Thursday, December 04, 2008

Happy Holidays- A Constipating Ordeal

It has been an annoying ordeal in taking Kyra's holiday pictures this year, to say the least. Every year we hop over to Sears Portrait Studio where we are loyal customers and big fans of the great pictures they take of our little girl.

Up and until this year, we have never walked out of the studio with less then stellar comments and having spent more money then planned. This time around, we came out of the studio with pictures like this:
And this one:
That look of constipation in those two shots are just darling, aren't they? **insert eye roll here**

And for some reason, no one working that particular day could understand why the only picture taken that day we enjoyed was this one:
So I did what I normally do. I hopped on the computer and wrote my opinion when asked for it on the section of the receipt that asked for comments and opinions. Usually I write wonderful reviews about how fun and easy our experience was. This year I wrote about how horrible the pictures were, how the photographer didn't listen to a word I said about how to work with Kyra (who tends to clam up and act all shy and timid around certain strangers), and finally how when we got to preview our pictures I repeated over and over again about how much I didn't like any of them.

Even the above picture was not that great at first. It was taken horizontally at such an angle that I hate the fact you would automatically turn your head when looking at it. They cropped it vertically and was able to turn it ever so slightly to make it look a little less cockeyed.

What resulted was the ability to shoot several more frames. After talking with the manager of the studio it was obvious she was only swallowing her own pride and doing this to make me happy after having me give such a terrible review of her employees.

I was informed by her that it was my fault Kyra's first set of photos didn't turn out because we scheduled her on a Saturday. Apparently when scheduling your appointments on the weekend one should be aware that they can. not. give you more then 15 minutes in the studio or else they would be backed up for hours by the end of the day and if I wanted more time to focus on us, then, well, I should have booked it for a weekday. Shame on me for not knowing we would be shafted on a Saturday morning, one hour after they opened. If they had informed me of this when making the appointment, then, well, it would have been absolutely no problem in scheduling a better time frame. One where they would take the time to work with us and make the whole experience more personal.

Either way, I got new pictures of my darling little girl. And this time, instead of being shoved in and out of the studio in 15 minutes, the photographer (who was the exact same person as the first time) managed to listen to me and my wishes. It was a much more pleasant experience.
She may not be smiling with teeth showing in any of the new pictures, but at least she doesn't have the look of sitting on the toilet, constipated, plastered all over her face.
And the lack of a constipated look on her face, better posing, and actually taking the time to work with us makes me very happy.

Hope your holiday season has started out with a little less shit then ours has!

2 comments:

  1. At least you know how to catch the shit and dish it back. I would have just paid for my pictures and hoped for better luck the following year. But you're right; the second session pictures are much better. I've never seen Kyra in contemplative mode before. Cute!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Before I even read a word, I saw that first picture and thought "Um...I hope that's not her Christmas picture this year". I was relieved to find out you didn't like it either.

    The second shots are MUCH better. She looks so much more relaxed. Beautiful as always :)

    ReplyDelete