A picture-perfect endeavor

The entrepreneurial spirit is expanding in the art department at Minneapolis Edison High School.

Some bright students and their art and graphic-arts teacher Mark Rizzardi have expanded Edison's homemade-yearbook business to include a student-run photo lab that provides a yearbook photo for only $10 at the northeast Minneapolis school.

The school is disproportionately populated by low-income immigrant kids and others who hail from working-poor families. Last year, only half of 200-plus Edison seniors sat for professionally taken yearbook pictures. The rest just used their student-identification photo.

Rizzardi, who is also the yearbook adviser, saw an opportunity to engage kids from his art classes in hands-on learning through an endeavor that also would teach them about the trade by producing an economical product for which several dozen kids already have put money down.

"I've already orchestrated about eight photo shoots," said freshman Malaysia Barnes, 14, who was helping Bontu Abdissa, 18, before her portrait last week in a storage space converted to a no-frills photo studio. "I try to make the photo subjects feel and pose comfortably, so they look good.

"I also enforce the '10 Things to Know' about preparing for a studio portrait. I'm really learning about photography from Mr. Rizzardi."

As Barnes helped Abdissa prepare for her shoot, seventh-hour class photographers Awil Mohamed, 15, and Jibril Nur, 18, checked out their cameras.

Both plan to study engineering at four-year colleges. They also are exploring art at the intersection of portraits and computer science.

For $10, Edison seniors will get the yearbook shot of their choice produced by the students on classroom equipment. Each kid gets a photo-laden CD to take to a commercial printer. The local Walgreen's on Central Avenue NE. makes various-size prints for as little as $10 for Edison kids.

"The photos look great," said senior Chris Kukowski, 18. Rizzardi said some students will continue to go to professional photographers and that's great.

But the new student-operated photo lab provides a learning opportunity and an attractive product for students who otherwise wouldn't have any pictures shot.

"I was once a starving artist," Rizzardi said. "I have a history of innovation and saving money.

"A typical studio bargain price would be about $50 for a basic sitting, and it can go well over $200. The 'eStudio,' now part of my photo curriculum, allows students in any photo class to take part, as model and photographer. No charge for students in a photo class. Ten bucks for everybody else. For that price they will receive 30 high-resolution images, using a Canon SLR digital camera, which we burn to a CD. Walgreens, for $9.99, they will print an assortment of 46 photographs."

Rizzardi and his students took the plunge into in-house production with community partners after Edison's yearbook publisher started demanding deadlines as early as the fall before graduation and the price for even a basic book shot over $50. Fewer than half the seniors were buying yearbooks.

Rizzardi sells the yearbooks for $25 to $45, depending on how early students sign up. He and the 20-student yearbook staff plunged into their photography, design and layout, using the same Adobe Creative Suite online tools used by professionals.

Frank Miske Jr., the owner of nearby Custom Business Forms, prints the 144-page yearbooks, including color senior pictures, at cost in the spring under the watchful eye of the student editors, who complete the process with his pressmen.

"This is great for the kids," Miske told me a few years ago as we watched pages come off the press. "This is a tough business and we need good workers."

Other business partners who collaborate on Edison's student-operated photo-and-yearbook business include Di's Print Shop, owned by Edison grad Diane Halvorson; the Northeaster Newspaper, and West Photo, all neighborhood businesses.

Neal St. Anthony • 612-673-7144 • nstanthony@startribune.com