Sunday Media / Life Milestones
Graduation photos taken while the campus is still yours
You have walked that path a thousand times without looking at it. In about a week you will need an excuse to be there at all. This page is how to photograph it properly before that happens.
Based in Guelph, ON. Shooting across Southern Ontario. Every fee, including travel, insurance and any campus permit or ticket costs, is discussed and agreed in writing before anything becomes binding.
Placeholder image. Swap this for your own graduation work before the page goes live.
Four years, one gown, one afternoon on campus before it belongs to someone else.
Nobody photographs the ordinary version of a degree. There is no picture of the third floor carrel where you sat until close, or the bus stop in February, or the lab bench with your initials in sharpie on the drawer. There is a group chat, a lot of screenshots, and about nine hundred photos of other people’s food.
Then convocation arrives and the whole thing compresses into one loud morning. You are handed a gown that does not fit, seated in alphabetical order, walked across a stage, and photographed by a stranger with a backdrop and a queue behind you. That photo has a job and it does it. It is not the photo of what those years actually were.
This one is. A graduation session is a proper hour on the campus you know better than anyone will believe, with the buildings you lived in, the people who got you through it, and the gown worn on purpose instead of survived.
It is also the last realistic chance. Access, keys, cards and belonging all quietly expire. Within a year you will be a visitor at your own school, walking past a building you cannot get into anymore, explaining to someone that you used to have a desk in there.
Book it while you still have the swipe card. The campus stops being yours faster than anyone warns you.
Thirty minutes to two and a half hours
Sessions run anywhere from 30 to 150 minutes depending on the package you choose. A short one is you, the gown and two locations. A long one adds family, friends, the faculty building, a second outfit and a walk downtown afterwards.
We direct, you do not pose
You will be given something to do, not a shape to hold. Walk to that door. Tell me what you were doing in that building at three in the morning. Throw the cap, badly. The photograph happens in the second after the instruction, which is why it looks like you.
One for the wall, one for the grandmother
Files are delivered print ready. Somebody in your family is going to frame one of these and keep it on a shelf for thirty years, and it will almost certainly not be the one from the stage.
Where do people actually shoot these?
Almost everyone answers this the same way: the building on the front of the brochure. It is a good frame and you should get it, because your parents want it and it is genuinely handsome. It is also the one photograph that looks identical for every graduate that school has ever had.
The frames people keep longest are the specific ones. The door you badged into at seven in the morning. The bench. The one lab, studio, barn, rink, greenhouse or basement where the actual work happened. Southern Ontario campuses are unusually photogenic for this: limestone and ivy at Guelph, glass and brutalist concrete at Waterloo, red brick and long lawns at McMaster and Western, and stone and water at Brock and Laurier.
Pick two or three types from the list below and we will build a route between them that walks in under ten minutes, because an hour spent crossing campus is an hour not spent photographing.
The landmark building
Johnston Hall at Guelph, University College at Western, University Hall at McMaster, the Laurier and Brock frontagesEvery school has one building it puts on the front of everything, and there is no shame in wanting that frame. It says the name of the place without a caption, which is exactly what a grandmother wants on a shelf. Stone, ivy, a heavy door and a set of steps do most of the work for us.
The trap is that everybody else wants it on the same weekend. On convocation day there will be a queue at that door and somebody’s uncle in the background of every frame. We shoot it either very early, on a weekday that is not a ceremony day, or from an angle nobody else bothers with.
Depends which way it faces. We check the wall before we book the hour, not after.
You already know. Tell us which door and we will meet you at it.
Every convocation day, all day. Also move in weekend and open house.
Scaffolding, banners, parked service vehicles, and other people’s photo queues.
Arches and cloisters
Covered walkways, colonnades, breezeways, stone tunnels between buildingsAn arch does two things at once. It frames you, which makes an ordinary standing portrait look composed, and it throws even shade onto your face while leaving bright daylight behind you, which is the single most flattering lighting setup available outdoors for free.
It is also the reason we rarely need to cancel for rain. A covered walkway with open sky at both ends stays dry, stays bright and looks nothing like a compromise. If the forecast is bad, this is where your session moves to, and most people end up preferring the results.
Any hour, which is rare. Open shade under cover works from morning to dusk.
Usually thirty seconds from the landmark building. They tend to be attached.
Between classes. Ten minutes either side of the hour is the worst window.
Wind funnelling through and taking the cap off. Pins in, always.
The green and the quad
Johnston Green and Branion Plaza in Guelph, any main lawn or central quadOpen lawn is where the gown finally gets to behave like a gown. It catches wind, it moves when you walk, and there is room to throw a cap without hitting a wall. It is also the only place on campus with space for a group of nine to stand without half of them being hidden.
