Portrait Innovations

I really don’t get the bad reviews about this place, we had a great time. AMANDA M helped us and did a great job.
We took our two year old for some Easter photos, Amanda kept our son laughing and happy the whole time. She really works well with kids and was able to keep him busy for some great shots.
They have more props than our normal photog, and fresh backgrounds for every season.
The packages they offer were all reasonably priced, and included two Cd’s with the photo rights. So I can do what I want later too.
I think the other people may have never been to a high dollar photog, this is a different experience, but perfect for quick family pictures with lots of poses and immediate prints.
The only thing I would recommend is this location could use a good cleaning, the carpets were filthy, but since Amanda did such an awesome job I am still giving them 5 stars.

Portrait Innovations is wrong on a few levels —
1. The pictures taken were rushed AND we were rushed through picking which photos we wanted printed that day.
2. I had to ask twice to get an answer on how much it would be to get a CD with all the pictures taken that day. (First answer was «We’ll get to that.»)
3. When I received an answer, it was with a caveat — and this is the kicker — To get the CD itself we had to spend $ 70.00. Not bad, admittedly. The caveat? Oh, they’re low resolution! You can post them to facebook, but can’t print them out at home or at Walgreens, you HAVE to take your CD up to a Portrait Innovations Studio to have them printed, for a markup, of course.
4. I asked if we could pay more to get them, and got an adamant «NO.»
5. If the CD gets scratched, we’re screwed — Portrait Innovations does not save the photos they take.
6. I just paid over $ 250.00 to get photos taken that I’ll have to pay again for later???
Needless to say I was fairly irritated with the whole process, and wanted everyone else to know what my experience was with them. Please call them and verify — everything I’ve said here is absolutely true.

***Warning***
This review is going to be harsh because I work in graphic arts.
***************
1) you stressed my mom out and confused her. You made her feel good about having a person there to catch fly-​away hairs and light glares, but then that person left.
2) your photographer did NOT have the eye. he framed photos terribly: cutting off arms and hands and knees. Our long shots were mostly background. But hey, i should give the guy a break, right? Our family is 8-​people large
3) your photographer was corny and cheesy in a creepy way and he did not inspire fun, as was promised.
4) at photo pick-​out time, he acted like an optometrist with an agenda: «you don’t like number one? what about number two? I like number one, lets pick that and go on to the next»
5) cropping of the images was done poorly and too quickly
6) and please, for the love of all things sacred, stop trying to sell people on the fuzzy oval thing? it looks 1980’s and it’s totally false and in poor graphic style.
You get:
* one star for being able to print on-​site
** two stars for giving me a CD without watermarked images (so i can PhotoShop to my heart’s content)
one plus two is three.
Three stars, Portrait Innovations… consider yourself lucky…

to be fair, i found portrait innovations after a few mediocre to awful experiences at other portrait studios, so i may be a bit over-​elated in this review. we’re definitely going back in 2 months, so perhaps i’ll update my review after a second go.
in the mean time…
this studio is everything you want in a «take some pictures of my baby» place. the staff is friendly. everything is bright and clean. the photographer we had listened to what i wanted and even more importantly, what my 7 month old was capable of doing. she didn’t go overboard with trying to make the baby smile, because that doesn’t work with her. very quickly (but never rushing us) we went through several different settings with one costume change. we could have had more though, free of charge.
all in all, she took about 100 shots of us. filtering through them to determine what we wanted to get pictures of was no easy task, but the software they use and the skill of the photographer helped make it nearly painless. unlike what i’ve experienced at both sears and kiddie kandids. things got a bit hairy with the sales tactics, but not more than i’d expect in a place like this. that is, after all, where they make all the money. about 15 minutes later, i was walking out with a stack of beautiful baby pictures.
the best part? there’s no sitting fee and a cd with all 100 pictures was included in the price of the one-​pose package ($ 16). of course, we spent more than that, but you really don’t have to.