taking a picture
On top of everything else I have to do this week, I was informed that I was to take a family photo of my daughter and me for the wall. So be it. I leave Sunday morning for a haircut and some pictures to find out that nothing is even open. I wanted to try to avoid the crowds and be as quick as possible, but that is never the case, especially on Sunday.
It is 10am and the usual haircutting place is closed, so I move on to Wal-mart. Sariah starts throwing a fit, because she enjoys getting her hair cut and doesn’t understand. The place inside Wal-mart just opened, but we still have to wait behind two other people with only one hair-dresser.
I go to check out the portrait studio which says closed until noon. It appears to be open for only four hours on Sunday- the one day most everyone has off from work. Go figure. We go back to the stylist and Sariah gets her hair cut.
Now it is 11am and we pop over to Target where their portrait studio just opened. There is absolutely no one around, so I scan the area and take a look at the appointment book sitting before me. There is an appointment for 11am and again at 1pm, but nothing in-between, so I continue to wait.
Finally someone emerges from the back room and asks if she could help me. I ask if she could squeeze me in sometime today and she replies that they are booked solid, but I can make an appointment. Um, that’s not what the book says, but I didn’t have an appointment, so I will be nice.
She asks when I would like to have my appointment. Maybe next week, she suggests. I reply the sooner the better. If I wanted next week, would I be here today? Then she asks which day this week. I say well if today is booked, then how about tomorrow. I also ask if we could come back in today if there’s a cancellation and she says they don’t do that.
We go into making the appointment. She looks me up and down and quite coldly states, “We suggest that you wear bold solid colors for the pictures.” “In fact,” she says, “we like something like that,” points to the only picture on the wall I really didn’t like and where the whole family is wearing solid white. “Of course, if you show up in something else, we won’t kick you out or make you go home and change,” with a forced laugh.
I do realize that stripes are usually not good for picture taking, but if they can’t work around that, how professional are they? Also, it’s one thing to suggest solids and then something else to suggest all white. Do they not know how to play with light?
Going on with the scheduling she wants to know who will be in the shoot. Well, duh, the two of us who are here right now and wanted the picture taken. She asks three different times before she was through. I don’t know why something like that is so hard to understand. She also wanted to know if we were bringing in any props. Do they not have their own? I said no and she asks again if I am sure. “Well, yes unless you will let me bring my dog in, because she is part of the family too.” “Oh, no, we can’t do that here.” Why, but of course, so stop asking me!
We finish with the scheduling and she says that if we decide to cancel to call, but doesn’t give me a phone number. Don’t you think if I had a phone number I would have called in the first place to make an appointment? I know I could look it up, but don’t they have business cards and the only number I found when looking up was the store’s main number. There was no phone number or hours for the studio.
We arrive back home around noon. In all that time it took to schedule an appointment, she could have shot the pictures and been done with it. Slightly frustrated, as is the norm, I decided to try my own family portraits. I do not have a tri-pod and my LCD screen is busted, but I still made do. Sariah wasn’t too cooperative and we were both hot and tired by this time. I took some shots in a couple different areas outside, and then moved indoors. Of course, none of those were good enough for the wall according to some, so I had to keep my appointment.
The following day, Monday, we had a noon appointment at Target. We arrived five minutes early and again no one was around. Their portfolio was out this time and so I leafed through it while waiting not overly impressed. A lady comes out of the back room with a family and the family leaves. I thought, how odd, aren’t they going to look at their pictures on the computer here. The lady comes over and says, “oh, are you my noon?” Um, no one else is around, we’ve been here for a while, so I would have to say yes. And then she says, she will be right with me.
She goes over to the computer and is messing with the other family’s pictures. She apologizes for “running late, but that toddler was fussing and it was just taking forever.” Um, is that professional to tell a client that? She talks to me with her back turned because she is still fiddling on the computer and asks me if it is going to be just the little girl in the shoot. I say, no, it is going to be both of us. I wonder if maybe she can’t read, because didn’t I just go over that the day before while scheduling?
She says she can multi-task and runs to the back room as my daughter and I sit and wait. The lady reappears and asks if it is going to be the two of us in the picture again. I thought we just covered that. She asks if I want any singles and I say no. She asks if I am sure. If I wasn’t sure, I would say so, but when a definite no comes out several times, wouldn’t you say that is sure?
She asks what the pictures are for and then starts guessing. I say no, no, no, just a family update. She bends down into Sariah’s face and asks “are these birthday pictures? Is it your birthday?” I already said no, but go ask the child, that makes sense. It was also slightly creepy the way she was talking to her.