Low sun across a lawn in the last hour of daylight, with the buildings dark behind you and grass lit up gold, is the frame most people did not know they wanted until they saw it. Bring a second person to hold things, because the lawn is where the jacket, the bag and the water bottle all get put down.
Last hour before sunset, sun raking sideways across the grass, buildings behind you.
Central by definition. Usually a two minute walk from anywhere else on this list.
Warm afternoons, spring exam season, and any day with an event tent on it.
Sprinklers, freshly cut grass on dark gowns, and mud under the good shoes.
Steps and glass
The main library, the science atrium, the concrete blocks nobody calls beautifulSteps solve height differences, give a group somewhere to arrange itself, and let us shoot slightly up at you, which is a more confident angle than most people ever get photographed from. Glass frontages bounce a wall of soft light straight back into your face on an overcast day.
Modern campus architecture photographs better than its reputation suggests. Concrete, steel and repeated windows make clean graphic backgrounds that hold up next to all the ivy, and if you spent five years in that building it belongs in the set whether or not it is pretty.
Overcast is ideal. In sun, wait until the building shades its own steps.
The library is central on every campus in the province. That is the whole idea.
Exam periods, when those steps are somebody’s only fresh air all day.
Reflections of us in the glass, and gowns catching on step edges.
Your own faculty
The lab, the studio, the shop, the greenhouse, the barn, the rink, the newsroomThis is the frame that stops being generic. A veterinary student in the barn, an engineer in the machine shop, a fine art student in a studio with paint on the floor, a plant science student in the greenhouse in February with condensation on the glass. Nobody else in your graduating class has that photograph, and in fifteen years it is the one that still explains something.
It takes one email. Interior spaces almost always need permission from the department, a supervisor or a building manager, and the answer is usually yes if you ask a week ahead rather than turning up with a camera. We will draft the message if you tell us who to send it to.
Whatever window it has, overheads off. We bring a small light if it has none.
You have the code. Confirm your card still works before the day.
Working hours. Early evening or a weekend gets you the room to yourself.
Safety rules, closed toe shoes, live equipment, and anything confidential in frame.
Trees and the arboretum
The Arboretum in Guelph, campus woodlots, tree lined approach roads, the ravine everyone walks throughMost Southern Ontario campuses have a green edge that students walk through daily and never photograph. A hardwood canopy turns hard midday sun into soft green light, and in the second and third week of October it does something to a black gown that no studio backdrop can imitate.
It is the quietest option on this list, which matters more than people expect. If being photographed makes you self conscious, twenty minutes under trees with nobody watching is a far better warm up than starting on the busiest steps on campus.
Two hours before sunset, sun coming sideways through the trunks.
Ten minutes on foot from most campus centres. Longer in the shoes.
Weekend afternoons in October. Weekday evenings are almost empty.
Mosquitoes in June, mud in spring, and light dropping fast under cover.
The town you lived in
Downtown Guelph, uptown Waterloo, Hamilton, London, St Catharines, the street with the house on itYour degree did not only happen inside the fence. The porch of the house with six names on the lease, the coffee place that knew your order, the bus stop, the corner where somebody proposed a terrible idea at two in the morning. These are the frames your friends will react to hardest, because they were there.
It also gives the session a second half with a different feel. Gown off, jacket on, warm windows and lamps coming on at blue hour, and the whole thing stops looking like a school photo and starts looking like a chapter ending.
Blue hour. Fifteen to thirty minutes after sunset, one small flash if needed.
Walkable from most campuses. Guelph is our front door, the rest are close.
Friday and Saturday nights, patio season. Sunday evening is quiet and beautiful.
Private property, parked cars and bins in frame, and gowns on wet pavement.
How to choose, without overthinking it
Two or three spots, not seven
Every extra location costs a ten minute walk in shoes you cannot walk in. Three good backdrops inside a five minute radius produce far more keepers than a tour of the whole campus.
One recognisable, one personal
The landmark for your family, and the door only you care about for you. Everything after that is a bonus. If we only get two frames, those are the two.
Not on ceremony day, if you can help it
Convocation day is loud, crowded and on somebody else’s schedule. A quiet weekday with the same gown gets you an empty campus and an unhurried hour.
Check what is under construction
Campuses are permanently half rebuilt in summer. Look for hoarding and cranes the week before, because they move slower than your booking does.
Have a rain plan on day one
Pick the backup when you book, not when the radar turns green. An arch, an atrium, a covered walkway. Then rain stops being a crisis and starts being a mood.
Check the boring things
Visitor parking, gate hours, which lots are permit only after five, where the nearest washroom is, and whether the building you want is locked on weekends.
