East Bay Baby

Do they even allow dogs into Sears Portrait Studio?

It’s that time of year again – that’s right, Christmas portrait time.  Since our home isn’t very, shall we say, picturesque, I decided to take my son to Sears, where he could get “professional” portraits done with cheesy backdrops and props.  (Unfortunately, they don’t have those fantastic laser backdrops  so prominent in school portraits when I was a kid.  See Exhibit A.)  After all, my mom forced us to go to get annual photos, and now it’s time for me to subject my child to this tradition.

The thing about Sears, and other similar chain portrait studios, is that your experience can be totally hit or miss, depending on your photographer.  You could get a great photographer who can really entertain your kid and capture the right shot, or you could have a not-so-great photographer who has minimal experience with kids.  So if you have a temperamental kid, you might want to find a local photographer who specializes in children’s portraits.  I was tempted by those Sears Portrait Studio coupons that come in the mail and decided to chance it with Sears.

My photographer was meh – I had to do most of the corralling and entertaining to coax my child to smile.  (Turns out the only way I could get him to smile was to ask him to clap his hands – so all the decent portraits we got were of him clapping his hands.  If someone who didn’t know my son were to see all of these portraits, he would think my son had that rare deformity where his hands are glued together.)  Nonetheless some good photos resulted from this session.

My recommendation before going to a place like Sears is to do your research beforehand.  On the website, you can browse their available backgrounds and props so you have an idea for what kind of portraits you would like.   By doing this preliminary research, you can cut the amount of time you spend in the studio hemming and hawing over which background will or will not clash with your child’s outfit or which props will be death traps for your child.  My research was quite valuable, as our photographer wasn’t particularly helpful in picking out backdrops and props.  I ended up just telling him exactly what I wanted based on my prior research, which brings me to my next point.  Your photographer will make suggestions as to what type of background or props you should try out.  Don’t be afraid to tell him that you the background is super cheesy or the props suck and that you want to try something else.  These are portraits for you (seriously, don’t fool yourself into thinking that the portraits are for your child so that he can look at his baby photos when he’s an adult), and you don’t want to be pissed off that you’re spending a fortune on crappy photos with backdrops that you hate.

Information that isn’t readily available before your session is pricing information.  Even when you step into the studio, pricing information isn’t prominent.  The sales associates and photographers seem to be very careful to spring that information on you *after* you’ve taken the photos and when you’re sitting down in front of the computer, browsing through all the shots.  This is the time when you’re most vulnerable – you see your child in these posed shots and you can’t help but think that you have the cutest child on earth and that you must buy photos of all sizes for all the different poses so that you can share your child’s beautiful smile with the entire world.  Seriously – even if your kid’s hair is messed up, he has a crooked smile, has one eye closed, a booger hanging out of his nose, whatever, you’ll still think it’s adorable and want to buy a 20×24 wall photo to place above the mantle. We’re biologically programed to do so.  Even if you steel yourself before stepping into the portrait studio as I had and vow to only pick one pose and buy the cheapo $7.99 package for which you have a coupon, you’ll be tempted to go back on this vow.  I did.

But I digress.  I’ll try to give some brief pricing information based on my own experience.  You can find coupons online here.  They’re currently running a holiday promotion – $7.99 for 35 portraits (1 8×10, 2 5×7′s, 16 wallets, and 16 minis), and no session fee.  (Although this offer expires Dec. 31, 2009, I believe that they usually have a similar offer for $9.99.)  This was the package I intended to get.  This package, and any other package or deal that they offer, cannot be combined with any other coupon, package or deal.  If you purchase one of their packages, additional sheets start at $19.99.  (for example 1 8×10 counts as a sheet, there are 2 5×7′s on a sheet, 8 wallets, etc.).  This $19.99 price is for portrait sheets that haven’t been enhanced.  There’s an extra fee for bling-ifying your child (aka enhancing the photo).  This holiday photo package, which is valid for only one of the poses from your session, is by far the cheapest package that they have, and they bank on the fact that you’ll buy additional sheets of all the other poses taken.  So what starts out as a $7.99 deal ends up to be $100+ because our biological programming dictates us to think that all photos of our child are adorable.  There’s also a $14.99 sitting fee; this fee is waived with some of the coupon offers or portrait packages.

Now if you don’t purchase a package, each sheet costs $9.99.  On their website they currently have a coupon for 20% off your entire purchase.  When I went a couple weeks ago, they had a coupon for 50% off entire purchase, I think.  Depending on how many sheets you want to get, this may end up being a better deal (after all, are those mini portraits covered under the $7.99 package that useful anyway?).

If you want to buy a CD with all the photos taken, it’s going to cost a pretty penny.  I believe that the a la carte pricing of the CD is something like $250 (including blingified and unblingified photos), something like $150 for only the unblingified photos.  If you ask about the price of the CD alone, they will shock and scare you with this crazy price, and then quickly tell you that since you’re looking into purchasing the CD, you ought to look some of their other portrait packages which cost $150+, which, as you can see, is a very good deal given the price of the CD alone.

General tips and information for when you take your child to get portraits at Sears (or perhaps anywhere else), some or all of which may be obvious:

1. Schedule the session around your child’s usual naptimes.  Do not attempt to take portraits when your child is usually sleeping or about to take a nap.   You can call Sears to schedule an appointment or make an appointment online.  (I did the latter, and it worked out very well.  They even called to confirm the appointment.)
2. Now if you’ve followed Step #1  but your child has decided to not take a nap at his usual time and is thus tired or cranky by the time portrait time rolls around, save yourself and the photographer and other patrons the headaches and cancel your appointment and reschedule.  It’s not worth the hassle or the headache.
3. If you go to Sears, plan at least 2 hours for the entire trip.  Even if you get into the studio right when your appointment begins, you’ll take about 40 minutes to an hour in the studio since they take multiple poses and have to change backdrops and props.  And then you have to wait about 20 minutes for them to load the photos onto the computer.  And then you have to agonize over which poses to choose, how many portrait sheets to purchase, to whom you need to send portraits, etc.
4. If at all possible, do not take your child to take portraits by yourself.  Bring your spouse, partner, mother, friend, anyone.  You’ll  want someone to help entertain your child while taking portraits.  You’ll also appreciate having someone else there to hold and entertain your child while you’re picking out the specific photos to purchase and also to help give you a second opinion.  Perhaps that picture with the booger hanging out isn’t worth $19.99.
5. Dress your child in comfortable and relatively fuss-free clothes that don’t get messed up our out of place easily.  Your child will squirm and crawl/run around.  Nobody will be happy if you have to stop the photographer every 30 seconds in order to tuck in a shirt, rearrange the folds of a dress, etc.
6. Try to keep your child’s appearance natural.  (“Yeah right,” you might think, after you see some of the available portrait backdrops.  There’s no way one can make a child look natural against a backdrop of brightly colored letters floating in fake clouds (entitled ABC Fun) or a backdrop of monstrously large daisies (entitled Bloomin Daisies).  What I mean by this is that if your child’s hair naturally sticks up on end, perhaps attempting to paste it down with gel or other hair product isn’t the best idea.  Your child will look unnatural at best and at the worst, will just look like a tool.  My son’s hair sticks up (his head has been described as looking like a “black dandelion”), and rather than trying to tame it as my mother suggested, I just left his hair au naturale.  I want to remember him and his hair as it actually was all the time.
7. Don’t be too upset at yourself if you allow Sears to upsell you.  It happens to all parents.  It’s inevitable.
8. The Sears Portrait website offers some tips based on age, event, and group size.