The Ten-Dollar Photo Shoot

Every year around Easter, a portrait studio in Fort Worth sends out flyers in the mail for a $10 photo shoot. The $10 includes the sitting fee, a few spring/easter greeting cards, and approximately 8000 copies of your ONE favorite pose. We took the girls last year to see if we could get a cute picture of them together, and we got an okay one. They tried to convince us to buy more poses, but they were way too expensive and we firmly held our ground. Last year I could tell that our photographer was bummed that he didn't make a bigger sale.
This year we got the same flyer in the mail. I decided that since it had worked out decently well for us last year, we would go again to get one good pose of the girls together, in their darling new Easter dresses. Unfortunately Daneel wasn't able to come along because of some schedule conflicts.
I resolved in my mind that I would not pay more than $10 and would walk out of the studio with ONE pose in hand.
The photo shoot went really well. I told the photographer that I was only interested in poses of the girls together because that is what I was going to buy.
She completely ignored my request and replied: Okay. Let me just take a few of them individually so you have a variety to choose from.
By the end of the session we had hit lunch time, and soon to be nap time for Julie. I still had to sit down with the photographer to choose my favorite pose. We sat down at the computer and she promptly tried to sell me one of their larger packages. - Somewhere in the range of $500. I told her that definitely would not work for us and that I just wanted the $10 package that I had come in for.
She moved down to a package somewhere in the $300 range. Julie started screaming.
Again, I told her that I just wanted to choose my pose and get out of there before my child COMPLETELY came undone from a combination of sleep deprivation and starvation.
Our photographer patiently began to show me all the pictures she had taken. She showed them to me in sets of 3 and asked me to pick my favorite out of each one. She seemed completely oblivious to Julie's screams. I was feeling desperate, ready to do anything to get out of there!
I began to wonder why I had attempted to do this without my wonderful husband, who has much more of a backbone than I do.
She sweetly smiled and told me how cute the girls were in all of the pictures. I had to admit that she had captured some very cute poses. I asked her, can I just pick a pose the $10 package and bring my husband back in to see the other poses later?
"No." She replied. "We delete all the pictures as soon as you leave. If you buy a package that has a copy of the CD, that will be your only record of the poses." She acted as if buying ONLY the $10 package was not even an option.
Seriously?! I've got to get out of here to feed my children and get them down for naps.
"Okay," I sighed. "What is the very LEAST amount of money I can spend and get the CD?" Afterall, there were some very cute pictures on there. She told me the amount and it actually sounded fairly reasonable. In addition I would also get some hard copies of a few more favorite poses.
I called Daneel to ask him what he thought. He thought I should walk out of there with one pose and pay $10. I agreed that that had been the plan, but I was feeling so much pressure! And the pictures were so cute! He gave in and agreed that we could spend a little more. It seemed like a pretty good deal.
I quickly confirmed with the photographer, "So if I buy the CD, I'll have all of the poses and can print any of them that I want?"
"Absolutely!" She smiled.
Yes! I got out of there as fast as I possibly could, pictures and CD in hand. I was pretty pleased.
The next day I would upload them to the Wal Mart website and get some 8x10s printed for the grandparents. Problem. Every picture I tried to upload flashed a big, red 'LOW RESOLUTION' sign.
That cannot possibly be. So I called the studio and explained my problem.
"Oh yes," the lady on the line said. "If you want the pictures printed, you have to bring them back to our studio. They're encrypted so that you can't get them printed other places."
I hung up and called the studio headquarters in Tennessee to complain. I felt as though our photographer had been very deceptive, leading us to believe that we could print off anything we wanted as long as we had the CD. She completely failed to mention that we would have to pay their studio prices for any future pictures we would want.
The lady at the other end was very sympathetic, but not at all helpful. She said she was sorry that our photographer had not communicated well with us, but that if they sold the picture CD's they would go out of business. She said that from the cd I could upload pictures to facebook, and that I should be able to get a decent 4x6 print from them, but that was it.
GRRRR... I had a few other ideas of things that might make them go out of business, but I held my tongue. Afterwards I looked up my predicament online and found that I was not the only one who had encountered this problem. A number of other people voiced the exact same complaint - feeling deceived and led to believe that they were getting something they actually weren't.
It wasn't a total loss - we did come out with some adorable photos, which I will post in a following post. But we learned the hard way to always make sure you know exactly what you are getting before you pay! And maybe don't go to Portrait Innovations if you don't like being pressured and overpaying for products.
I would much prefer to stick with pictures done by my sweet friend April, who is genuine and honest, takes great photos, and does not pressure you to overspend your budget!