We did a photo shoot for my DS's 3rd bday less than two weeks ago at the Wilderness Lodge. I had the $25 rate, which they did honor, but there was some drama. At first they gave me the $75 rate and I went to pay and I was like no it's not that much and I went back and they re-read the email and was like oh they have stopped doing that rate, so we got rid of our cards that had the upc code on it. But it was really no biggy. They went on with the shoot and then found the upc code from another location and all was fine.
The photographer was great and she took 110 pictures. However, there were a few pictures that were blurry, several that were too light (problem with the sun), a few where my son was looking away, one or two that were too dark and one or two with red-eye. But those types of pictures happen, that is why you take so many. However, these issues are what I expect when I take pictures of my son, not when a professional does it. All in all it was worth the $25, since we also got pictures of all 3 of us, which is hard to do. However, I don't think I would pay $75 and I know I wouldn't pay the full price of $150 or whatever it is. I know that I could have taken pictures very close to the quality of the pictures they took. That is why I wouldn't pay more.
But we did get some good pictures. Here are just a few.
In this one you can see some of the issues with the sun. This one looks good, but we have some pictures where my son looks really washed out. I have been able to fix them a little bit with photoshop, but I shouldn't have to do that to professional pictures.
And to compare, here is one I took myself last November at the Poly of my DS. I swirled part of his shirt where his name was.
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