Composite Pictures

My cheap mother actually liked school pictures, and she would usually shell out some money for the cheapest package, usually while bitching about the price. Those were the days before digital cameras, scanners, and digital picture printing services made it easy to steal pictures. To protect their livelihoods, photographers tend to mark easily copied proofs, making them less desirable to copy. This is not foolproof.

As an undergraduate, I had a formal photo taken for a school organization composite. The photographer, not knowing how insanely cheap my mother is, sent her some proofs with a package order form. This particular anti-theft mechanism was very good as there was a sticky substance on the proofs so that the proofs were easy to see, but copying those proofs produced pictures that looked badly scratched. This was no deterrent as my cheap mother had no problem making several blown-up, scratched copies and proudly displaying them in the house and dispersing to relatives.