Permissions, permits and the things that get sessions moved along
Outdoor grad photos on public campus grounds are normal, expected and almost never a problem. Ontario universities and colleges are full of graduates in gowns being photographed every June, and campus staff have seen it a thousand times. That said, the rules are real and they differ from school to school, so here is what actually applies.
Outdoor and casual is usually fine
Walking the grounds with one photographer and no lighting stands rarely needs anything. It is treated as personal photography, the same as your family taking pictures after a ceremony.
Interiors need a person to say yes
Labs, studios, libraries, theatres, athletic facilities and residences all have someone who owns access. That is a department admin, a supervisor, a building manager or the front desk. One polite email a week ahead is the whole process.
Tripods and lighting change the answer
The moment a stand goes up, some schools reclassify the shoot as commercial and want a permit or a booking. We work handheld by default for exactly this reason, and we ask first when we do not.
Convocation day belongs to the school
On ceremony days the official photographer has the stage and specific areas are roped for them. We stay well clear of that, work the outer grounds, and time around the flow of the ceremony rather than against it.
Ask the school, not the internet
Every campus publishes something. Search the school name with photography policy or filming permit, or call the main communications office. Five minutes there beats being moved along mid session.
Be easy to have around
Do not block doors or accessible routes, do not climb on anything, do not move furniture, and if a staff member asks you to move, move cheerfully and immediately. Being pleasant gets more access than any permit ever will.
Our photographers already know these campuses. They know which door is locked on a Sunday, which lawn has an event tent on it in June, where the sun lands on that wall in October versus May, and which building manager says yes if you ask properly. Tell us your school and your program and we will send back a route. We are also building a full Photoshoot Locations guide for Southern Ontario, with maps, parking notes, permit details and the best hour for each spot.
Before, during, or after the ceremony
This is the decision people get wrong, and it is worth two minutes of thought because it changes everything else: how long you have, who can be in the photos, what the campus looks like behind you and whether anyone is calm.
Most Southern Ontario schools run a large spring convocation in June and a smaller one in the fall, and regalia is available to rent or buy for a window around each. Confirm your own school’s dates and gown pickup rules first, then pick one of these three.
Before the ceremony
The one we recommend to almost everybodyA quiet weekday in the week or two before convocation, gown collected early, campus running normally. Nobody is rushing, the light is whatever hour we choose rather than whatever hour the ceremony ends, and you can spend twenty minutes in one spot without a queue forming behind you.
The practical catch is the gown. Rentals are usually collected close to the ceremony date, so this option depends on your school’s pickup window, or on buying rather than renting. Ask the registrar or the campus store the month before, because that one answer decides your entire timeline.
It also means that on the actual day you are not thinking about photographs at all. You get to sit with your family and enjoy the thing, which is worth more than most people realise until they have done it the other way.
Calm. Unhurried. The version where nobody is checking a watch.
Golden hour, empty backgrounds, and time for a second outfit.
When regalia can be collected. That single date decides whether this works.
Six to eight weeks ahead. June evenings around convocation go first.
Convocation day
Highest energy, tightest scheduleEverybody is there, everybody is dressed, and the emotion is genuinely at its peak. Your parents are already on campus in good clothes, your friends are graduating in the same hour, and the photographs carry something a staged session never quite does.
The cost is control. The campus is full, the landmark spots have queues, the official photographer owns specific areas, and the light is whatever the ceremony schedule hands you, which in June is often flat midday sun. Nobody is calm, and hair, makeup and gowns have already been through a warm hall.
It works well when we plan it as two short windows instead of one long session: twenty to thirty minutes before the ceremony while everyone is fresh, and a second window immediately after for family, friends and the cap toss. We pick shaded and covered locations deliberately, because we do not get to choose the hour.
Loud, emotional, fast. Real in a way that cannot be recreated.
Everybody in one place, and the actual reactions at the actual moment.
Ceremony start and end times, roped areas, and where your family will be standing.
Midday sun, crowds in frame, and running late before we have started.
After, on your own time
For anyone who bought the gown or missed the windowPlenty of people photograph the degree weeks or months after the ceremony, and the results do not suffer at all. If you own your regalia, or you can borrow it back, the campus in September or in fresh snow looks completely different from the June version everybody else has.
This is also the answer for anyone who could not attend their own convocation, graduated during a year when the ceremony was cancelled, or is home from another province for a week. The photograph does not care what date the paperwork says.
One honest caution: if you are renting, the return date is real and late fees are not a story you want attached to these pictures. Confirm the return deadline before we set a session date.
Deliberate and personal. Entirely on your schedule.
