It's that time of year, when freshly scrubbed students across the country don their best duds in hopes of generating the perfect school picture.

This week, children streamed in and out of a makeshift studio at Miramar Ranch Elementary School in Scripps Ranch, where photographers and volunteers spritzed hair, tilted heads just so, and encouraged grins with the obligatory, "Say cheese."

Clayton Cassidy practiced his smile in the bathroom mirror in preparation for his kindergarten portrait. He bravely put aside his aversion to buttons and agreed to a freshly pressed red plaid dress shirt before heading off to school - his mother and her brush right behind him.

"This is the first time in four years he's worn a collared shirt," said Sabrina Cassidy. "He hates buttons, but he wanted to look nice for picture day. He was concerned about looking handsome."

School picture day doesn't always turn out as planned. But good or bad, the results will undoubtedly linger for generations and eventually bring back a flood of memories.

"It is a rite of passage, but things always go wrong," said Lynn Plourde, a children's book author who used the subject for the backdrop of her book, "School Picture Day," published in 2002.

"Everything your mother did when you left for school in the morning will have been messed up, there will be missing teeth, or the class clown will be doing rabbit ears behind someone in the group picture," said Plourde, of Winthrop, Maine, who has published 14 children's books.

The tradition of school pictures began not long after the advent of photography, with many photos dating to the 1880s and before. Of course, technology, fashions and hair styles have all evolved since then.

But these days, the school portrait is no longer the only image that records a student's life. The advent of personal cameras, digital photography, camera phones and computers means there are more images of this generation than any before it.

"I don't think school pictures have much meaning anymore," said Eric Margolis, an Arizona State University education professor who studies and writes about old school photos.

"We photograph ourselves so many times and in so many ways. For children in turn-of-the-century America, this documentation may have been their only portrait."

Some of the earliest school photographs start with group shots of a class, club or athletic team and go on to include individual portraits and glimpses of school life.

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