There are two ways to do the club pictures. You can either arrange for Victor O'neill to come in and take the pictures, or you can take them yourself. In the past I always had the staff take pictures on their own and use those. However, this year Victor O'neill came in and took them for us over the span of 3 days. I personally think that this was much easier to deal with and prevented a lot of stress.
HOW TO
I would start planning for the club pictures really early in the year (soon after first deadline is over). This way there is no confusion and you can plan out the pages and then submit the pages whenever you need to in order to meet the deadline requirements. First, you need to send an email to all of the club sponsors. Look in the book from last year and email those sponsors as well as any new sponsors that you are aware of. In the email, you have to state that club pictures for the yearbook are coming up soon. Ask them to reply to you with a rough estimate of the number of people in their club and if they would like a club picture in the yearbook. Tell them that a schedule will be released in the next few weeks with when the club pictures are. After this, you need to go to the main office and see what mornings the gym is available to use to take pictures. I think it works better to take the pictures in the morning than after school because more people will attend. However, if you can get the gym for the afternoon one day do that as well. I would start off by reserving the gym for 3 or 4 times (morning or afternoon, whichever is open) preferably the same days or the same week. Once you have the days, you have to make a schedule with the times for each club. I would suggest doing all of the big clubs on the same day because chances are people are in multiple of those and it is better to have one stressful day than have all of the days be stressful. Give smaller clubs 5 minute intervals and big clubs 10 minute intervals.
When the time comes to take the pictures, when the clubs arrive they need to be organized so that they stand in order from tallest to shortest with officers in the back of the line. It is important to be loud and assertive so that they listen and so that they follow directions to make it go as fast as possible. When they are all in line, have the tallest people stand in the top row and then file down from there. Put the officers in the front row if applicable. When the picture has been taken they need to stay in the rows and the places that they are in. You need to have multiple clipboards prepared where you write the row number and the club. Give one to the first person FROM THE LEFT in each row and have them write their full name, no nicknames, and pass the clipboards down. There needs to be someone standing on the other side to collect the clipboards. Once they write their names tell them that they can leave.
If you are taking the pictures, make sure to use a tripod and the same camera with the same settings for all of the pictures. If you have Victor O'neill taking the pictures make sure that you get them on a flash drive from them the day of so that you do not have to wait to get them and you can upload them as soon as possible to the spread.
When the time comes to take the pictures, when the clubs arrive they need to be organized so that they stand in order from tallest to shortest with officers in the back of the line. It is important to be loud and assertive so that they listen and so that they follow directions to make it go as fast as possible. When they are all in line, have the tallest people stand in the top row and then file down from there. Put the officers in the front row if applicable. When the picture has been taken they need to stay in the rows and the places that they are in. You need to have multiple clipboards prepared where you write the row number and the club. Give one to the first person FROM THE LEFT in each row and have them write their full name, no nicknames, and pass the clipboards down. There needs to be someone standing on the other side to collect the clipboards. Once they write their names tell them that they can leave.
If you are taking the pictures, make sure to use a tripod and the same camera with the same settings for all of the pictures. If you have Victor O'neill taking the pictures make sure that you get them on a flash drive from them the day of so that you do not have to wait to get them and you can upload them as soon as possible to the spread.
OTHER TIPS
Regardless of how you are having the pictures taken, you have to make sure that all of the yerds there with clipboards or helping to get groups organized are assertive and can talk loud. It is important that everyone can hear you and know what is going on. If people are in multiple clubs that have pictures on the same day, assure them that they can still be in both pictures, even if they are scheduled for the same time (if there are two stations set up to take the pictures).