Fall colour or snow, an empty campus, and any hour you want.
Whether the gown is yours to keep, and the rental return date if it is not.
Anytime. October dates fill fastest because of the colour.
If you only take one thing from this section: find out when you can get the gown, before you pick a date.
Regalia availability is the constraint that quietly decides everything else on this page. One email to the registrar or the campus store gives you your pickup window, your return deadline and whether buying is an option, and the whole plan falls out of those three answers.
The gown is the whole costume
You will wear it for one afternoon in your life and it will be in most of these photographs, so it is worth ten minutes of attention. Academic dress is also the one part of this that is standardised, which means the problems are predictable and every single one of them is fixable the night before.
Terminology varies by school, so treat the notes below as general guidance and check your own convocation instructions for the details. Colours, hood shapes and hat styles are set by the institution and the degree, not by taste.
Get the creases out
Rental gowns arrive folded in a bag and the fold lines photograph like scars, especially across the chest and sleeves. Hang it the moment you collect it. Steam it, or hang it in a bathroom with a hot shower running for fifteen minutes, then let it dry fully on the hanger.
Do not iron polyester directly. A warm iron on a low setting with a cloth between, or no iron at all, is safer than a shiny melted patch on the one thing you cannot replace.
Pins, angle, and the tassel side
A mortarboard sits flat and level, roughly a finger width above your eyebrows, not tipped back on the crown of your head. Two or three bobby pins pushed through the inner band into your hair hold it against wind, and wind on an open quad is not hypothetical.
Which side the tassel hangs on, and whether it moves during the ceremony, is set by your school. Check the convocation instructions and pick one side for the whole session so the photographs stay consistent.
It will slide, and it will twist
Hoods are heavy, they pull backwards, and they rotate the moment you walk. Whoever is coming with you gets one job: check the hood between every location. A small safety pin at the shoulder seam, hidden underneath, stops most of it.
The colours on a hood identify your degree and your school, so we photograph at least one frame from behind or at an angle where they read clearly. Somebody in your family will want that.
Even, straight, and worth explaining
Honours cords, Indigenous graduation stoles, program or association stoles, athletic and service awards. Bring them, wear them, and tell us what each one means before we start, because we will build frames that show them properly instead of hiding them in a fold.
Even lengths on both sides, straight edges, and nothing twisted. Thirty seconds in a mirror before the first frame saves an editor an hour later.
Only the edges show
A gown hides most of an outfit and reveals exactly three things: your collar or neckline, roughly a hand span of hemline at the bottom, and your shoes. Those three are worth choosing carefully. Everything between them is invisible and can be whatever keeps you comfortable.
Black gowns are hot in June and thin in November, so plan the layer underneath for the actual weather rather than for the photograph.
Lint, grass and coffee
Dark polyester collects everything: pet hair, lint, cut grass, dust from a stone wall you leaned on. A lint roller in the bag is the single highest value item on the shoot day checklist.
Carry the gown on a hanger to the location and put it on there. It travels far better over an arm than crushed into a back seat, and you avoid arriving already creased.
If your regalia carries something personal, a stole from your community, a pin, a family item, a flag, a photograph of someone who should have been there, tell your photographer before we start rather than halfway through. It changes which frames we build and how long we spend on them, and those are almost always the pictures that matter most afterwards.
Everyone who got you here
A degree is rarely a solo project. Somebody drove you back to residence at midnight, somebody covered rent for a month, somebody sat on the phone during a bad week, and somebody is going to cry in the parking lot afterwards and deny it. Those people belong in the set.
Groups are also where sessions run over, so we handle them with a list and an order rather than improvising while eleven people mill about on a lawn. It takes five minutes to write and it saves twenty on the day.
Biggest first, then release people
- The full group, everybody, while nobody has wandered off yet.
- Graduate with both parents, then each parent alone.
- Graduate with siblings, then the whole immediate family again.
- Grandparents and anyone who should be sitting down soon.
- Extended family, godparents, the aunt who flew in.
- Friends and classmates, in whatever chaos they arrive in.
- The graduate alone, last, once the audience has gone quiet.
Six things that decide how this goes
- Send us the group list when you book. Names and relationships, not just a number.
- Tell one confident relative they are the caller. They fetch people faster than we can.
- Give everyone one meeting spot and one time, and make it fifteen minutes before ours.
- Warn us about anything delicate: a separation, a wheelchair, a hard of hearing grandparent, someone who is not attending.
- Ask family to coordinate loosely with your gown colours. Nobody needs to match.
- Budget roughly three to five minutes per group. Eight groups is half an hour, honestly counted.
