Jewel Images Portrait Studio

She’s as good as they get… Her work of our son Preston over the last year (3 sessions total) is nothing short of outstanding… Thanks J…
PS: Her restoration of an old pic of my son and I was beyond belief… The photo was over 25 years old and she simply worked magic on it…

I took a class with Julia in newborn photography so I watched her work with several clients and she is AMAZING. She is so good with the babies and moms it was just fantastic.
Her pricing is also very reasonable for the quality of final product.
I am not a long writer so that is all I will say!
Stuart

I have had the wonderful opportunity to be photographed by Julia of Jewel Images on two occasions now, and both experiences were absolutely first class from beginning to end. I visited her beautiful studio in the Pearl District in Portland when she was located there, and she created some gorgeous business headshots of me. At a time when I felt very insecure about my appearance, she made me look and feel confident and beautiful. There were, of course, many photographers I could have picked who were cheaper, but the value you receive when you work with a professional who knows what she is doing behind the camera and can bring out the very best in her subjects is absolutely priceless. After that experience, I knew I couldn’t trust my family portraits to anyone else, so even though she had relocated to Bend, Oregon, I loaded my family up into the car a few months ago and we made the trip from our home in Seattle to Bend so that she could create our family portraits for us. We couldn’t be more thrilled with how they came out. We sent Christmas cards this year featuring the portraits, and received so many compliments on the beautiful images Julia created for us. I can’t recommend Jewel Images highly enough — Julia is the only photographer I would trust with my family’s memories.

I have to say, I’m surprised at the PPs post. My experience with Jewel Images was anything but negative. She is not inexpensive, true, but she is an award-​winning photographer and if you want inexpensive, you can take pictures yourself, find a friend to do it or go to Sears; all viable options when you want a bargain.
It’s true that there is a time limit on how long pictures will be available but I found that time limit to be plenty and in fact, helpful, because without a time limit, it’s too easy to allow life to get in the way and a year passes and I already need new pictures before I’ve chosen the old ones! I did ask about the digital proofs so that I could forward to my family and she explained to me that a lot of people used digital proofs as a way to avoid paying for pictures. That’s unfortunate because, as an artist, she deserves to get paid and quite frankly, when people think it’s ok to steal, it affects the rest of us.
I’ve had three sessions with Julia and I’m overdue for a 4^th. The first was approximately 5 years ago; we had a great time and she took some amazing black and whites of my baby and me that hang in our family room and never fail to draw compliments and «Who did those?». The second session was much more chaotic; our daughter’s first birthday. Combine a 1 year old with two sets of doting grandparents and a photographer and you’re bound to have excitement. Julia did fabulously and my mother-​in-​law hired her shortly after to take pictures of some of her grown grandchildren. We have some once in a lifetime shots from that session that make my heart melt. Our third session was our first in-​studio session and included a fickle 2 year old who started out not wanting to cooperate for pictures at all! Julia woo’ed her by taking some adorable pictures with her favorite lovey and even got some rare pictures of my husband and me together (one of us is usually on the other side of the camera so couples pics are hard to find!). Pictures from that session adorn our formal living room and look entirely elegant.

(Update 04-​16-​2013)
It’s not often that I go back and look at a review and wonder if I got it right or did I just experience a business on a bad day, a new day, or just a skewed view day of my own. It’s been 3 years since the original review and I’m opening this review up for revision because businesses change and so do customer experiences. Expect an update soon.
(Originally written in ⁰⁶⁄₂₀₁₁)
Think twice before choosing this very expensive boutique studio.
Jewel Images presents beautiful portraits and images on their website & facebook pages, but after my family session I started to feel like the studio cares more about their personal portfolio/​advertising photos than any photo/​print that they will produce for you (the customer).
I am embarrassed at how much we put in towards the sitting fee (photoshoot), purchasing of prints (60 dollars each @ 5×7 sizing). and the final purchase of negatives (5 in total).
We had specifically hired Jewel Images to produce a few family photos and potentially a larger canvas printed photo to hang on our wall. Unfortunately — we purchased negatives from her that are so poorly photoshopped that when you enlarge them in any way — you can literally see the lines she hand drew with various photoshop tools. I recently printed one for my parents in a 5×7 format and the flaws are visible.
Do not Expect:
To get time to really think about what images you want. Do not expect those images to be accurately displayed in the same way they will print. We got an ultimatum saying that if we didn’t purchase something in our allotted viewing time — she would delete everything or charge us a fee to come back in and look again. She won’t give you proofs, of any kind, not even with a digital water mark. You can pay her a large fee to have access online, but that money doesn’t forward to your purchase. So you’re really forced to buy right then and there.
You can expect:
To pay around 60 dollars a print (even for a 5×5)
Don’t expect any proofs unless you spend upwards of $ 800 (can’t remember the actual price cut-​off) & then you can pay for them.
Digital negatives — 150 a pop
This isn’t a photographer — this is a glorified digital point and click gal with amazing photoshop talents — WHEN SHE CHOOSES TO USE THEM (and so far I’ve only seen those talents used on her own portfolio).
Meh. This whole experienced really sucked.