When students get to their senior year, capturing the memories of their time in high school is a natural desire. One timeless tradition comes in the form of formal senior portraits in the yearbook, which can easily be taken at Now and Forever Studios, a family-run business in Los Gatos.
Tara Higgins, the studio manager at Now and Forever Studios, said that since it was established in 2007, Now and Forever has been providing portrait services for local students. In 2011, Saratoga joined many other schools like Homestead and Leigh in getting senior portraits from them instead of Pro Image Studios, the school’s previous senior portrait provider.
According to its Facebook page, Now and Forever Studios was founded by eight members of the Haydn family.
Higgins said the family bought a property in Los Gatos and renovated it to make it more suitable for the business. They quickly started hiring family friends and others to help run it.
They mainly found business by emailing schools and asking them if they’d like senior portraits.
“When the studio started gaining traction in 2011, we hired a sales rep to increase our popularity among the community and expand our work,” Higgins said.
The studio has grown to a large-scale successful business that provides for 35 schools in the Bay Area. However, it still uses the original studio that the founders renovated almost two decades ago in Los Gatos.
Senior Orion Tamas King had a positive experience when he took his senior portrait in late November.
“The experience was very quick and fluid,” he said. “I booked a session where I got photos with formal wear and photos with my graduation gown. Overall it was very quick, and the images were very high quality. Though everything was rather pricey, it was definitely worth it for me.”
According to its website, Now and Forever Studios offers specialized or custom sessions for customers who may want additional services. For example, they offer an additional photo shoot outdoors within the studio’s property. They also have a deluxe session, which adds an extra session on top of the normal photos, for people who want extra photos in either a different setting or with someone else.
It’s also important to note that prices typically include only the actual photo session. To get digital or print copies of the photos, it can cost between $78 and $800, depending on the package.
SHS moved from Pro Image Studios in San Jose to using Now and Forever Studios mainly because the latter was much closer and more convenient for students. The transition was smooth and there were no major changes for the yearbook staff and others involved with senior photos, according to a Falcon story published in 2011.
“We just want to capture all these students’ smiles,” Higgins said. “High school memories last forever and are something you’ll want to look back on.”
In addition to senior portraits and graduation photo packages, Higgins said Now and Forever also provides sports photo sessions where photographers take images of subjects with an aspect from the sport like a ball or other piece of equipment in it. The studio has sessions for many different sports like football, basketball and wrestling. It even has sessions for portraits with pets or cars.
While every senior is required to use the senior portrait service at Now and Forever Studios for the yearbook (a dozen or more seniors opt out of taking the photo every year and don’t appear in the yearbook), the school likes the consistency and convenience the service offers seniors, and it’s a tradition that won’t change anytime soon.