I will NEVER go back to this studio again. I have a 6 week old and a 22 month old. We arrived 15 minutes early so that I could feed my newborn and be promptly ready for our appointment. They were not as concerned with punctuality because it was not until 45 minutes after our appointment time that they finally came to us and told us they were ready...no apology, no "thanks for waiting." Once they started taking pictures, I knew we were on borrowed time with the limited patience of a toddler and newborn. I had told the photographer how important it was to get a sweet picture of my 2 girls. At one point, he had the camera pointed directly at them and he told my toddler to give her sister a kiss. She leaned in and gave the sweetest hug and I said "oh that's it." He said "no, you need to kiss her." Really? He was more concerned about getting a staged shot than a naturally sweet one. Well, my toddler didn't feel like kissing her, so we got no shot.
After the session was over it was time to pick out the pictures. I asked if we could just purchase a CD with the images, and I was told that they did not do that. This was annoying since their website advertised that you can get a portrait CD. They explained to me that they don't do that anymore and that we can look at our virtual account online and burn our own CD of low resolution pictures. We have always purchased the CD with the high resolution pictures at other places since I like to include professional pictures in family albums that I make on Shutterfly. I will obviously not be able to do this with these pictures. I would have gone somewhere else if I'd known this ahead of time.
Since I could not get a CD I had to look at all the pictures right then with 2 children who were going downhill fast. I wanted to look at all the pictures and just pick out the ones I wanted, but the photographer would not let me do that. He said that we had to start with a package that contained all the pictures ($500+) and take the pictures out one by one. This is an exhaustingly SLOW process. Ten minutes into it and my newborn was screaming. He did not seem to care. He proceeded to tell stories about his birthday and other things to make the process even slower. This may have been part of his strategy for us to purchase more because after we had narrowed the pictures from 60 to 18 poses, I said that I had to go because my children were screaming, and I couldn't hear what he was saying anymore anyways. Because I didn't have more time to narrow down the pictures, I ended up spending about $300 for way more pictures than I will ever need and no CD.
3 1/2 hours after our appointment time, we finally walked out of the studio. Ridiculous!! read more