JCPenney Portraits

We just got back from a portrait session at JCPenney Portrait Studio. I've been meaning to get 12 month portraits of Saeri in her dol hanbok, but I kept putting it off... until 2 weeks ago when I realized that she was almost 18 months old! Plus, the whole reason I scheduled this session (albeit half a year late) was because the professional photographer we did hire for Saeri's doljanchi did a rather mediocre job. :( So I wasn't about to spend another several hundred on photos for the same event.

I would've loved to hire a different childrens' prophotog, but all the highly rated ones were charging fees in the thousands! So after researching both childrens' portrait studio chains as well as large retailer portrait studios, I finally settled on the JCPenney at Parmatown Mall. It had consistently received great ratings, and I especially liked that the staff supposedly didn't rush through the sessions. And JCPenney always has coupons available, even allowing you to print them from their website.

Each session is allotted 45-60 minutes, and you can have up to 2 outfits. A total of 25 photos will be taken; their computer program automatically disables the camera after 25 shots. They offer a lot of backgrounds, but I went with the classic all-white--I think the other ones look very fake and reminiscent of school pictures.

But overall, I'm very satisfied with how the session turned out, even if the day didn't start off too well. We suddenly had to move up our appointment, so of course we were scrambling to get there on time. Once there, we realized that we forgot the damn hanbok! So Appa had to rush back home while we started the session with the first outfit. There was only 1 employee, and she actually had to push back her lunchtime to accommodate us (GUILT). But she was so professional, never once acting irritated or impatient. She was excellent with Saeri, who actually warmed up to her in only 10 minutes! That's crazy fast compared to most strangers--it's true, my daughter is a hater. She even handled me pretty well when I was starting to become momzilla lol. She definitely earned every last penny of her paycheck trying to get Saeri to crack a smile, but that stubborn little girl was way too distracted by the big black box in front of her face (i.e. the camera).

In the end, we got a few good pictures. I wouldn't say they're amazing, but they were much better than anything I could've taken with my little point-and-shoot. We didn't get a single decent full-length photo of Saeri in either outfit, which I'm really bummed about. I wish JCPenney would allow at least 25 shots per outfit, but c'est la vie, non?

I decided to get 5 8x10's of 5 different poses, and 1 10x13 collage that the employee created. I used a coupon which waived the sitting fee and made all traditional sheets $3.99 each. So the 5 8x10's totaled just under $20, what a steal! I wouldn't have gotten the collage, since I'm fairly good with Photoshop, but Appa was literally swooning over it lol. So I paid $30 for that 1 collage, yuck. I definitely can't complain about paying only $50 for everything though! :D

Hopefully I won't be disappointed by the photo quality, I'm scheduled to pick them up in a week and a half. I usually get my digital prints from Snapfish or Walgreens, so it's not like I'm looking for mind-blowing, professional-quality photos. Just no weird squiggles or black spots littering the pictures, is that too much to ask?

I'm totally considering a manual P&S camera now. My Casio P&S isn't cutting it anymore, and DSLRs are way too bulky and impractical for me. Saeri will only smile in photos for ME, so I think it would actually be more worthwhile to take her portraits and edit them myself. I don't have the resources for photography lessons or the patience for online tutorials, so it's got to be an extremely user-friendly and relatively intuitive camera. I've heard great things about the Canon S95, but I know I'll need to do a lot more googling before I'm ready to purchase. Or maybe I should just keep it simple and only look for pink ones. xD