Grandparents first, always
If someone in the group is elderly, unwell or standing with difficulty, we photograph them early and let them sit down. It is the one rule we never bend, and every family thanks us for it later.
Friends are a separate window
Classmate and roommate photos are a completely different energy from family ones and they run longer than anybody expects. If your friends are graduating too, we plan them as their own block, often after the family has gone for dinner.
Someone who cannot be there
A photograph, a pin, a piece of jewellery, an empty chair, a name written inside the cap. Tell us and we will find a way to include it that is quiet rather than staged. These are frequently the most important frames of the day.
The supervisor or the mentor
Graduate students, thesis writers and anyone who spent years with one professor or coach: ask them. Most say yes, most are quietly delighted to be asked, and a photograph with the person who supervised the work is worth more in ten years than the one on the steps.
Give the kids a job
Small siblings, nieces and nephews last about eleven minutes in formal clothes. Photograph them early, give them the tassel to hold or a cap to wear, then let them go and run.
Pets, if the campus allows it
The dog that got walked at two in the morning during exam season has earned a frame. Check the grounds rules first, keep them leashed, and bring one person whose only job is the leash.
The same gown, four different photographs
Ontario does not do subtle. The same quad is a mud pit in April, blazing and green in late June, on fire in October and a white sheet in January. A black gown behaves differently in each one, and so does everybody wearing it. Pick the season that matches the mood you want, then let us handle the rest.
Spring convocation
Late May and JuneThe main event for most Southern Ontario schools. Everything is green, the campus has emptied of undergraduates, the lawns have just been cut and the whole place looks like the version in the recruitment video. Sunset lands late, near half past eight in June, so a session can run properly into the evening.
The one thing nobody warns you about is heat. A polyester gown over a shirt at two in the afternoon in June is genuinely unpleasant, and it shows in faces within ten minutes. We shoot in shade or in the evening, keep the gown off between locations, and put a water bottle in somebody’s hand.
The lightest thing that still looks right at the collar. Breathable, not formal wool.
Heat, sweat on a dark gown, midday sun, and freshly cut grass on hems.
The green in the evening, arches at midday, the arboretum for shade.
April. June convocation weeks are the busiest fortnight of our year.
Summer
July and AugustA campus in July is an unusually good place to be photographed, because there is almost nobody on it. No queues at the landmark, no crowds on the steps, no event tents. Long light, green everywhere, and the whole place to yourself.
The move almost nobody books is sunrise. Half past five in the morning, cool clean light, an entirely empty quad, and you are eating breakfast by half past seven feeling like you got away with something. It is also the only realistic way to have a hot campus to yourself in a gown without melting.
Linen, cotton, anything that survives being under polyester for an hour.
Construction season, closed buildings, humidity, and mosquitoes near trees at dusk.
Anywhere. The whole campus is available and quiet.
Two to three weeks ahead. Summer weekday evenings are usually open.
Fall convocation
October and NovemberThe best light of the year, and a black gown against October colour is the strongest combination on this page. The sun stays low and warm all day, so the usable window widens instead of narrowing, and colour peaks across Southern Ontario in roughly the second and third week of October.
Fall ceremonies are smaller and calmer than the June ones, which makes convocation day itself far more workable. The trade is that peak colour is fragile: one windy night can take a canopy down to bare branches, so we plan a route that still works if the leaves leave early.
A real coat for between locations. Knits and boots under the gown.
Sunset near half past six by mid October, and wind lifting the cap on open lawns.
The arboretum, tree lined approach roads, any campus path with maples on it.
Six to eight weeks ahead. October dates go first and they go fast.
Winter
December to MarchThe most underbooked season and quietly one of the best for this. Fresh snow is a reflector the size of a county, throwing clean light straight up into your face, and a black gown against white ground is about as graphic as a photograph gets. Golden hour lands near quarter past four in December, so you are done, warm and eating by six.
We shoot winter in bursts: twenty to thirty minutes outside, a warm building within sight, coats back on between frames, hands in pockets right up until the shutter. Faces first while everyone is comfortable, details later. Nobody stands in a gown in February for an hour, and nobody has to.
Indoor campus architecture is the other half of this. Atriums, libraries, stairwells and long glass corridors are all warm, all lit and all yours in winter, and they photograph far better than the season deserves.
Thermals under everything, a coat you love for between frames, boots with grip.
Red hands and ears inside ten minutes, ice on steps, salt marks on a dark hem.
Stone frontages after snowfall, atriums, and an arch with snow blowing through it.
Anytime. Winter has room, and we chase the snow when it falls.
