▲ A photographer from CR Studio takes small group pictures for seniors from the Department of Chemistry in front of the Case Hall.
Girls in H-line skirts and straight line cropped sleeve jackets with fancy bouffant hair, the so called Jacqueline Kennedy style, gathered around Pfeiffer Hall on a warm spring day with flowers blooming throughout the campus: It was the day seniors from the College of Education, the class of 1968, took their graduation pictures.
Now 44 years later, with spring at its peak and like any other years, the seniors class of 2012 gather around Ewha campus to get their graduation pictures taken. It takes a lot of effort and time, not to mention materials to get the perfect shot to commemorate the entirety of the four-year college experience.
The efforts often start weeks before the big day. Getting the perfect bodyline is among the first item on the to-do list. It is now almost a ritual to lose weight before getting a picture taken.
“For the past three weeks, I have been having green salad as dinner to lose weight before I get my picture taken. It is really hard,” said Kim Yoon-mi (Environmental Engineering, 4), one of the seniors taking her graduation pictures this spring.
Getting the right wardrobe for the graduation picture is another question that a senior mulls over for weeks before the shoot. Most of the students wear the famous so-called “Yu Gwan-sun Style,” namely, a black skirt with white top for graduation pictures. At a favored photo shoot site in front of Pfeiffer Hall, among the 16 students from the department of Journalism and Media Studies who were waiting in line, nine students were wearing black skirts or a one-piece dress with white blouse or jacket, showing the obvious Yu Gwan-sun style trend.
“I bought a grey knee-length H-line skirt and cream colored blouse for the photo shoot. But I wore them for my job interview later on so it was a good deal,” Lee Kyoung-min (’07, Industrial Design) said.
On the morning of the photo shoot, students go to beauty parlors to get their hair done and get professional make up for the photo shoot. According to manager Han Mi-hyun of Lee Kaja Hair Bis near Ewha, it takes about an hour or two to finish a students’ make-up and hair for her graduation photo. Students have to wake up early to get themselves into shape for one nice, everlasting graduation photo.
“My photo shoot started in 10:30 a.m. so I went to the hair salon around 8:00 a.m. I had to wake up really early in the morning,” Kim So-yeon (Journalism, 4) said.
Perfect make-ups and hairs are important to students since the photos remain as a permanent record of the students in that moment of her life.
“I booked my make-up for the graduation pictures at the make-up studio in Apgujeong where Girls’ Generation – a famous pop group – in Korea. It will take a lot of time to commute between the make-up studio and school, but I think it is worth the effort since the graduation photo album lasts forever and it will be how my colleagues remember me after graduation,” Lee Eun-byul (Special Education, 4) said.
Sometimes, the make-ups won’t last long and wear out or smudge. “I got my make-up and hair at 8:00 a.m.  before my shoot at 2:00 p.m. During the classes, the blow-dried hair flattened and my make-up got smudged,” Kim Ji-yeon. (’07, Economics) said.
When everything is ready to go, the students then decide how they are going to take the pictures, including pose, facial expression and friends with whom they are going to take the group photo. The photographers provide fifty different posing options to students and suggest the best suited facial expressions and poses.
“Since the students are not professional models, they do not know how to skillfully pose in front of the lens. So we have to straighten their postures and tell them what their best facial expression is,” said Kim Tae-goo, a representative of CR Studio, who was taking small group pictures on campus. “The pictures look the best when the students smile but many students avoid big smiles at first. But when they choose the final pictures, they prefer pictures with smiles.”
Since the graduation pictures are kept forever as tokens of one’s four-year school life, students want to take the small group pictures with close colleagues with whom they shared their university lives.
“I’m going to take my group picture with a few close friends who I spent four years together with,” Shin Hye-won (International Studies, 4) said. “In fact, I am not graduating until next year but decided to take the picture this year since I want to have good memories with my closest friends.”
저작권자 © Ewha Voice 무단전재 및 재배포 금지