The Clear Lake Talon yearbook presales are open starting at $90. The students in the yearbook department have been working since before school started to get this year’s book ready.

Yearbook is an active part of life at Lake. Photographers cover every event, working for hours in all conditions to get the shots they need.

They attend sports games, practices, club meetings, school dances and more, unseen and unheard, until their evidence of the fun circulates the school’s TV systems.

The photographs may look amazing, but the job itself isn’t as glamorous.

“The photographers get charged at by sports players,” Morgan Rast, a page editor of the yearbook, said. “They almost get hit by balls—it’s a dangerous game.”

According to staff, no one has ever actually been injured, despite the close calls. Other problems also keep the editing staff on their toes.

“We lost a folder full of pictures,” Rast said. “We have no idea where they are, and they were all pictures for one specific page that was due on the twenty-ninth of last month.”

The staff are required to meet deadlines to stay on schedule with the publication of the yearbook.

“We struggle with deadlines. COVID is a big issue because of quarantining,” Rast said. “We’re all working very closely in that class. If I get quarantined, then everybody that I’m around gets quarantined.”

Being an editor in the yearbook program requires you to be able to handle stressful situations.

“As an editor, I have to keep everybody on their deadlines as well as meet my own and so it’s a lot of stress,” Rast said. “If you can’t handle stress, it’s not a great thing for you.”

Although the workload can be a lot for one person to handle, nobody is alone in this class. The team is made up of photographers and page designers under the supervision of page editors Rebecca Hench and Morgan Rast, and photography editors Tabby Ubernosky and Nicole Borrome.

“[Page editors] answer questions,” Rast said when talking about her page designers. “[Page designers] design the pages.”

The best time to buy your copy of the Talon would be when preorders start.

“At the beginning of the year, we usually have like a five-dollar discount,” Rast said. “ As we get closer to publishing, prices go up… [The deadline] is in January but a lot of times if we have extra you can buy them… but it’s on a first come first serve basis.”

Preorders help fund creation and guarantee you a book when they arrive in May, however, the program also has other ways of raising money.

“We sell business ads. We go talk to businesses [and ask] ‘Hi, would you like to support the yearbook?’” Rast said. “And we have senior ads, which a lot of senior parents reach out for a surprise senior ad.”

“[Yearbook] is a big commitment. Every day you are doing ten different things at once. It’s a high stress job,” Rast said. “That’s what it is—it’s a job.”

If you would like to preorder a yearbook, visit www.balfour.com.