I know some people like to do that and other people think it's tacky. I think it makes a great gift for grandparents and maybe godparents. Other than that, I probably won't be randomly handing out my child's picture. I mean think about it, you get hundreds of baby pictures inside birth announcements and holiday cards. What becomes of most of them? They get thrown in a box, and years later you look through it and find yourself asking "who's kid was this?".

I use to work for Olan Mills Potrait Studios. I'd never see a happy person coming in to have portraits done. The photographers were the ones that I felt sorry for. Screaming, crying, throwing things...and that was the parents!...lol I do think that if you can get it done once every 5 years than you have done the traditional thing.

After you got the pic done you then went over to sales and that's where you got taken to the cleaners. 8x10's and maybe one larger pic was enough for me, but the little charms and pins and all the useless garbage that they were pushing was just ridicules.

Home pics are so much nicer. You get to take pics of the real you or them.

seeker

I feel that a family portrait with a letter of update is really good, although my friends would probably make fun of me. It is mostly a family thing :).

I was made to have my pic taken all the time when I was a kid. I hated it. My father had a Nikon that he brought home from Japan during WWII. It had the old fashioned light sensor that you had to hold up to the sunlight to gage your light. I remember standing there in my stupid, lacy, pink and white dress, with a puffy skirt slip and just melting away in the hot sun. The darn thing itched to. My black patent leather Mary Jane's were too tight and the white, cotton gloves were crooked over my fingers.

I stood there for what seemed like forever before he got his shot. He wanted me to do it again because he had forgot to include the humongous easter basket that I had gotten. I took off like a shot as soon as I heard the camera click.

DCMerkle