Nobody is going to ask you to hold a diploma and smile at nothing
The reason most graduation photos look the same is that most graduation photos are taken in a queue, in a hall, with four seconds each. Stand there, hold this, look here, next. Under those conditions nobody on earth looks like themselves.
So we do not pose you. We give you something to do and then photograph the half second after you have stopped thinking about the camera. Scroll on, and the three rows below will move with you.
Placeholder frames. Replace with your own graduation work before launch.
The ones we actually use
- Walk to that door and tell me what you were doing in there at three in the morning.
- Throw the cap. Badly. Now do it again and actually look up at it this time.
- Tell your mum one thing about this place she never knew. Watch her face, not mine.
- Hold the diploma like it is a normal object and not a hot plate.
- Walk away down the path and look back on three.
- Roommates: line up in the order you moved in, and argue about who was worst.
- Stand still for ten seconds and think about the first week you were here.
Small things that do the heavy lifting
- Weight on your back foot. It lengthens everything and it looks relaxed.
- Chin forward, then slightly down. Feels ridiculous, fixes almost everything.
- Open the gown slightly at the front so you have a shape rather than a rectangle.
- Hands are the giveaway. Give them a job: the diploma, a pocket, the edge of the gown.
- Cap level, a finger width above the eyebrows, pinned. Check it in every reflection you pass.
- Keep moving between frames. Stillness is where self consciousness lives.
- The frame we keep is almost always the half second after the laugh, not the laugh.
Every prompt on this page has a version that works for your height, your mobility, your knees and the parts of yourself you would rather not think about while being photographed. Tell your photographer what you do not like about photos of yourself before we start, not after you see them. We will build the whole session around it and you will never know we did.
The gown hides almost everything, so spend it on the edges
This is the one session where most of your outfit is invisible. A gown covers the torso, the arms and the middle of everything, and it reveals exactly three things: your collar or neckline, roughly a hand span of hemline at the bottom, and your shoes. Put the effort there.
Then plan the second half. Most sessions take the gown off partway through, and that is when a full outfit actually gets photographed. Two looks in one hour, and only one of them needs a plan for wind.
Southern Ontario light is warm and green for most of the year, and academic black is a strong, flat colour, so anything that shows should either sit quietly next to it or contrast with it deliberately. Cream, oat, camel, olive, charcoal, deep green, burgundy and honest denim all work. So does one incredible red coat, if that is what you own.
Under the gown
- The collar or neckline is the whole story. A clean shirt collar, a simple neckline, or bare shoulders all read well. Busy prints at the throat do not.
- Keep the neckline clear of the hood and the stole. Anything high or ruffled fights them and loses.
- A hemline that finishes near or just above the gown looks intentional. One that hangs well below it looks like an accident.
- Shoes are in more frames than you think, because we shoot on steps and lawns. Choose them before you choose anything else.
- Comfort under the gown, always. It is hot in June and thin in November, and nobody sees the middle.
- Jewellery that means something, kept simple. Small pieces read; large pieces compete with the hood colours.
- Nothing that needs constant adjusting. You will be walking, sitting on steps and raising your arms.
- If your school specifies dress requirements for the ceremony, follow those first. They win over anything on this list.
The look without it
- This is the half of the session that looks like your actual life, so dress like the version of you on a good day.
- One layer you can take off doubles the number of looks for no extra time.
- Texture beats pattern on camera: linen, ribbed knit, suede, wool, leather, good denim.
- Fit at the shoulder is the only fit that matters. Everything else can be tailored later.
- A coat that is genuinely good. In three of our four seasons it is in every single frame.
- Haircut five to seven days before, never the day before. Tidy the beard line yourself.
- Iron it. Cameras find creases that mirrors politely ignore.
- Bring both pairs of shoes: the ones you can cross a campus in and the ones for standing still.
What to skip
- Big logos and slogans. They date the photo to the exact year, and this one is supposed to last.
- Neon and hot fluorescents. They throw coloured light straight up onto your face.
- Tight repeating patterns, thin stripes and small checks. They shimmer on camera.
- Brand new shoes. Campuses are large and blisters are loud.
- Sunglasses on faces. Great on a head, terrible in a portrait.
- Anything strapless that needs a hand on it. You will be raising both arms for the cap toss.
Outfit changes
Coming out of a gown is the easiest outfit change in photography, because you are already wearing the second look underneath it. A full change into something different is a bigger ask and depends on the package, the location and whether there is anywhere to change.
Ask your photographer when you book, not on the day. If there is time, pack the second look in a bag somebody else is carrying, and choose it so the two halves are different enough to be worth the ten minutes it costs us.
