Professional Photographer Frustrations

A few months ago, as my family was planning a reunion for this summer, I took it upon myself to convince everyone that we needed a complete family photograph by a professional photographer. The last such photograph was taken about 15 years ago - and since our family has grown by 15 people since then, we really needed an update.

I was the self-appointed person in charge. I found a photographer in Sevierville, Tennessee, where we would be staying, I scheduled the shoot, and even coordinated the colors of clothing so we'd look good.

Some things I should have found out: how many photographs he'd actually done of families and children, if he sold a CD of all the pictures so we could make as many prints as we'd like, if we could look at the pictures online and choose some to buy at a later date, and if other people had a good experience with him. Unfortunately, some things you find out the hard way.

This guy had acted nice and personable on the phone, and the first impression was the same. But then he was unprofessional in the way he talked to us, often telling those of us not in the picture to "be quiet" and even once to "shut up". Then he didn't seem to know how to get all the kids to smile. He had one or two tricks up his sleeve, but re-used them again and again, which, as you know, grows old fast with little ones. He actually would say "baby, baby, look over here" to a 9 month old - who of course would have no idea what he was talking about. If any of the kids were not smiling or wiggling, he acted put out and mad at the parents for not controlling them.

Oh, but I'm just getting started. After all the pictures, he insisted that we had to look at the pictures right then (it was dinner time and kids were running all around) or that night and also order any pictures we wanted. So we all went back to the condos to eat, then the men stayed to put the kids to bed and the women went to look at pictures. The best part of all this was the girl time. We had fun looking at the pictures. Then the price list was whipped out and we all gulped a little. The photographer handed out order forms and said, "who wants to order first?
My sisters and sisters-in-law said they wanted to talk to their husbands first and could we please drop off the order forms tomorrow? He insisted - order right now! (reminded me of a used car salesman - the worst type). He said there was no way we could drop off the forms the next day - he was too busy (but of course we wouldn't get our pictures for 3 weeks). But when we insisted, he very grudgingly said, "well I guess if that's the way it has to be."

That guy lost a lot of sales. He was not willing to work with us or help us out at all. We all left very frustrated with him. My family loved the pictures but ordered far less than we would have because of his inflated prices and poor treatment of us. In fact, one sister suggested we could have paid for an airline ticket for a photographer friend of mine to fly out from Utah to do the pictures and give us a CD of them and it would have been cheaper than this shoot. Ah well. Live an learn.

Let that be a lesson to all of you out there! Choose your photographers well....