Graduation Day Photo Ideas, Hour by Hour
Graduation produces exactly one photograph in most families: the posed shot in the gown, holding a rolled-up certificate, against whatever wall was nearest. It is a fine photograph and it says nothing about the day.
These ten prompts cover the hours around it - the gown collection queue, the parents finding their seats, the hat still on at 11 p.m. Run it with friends graduating the same day and the video ends up being about the year rather than the ceremony.
How to run it
- Length
- 10 hours · 10 photos
- Start it
- When the gown is collected, several hours before the ceremony.
The shot list
- 1
The gown, still in the bag
Before it is unfolded. In the hallway, on the bed, in the queue.
- 2
The hat problem
Whoever is trying to make it sit right. It never does.
- 3
Family, arriving
From a distance, as they find you. Do not warn them.
- 4
The venue, outside
The building and the crowd on the steps.
- 5
Finding seats
The room filling. Shoot from your row.
- 6
The stage from your seat
One frame during the ceremony, then phone away.
- 7
The crowd after
Everyone outside at once, hats and gowns, nobody organised.
- 8
With the people you actually studied with
Not the family photo. The other one.
- 9
The meal
Wherever the family took you. Table, mid-course.
- 10
Still wearing the hat
Late, somewhere completely unrelated to the ceremony.
Three things worth knowing
- Set it up with your friends the night before - graduation morning has no spare minutes in it.
- Hour six is one frame from your seat. Anything more and you watch your own graduation through a screen.
- The gown comes off around hour eight in most people's day. That is your last chance for the group shot.
Run this list with Sway
Start a Sway for these hours, send the people you are with its link and follow the list hour by hour. Everyone gets one shot per hour, and when it ends the hours come back as a single split-screen video.