Hi all,
Just a general question for mommies with preschool going kids: does your child's preschool take any yearly portraits of the kids (individual child's)? How much do they cost you?
my son's preschool had fall portraits and the entire bundle is so costly, I could buy a wooden chest for him in that amount! just wondering why the portraits could be so expensive.. do they really have to cost that much?! (just the CD with 3 poses is a 100 bucks! oh my!) I am torn because the photos did came out pretty good this year but the cost is OMG! what do you mamas do?
TIA!
PS: The entire bundle is around 140+ including a huge portrait and the CD and a dozen other sheets. That could be a good deal, however I don't need the dozen other sheets. Just the portrait and the negatives but that's not possible as that would individually cost me as much as the entire bundle LOL!
Wow Everly! now that's a great deal! For my son, the minimum purchase is 15$ for just 1 sheet! They did 3 different poses and all came out cute! Oh why is it so costly!? :(
Lisa, that's the same co that did our preschool portraits too!
The group that comes to my son's preschool charges $45 for a package that includes about 5 sheets and a class group photo. A-la-carte, $10 a sheet.
$140 is extremely costly. I'd select a few single sheets you like at the $15 rate and only spend what you want:)
Buy a $15 sheet and express your concerns about the price with the director. Get your own pictures done someplace else - Super Target on Abrams always does a decent job for $3.99/sheet.
Or, if you want to spend $$, you can hire a professional photographer yourself. I paid $75 for a 30 minute sitting fee and a CD with 30 pictures from the shoot. I print them at Wolf Camera and they seem like works of art. http://chera25.com/galleries.html
Of course your son looks cute in all the poses! That why they can charge so much... :)
Hmmmm. It is your Director of your school that hires outside people to come in. Not sure why the price is so high; that sounds extreme to me.
Sometimes the Director, in exchange for having "vendors" come in, will expect part of the profit and therefore, the prices have to be raised. Not saying that is what is happening, but negatives don't seem like they should be that much. I know some photographers do really nice work (more like a fancy portrait setting) and that may add to the price? I personally didn't ever purchase portraits at the schools.
Just my two cents,
R.
My daughter's pre school does yearly portraits, but they are NO WHERE near that expensive. There are several packages to choose from, and we get an 8x10 that is a collage of all 3 poses each year for $40. We choose to buy that one, but some of the other ones are as little as $10-$15. They use a company called Teddy Bear Portraits.
If you are comparing the price to the prices of Walmart, Target, Sears, etc, then yes, that is high. Did you know that big studios like these operate their photo studios at a loss? Their hope is to bring you into the door to buy other things and to keep you coming back. Did you know that they hire people with NO photography experience? Did you know that computers pick out the "good" photos for you and that the photographers get into trouble if they take too many pictures? Yes, I worked for one of the studios after high school, so am telling the truth. Big chains operate at a loss and it makes it look like independent photographers are making huge profits, which they are not.
My family uses an independent photographer. She charges around $150 for the session, the prints and CD are additional cost. She does a great job and is well worth the money. You are not just paying for the prints or the CD, you are paying for the time and talent it takes to get those pictures. The photographer that we use, she told me that she spends 1-2 hours to/from session and taking pictures, then 2-3 hours picking out great photos and putting a personal editing touch on the photos. Then, placing print orders, answering emails, burning CD's. I'm sure there is a lot more behind the scenes that I don't know about. Plus, I'm sure she has to pay business taxes, keep up with her equipment and who knows what else.
Now, I don't know if the people who did your child's pictures are a small independent business or not. But, more than likely, they didn't just take the picture and do nothing with it. I would hope they had adorable posing and were creative and took some time to edit to make the picture perfect. If that is the case, $140 is a great deal.
Ours does pictures each fall. We bought the package because it was cheaper than buying individual pictures. I think the whole thing was $140 for multiple prints.
This seems really high. Talk with the director about maybe looking for another photo studio next year. Yikes! Unless you can use these in holiday cards too, it seems like a little much.
Yes, the preschool my kids attend has a professional photographer come in for pictures. We purchased the biggest bundle for our girls, but it was $28 each. For that I think we received two 8x10s, two 5x7s, six 4x6s, eight wallets and sixteen mini wallets. Total cost for two kids is only $56 and that covers all the pictures I want to send to friends and family. We didn't have the option to buy the negatives.
I wouldn't have bought the pictures, but they turned out phemomenal and it saves me a trip to somewhere else for pictures that wouldn't be as good.
Our daughter's daycare/preschool used Teddy Bear portraits and we got the same package choices as you. We chose to not buy them (even though they were super-cute). We went to Portrait Innovations. They do such a good job and are so reasonable. They take over 100 pictures and 2 people worked to be sure we got the kids to smile. They do not use a tripod but walk around with a camera so they can get some interesting angles. We got some pictures that show their personality. We ended up spending about $130 but got 60 Christmas cards plus 2 large "decorative" pictures (that have multiple images) and a TON of sheets. We also got the CD with all the images. We went to the one in Highland Village but they have several studios in DFW. Good luck and I understand your dilemma. I do think I am going to send for the free ID card through Teddy Bear portraits that way I can at least get 1 copy of the ones they took.
Teddy Bear does our photos too. I bought one sheet last year, just so that I could have it. I was kicking myself for it! However, this year, I would not even look to see how they turned out. I just cannot see spending that much for school pictures.
I spend $125 for two photographers that meet us at our desired location (for 1-2 hours) and give us a cd with edited photos. I had those done recently, so I may just write preschool on the back of one of the photos. I just can't see spending so much for school photos. Pics from our photographer are so much better.
Yes, we have the pics taken for the yearbook and that's it. We never buy them. We found a local photographer that takes our kid's birthday pictures. We get the photo session at any local venue we want, usually a park, train station, etc, as well as the CD with permission to print ALL of the 50 pictures that have been enhanced, etc. She just raised her rates to $125. Um, that's a no-brainer.
Here's an example of her work for $125 and then we have them printed with auto correct OFF at Costco:
http://dreamalittlephotography.blogspot.com/2011/05/littl...
I'd rather take them to Target and get them done for $3.99 a sheet. They're always better anyway.