Take whichever list is useful to you and ignore the other one entirely. Some of the best graduation sessions we have shot were a suit, a sari, a ribbon skirt, a hijab chosen to sit with the hood colours, or the jeans and boots that person wore every single day of the degree. Wear the thing you feel most like yourself in. That reads in a photograph and nothing else does.
The hour matters more than the place
Every session we can control is booked backwards from sunset. Not from your calendar, from the sun. Give the same building to two photographers an hour apart and you get two completely different sets of photographs, and only one of them is the one you wanted.
Convocation day is the exception, because the ceremony owns the clock. When that happens we change the location instead of the hour, which is why the shade and cover options on this page matter so much. Here is what each hour actually gives you, and how we shoot it.
Sunrise
The hour nobody booksCool, clean and completely empty. The busiest quad on campus belongs entirely to you at six in the morning, the light comes in low from the opposite side of the sky to the evening, and there is not a single person walking through the back of your frame.
The cost is the alarm clock. The reward is an empty landmark building, a gown that is not soaked through by heat, and being home with the day still ahead of you.
Quiet, cool, private. Reflective rather than celebratory.
Backlit into mist, long lenses, empty architecture, plenty of negative space.
Popular campuses in June, hot days, and anyone who hates an audience.
Midday
The hour convocation usually hands youOverhead sun puts shadows under your eyes, blows out a white shirt and makes a black gown read as a hole. It is the one hour we would talk you out of, and it is also the exact hour most ceremonies finish, so we plan for it rather than complain about it.
The fix is shade with a view of open sky: under an arch, a colonnade, the north face of a building, a deep doorway, an atrium. Even light, no squinting, and the background goes darker than you do, which is exactly what you want.
Bright, contrasty, honest. Documentary rather than dreamy.
Open shade, arches and cloisters, and shadow as a deliberate graphic element.
Convocation day, winter, and schedules that genuinely cannot move.
Overcast
A softbox the size of the skyGrey days are the secret weapon and the reason we rarely reschedule for cloud. A full overcast sky is a giant diffuser: even light, no squinting, no harsh shadow, skin that looks like skin, and the colours in a hood going deep and saturated instead of washing out.
The one adjustment is the background. A white sky is a hole in the photograph, so we tilt down, put a building or a treeline behind you, and keep the frame full.
Soft, even, calm. Regalia colours read richer than they do in sun.
Closer crops, fuller frames, architecture behind you instead of open sky.
Steps and glass, the arboretum, groups, and anyone nervous about squinting.
Golden hour
The last sixty minutes before sunsetThis is the one people mean when they say they want that warm, glowing, slightly unreal look. The sun sits low enough to come through the air sideways, which warms it, softens it, and lights up the edge of a gown and the loose hair around a cap.
We put the sun behind you and expose for your face, so you get a rim of gold around the shoulders and no squinting at all. Then we find something bright to bounce it back: pale stone, a glass frontage, a light path, a wall. Long lens, wide open, the campus behind you melted to colour.
It moves fast. Golden hour is genuinely about forty usable minutes, so we are at the location well before it starts, and we do not stop to cross campus in the middle of it.
Warm, glowing, cinematic. The look almost everybody asks for by name.
Backlight and rim light, natural bounce off stone, long lens wide open, flare on purpose.
The green, open lawns, tree lined paths, anywhere with a clear western sky.
Arriving late. Forty minutes is the entire window and it does not wait.
Blue hour
Fifteen to thirty minutes after the sun is goneEveryone packs up at sunset and misses the best twenty minutes of the evening. The sky goes deep and even, lit windows and lamps come on warm, and the contrast between cool sky and warm light is the most cinematic thing available to us for free.
We add one small off camera flash, low power, just enough to separate you from the dusk. This is where downtown and lit campus architecture earn their reputation, and where the frames that look like a film still tend to come from.
Cool, quiet, grown up. The end of something rather than the celebration of it.
One small flash, slow shutter, warm windows and wet pavement working for us.
Main streets, lit atriums, the second half of the session, dinner afterwards.
After dark
When the only light left is the light we chooseFull dark is not a limitation, it is total control. Lit windows, a lamp post, a string of patio bulbs, a single flash through a doorway. Nothing in the frame is accidental because we put every source of light in it on purpose.
These are usually the last five or six photographs of the evening and they are frequently somebody’s favourite, because they look nothing like any other graduation photo that person has ever been sent.
Bold, private, cinematic. High contrast and deliberate.
Off camera flash, practical lights in frame, tighter crops, deep shadow.
Winter sessions that finish early, and anyone who wants something different.
Book the hour first. Then choose the place that hour flatters.
Sunset in Southern Ontario moves by about three hours between June and December, so the same session starts at half past eight in June and quarter past four in December. When you enquire, tell us the month and the campus and we will tell you what time you are actually free that evening.
