only in America do we feel we have the God-given right to be personally offended. And by God, offended we are!
 
The picture's not good, but the mom's freakout is just as bad. She's reading stuff into the picture that's just not there. Why? Either she's.. overly excitable.. or she's trying to get free stuff out of LifeTouch. Or both.

Why anyone would want free stuff from LifeTouch I do not know. I don't want their stuff at all. If it came with $100 bills attached, maybe.
 

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