The family returns and the photographer asked them if they can wait a while longer while she shoots me. It won’t take as long, because she shot 100 pictures of them and still needs some more time to go through those. I think about 100 pictures and she blames the toddler for taking too long, whatever. So the family leaves to have lunch.
It is finally our turn after waiting twenty minutes. We go into the back room and walk onto a big white sheet. There are no backgrounds to choose from and no props. The photographer asks once again, “just the two of you? You don’t want any of her by herself or just you?” How many times is she going to ask that? I know what I want and made it perfectly clear, so shut up already.
She snapped maybe a dozen total, which is more than enough, but I am still thinking about the 100 she took of the people before us. Some of the shots I thought were a bit ridiculous and not at all what I wanted. I’m not saying they were bad, just not at all what was wanted. A picture of only our hands while I have very noticeably chipped polish or one with my four year old daughter standing back to back with me looked and felt pointless. In fact, she had to explain her reasoning behind the picture later when she was showing it to me.
We were finished maybe ten minutes later, but she still had to go through the pictures and told us to come back in ten. Right, she has to delete the bad ones, because she’s not a real photographer. We shopped around Target trying not to spend money I don’t have. We took our time and then slowly returned. She was with someone else looking through their pictures and helping them order.
Then the family before us returned as well and we both had to sit and wait. She goes through the pictures on screen with her as the phone rings. She answers it and the one looking at the pictures says she will just scroll through on her own, so then the photographer quickly gets off the phone and rushes back over to the computer.
She explains the packages and what all they entail and I thought she could be telling us both at the same time, but wait, she doesn’t want me to see or know the prices until I see how “darling” the pictures are. Another family comes up and makes an appointment. While they are scheduling, I hear the lady explain all the “rules” and I think, see that is the polite way to say something like that.
The other lady with the family is still looking at pictures and I am finally helped. She shuffles through the pictures in a blur and I’m not sure what I saw. She showed me a picture in Sepia first before showing me the color and then put together some cluster of pictures and was cocky while presenting them. I was not interested in grouped pictures or Sepia and told her.
Then she shows me the package deals and prices. She says this is the regular price, but I can have 20% off, so I would only be paying that much. Is there any reason to the 20%? No. It’s a marketing ploy which is beyond stupid. She says if I purchase the sheets individually then the cluster pictures count as two sheets. It prints out on one, but it counts as two in the pricing. Another stupid marketing ploy?
Also, the prices were all over $100 which is quite ridiculous especially for what I had to put up with plus the quality of everything. I pulled out a coupon I printed from online and said this is what I want. A package deal for only $7.99 and I could tell she was not happy with that. She said, “Fine, pick a picture.” I said, “I would like to see them, please.” I tried looking at them and asking her opinion, but now she was very standoffish. I chose the best pose she had for the wall, but was pretty unsure about any of them. They were good pictures, but not for what I was taking them for.
The coupon says I receive 24 wallets, 6 billfolds, plus others. She says that I cannot have the billfolds and only 16 wallets. What?! Well, they cannot do the billfolds because they are digital; only film studios have the equipment or something to print them. If they don’t have them, then why state it on the coupon? Other Target studios have film and they can do them. So not every Target studio offers the same even though they are a big multi-media corporation?! I ask if I could have more wallets then to compensate the lack of the billfolds. She rolls her eyes and says, “Fine, you will now have 24 wallets.” Um, that’s what the coupon said to begin with, but I just wanted out of there. She makes the transaction on the computer hurriedly and I try to watch to make sure I am not getting gypped some other way.
I pay for my order while smiling to see that it is not being returned. She hands me the receipt and before letting go, she tells me that I NEED this paper when I come back to pick up the prints or else I cannot get them. She also tells me when the pictures will be back and I can only pick them up between 3:30pm and 6:30pm. That is alright and I turn to leave, then she asks me when I will be by to pick up my pictures. I thought she just told me, but she wants a more specific time. I have to make another appointment just to pick up?? I ask if it is really necessary because I have no idea what I will be doing that day. Some people live day to day. “Well, we want to make sure they are here when you come.” They should be here when I come on that specific day within those three hours as she told me, shouldn’t it?
I finally leave an hour and 25 minutes after my scheduled appointment time completely dissatisfied, so I went on to Wal-mart just to check. The photographer was there and greeted me politely. I asked if she had time to squeeze us in for a picture and she did. My experience there was completely different than at Target and we finished from shooting to payment in 15 minutes and much more satisfied.
She listened to what I wanted, didn’t ask the same questions over and over and treated me like an equal. I generally try to avoid Wal-mart for so many reasons, but now their portrait studio will be something else. As far as Target, no matter how well their photos turn out, it is not worth the headache of everything else and I will let people know.