Your biggest ally, literally
Whoever is holding the camera decides what survives from that afternoon. That is true whether it is one of ours, the official photographer at the ceremony, or your cousin with a hand me down body and a lot of enthusiasm. Either way, the single highest return action available to you is talking to them properly before the day.
Tell them the feeling you want. Not the shot list, the feeling. Warm and golden and celebratory, or quiet and grey and reflective, or bold and dark and cinematic. Those three sentences change lens choice, hour, location and edit, and most people never say any of them out loud.
Then look at their work in full. Not the greatest hits on a grid, an entire gallery from one session, start to finish. A highlights reel tells you they can get four good frames. A full gallery tells you whether the whole hour holds up, which is the thing you are actually buying.
At Sunday Media you are working with a small team of seasoned photographers, which is deliberate. Small means the person you speak to is the person who shows up, they remember the conversation, and they have shot enough Southern Ontario campuses to know where the sun lands on that wall in June before anyone gets in a car.
Your campus and your list
The school, the program, the three buildings that matter to you, and the group list with names and relationships. Ten to fifteen inspiration images with one line on each helps too. Not to copy, to calibrate. It is much faster than describing a mood in words.
What you dislike in photos of yourself
A side, teeth, a height gap, a scar, a hard year. Say it early. It is not vanity, it is direction, and it changes angle, lens and lighting from the very first frame instead of the last.
The questions worth asking
- Who is actually shooting my session, and can I see a full gallery of theirs.
- What time do we start, and what time does the light end that day.
- How many locations fit in the time I have booked.
- What is the plan if it rains, and does it cost anything to move.
- How many family and friend groups can we fit, realistically.
- When do sneak peeks and the full gallery arrive.
The day before
Almost everything that goes wrong on a graduation shoot was decided the night before, and almost all of it involves a gown that came out of a bag twenty minutes too late. Twenty minutes of preparation buys you an afternoon where the only thing left to do is enjoy it.
The night before
The day of
Eat a real meal, leave earlier than feels necessary, and hand the logistics to us the moment you arrive. Here is the whole list.
Shoot day checklist
You did it. Now the good part.
The gown is back over an arm, your face aches slightly from laughing at your own father, and the whole thing was far less painful than you had quietly braced for. This is the sweet stretch of pre delivery excitement, so go and enjoy it: dinner with everyone, the walk back across campus, the last drive out of that parking lot.
Then keep an eye on your email and whichever channel we have been messaging you on. Your photographer will be in touch, and the first thing to arrive is always the fun one.
Sneak peeks
A small handful of edited frames from the session, sent straight to you. Enough to post, enough to send to the family group chat, and enough to hold everyone over while the rest is worked on properly.
The full gallery
The complete edited set, delivered to your private gallery on our website. Exact timing varies with the package you booked and the season, and your photographer will tell you the date to expect.
Your access code
A private code arrives with the delivery message. It is the key to your gallery, so treat it like a house key rather than a hashtag, even when six relatives ask for it at once.
How to open your photos
Your gallery is private and it lives on our website. Everything you need is in the delivery message: a link, and an access code that looks something like this.
Please do not share your access code with anyone.
It is the only thing standing between your photographs and whoever it gets forwarded to, and graduation galleries get forwarded more than any other kind we deliver. If you want family to see the gallery, tell us and we will arrange proper sharing. If you think the code has gone somewhere it should not have, message us and we will reset it the same day.
Fun tutorial: take our easy to use gallery for a spin before your own photos arrive. It is built in house, and the code above is a working demo key. Tap the access code to copy it, then use it on the Your Gallery page.
Go to our website
Open sundaymedia.ca on any device. Phone is fine for looking, a laptop is better for downloading.
Open the menu and choose My Gallery
It is in the main navigation at the top of every page.
Type in your access code
Exactly as it was sent, capitals included. That opens your session and nobody else’s.
Download, request edits, or order an album
Inside the gallery you can download the full resolution files, ask for edits on specific frames, and request a printed album made from the set. If something is missing or a file will not open, message us and we will sort it out.
You have read the whole thing. That probably means you have already decided.
Tell us the school, the month and roughly how many people are coming, and we will handle the hour, the route, the permissions and the plan for the weather. All that is left for you is getting the gown out of the bag.
Every fee is discussed before payment. Travel, insurance and any campus permit or ticket costs are agreed in writing before the binding contract, so nothing on your invoice is ever a surprise.
GraduationGraduationNice one. Want this list to go?
You just checked your first box. We can hand you the whole list as a file, so it lives on your phone instead of in a browser tab you will lose by Thursday.