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I’ve previously tweeted about the High Street chain photo lab in my local shopping centre which has recently taken up doing portrait shoots. My impression when I first saw the setup was that it looked very basic, and that the staff didn’t look like they had a great deal of photographic experience. At the time, I couldn’t see any of the output to see if I was right.

Unfortunately, today I confirmed my worst fears as I walked past the shop and saw a customer (a mother with 2 kids) browsing their images on the monitor in store.

I hate to say it, but the images were genuinely poor from a photographic perspective.

The lighting setup was poor (cramped into a corner of the store, there was no room to set it up right),

The exposure was poor – generally underexposed, but with some really hot highlights on one side where one of the lights was about 2 stops too bright.

One of the kids, about 5 years old, said “it’s a bit dark”. Quite right.

But far worse than all of the technical shortcomings was the fact that the expressions were poor – there was no joy in the faces, and from that it was clear that there was no interaction between photographer and family. This is no criticism of the family, just that the photographer obviously did nothing to bring a spark of life to their sitting.

I can’t stress enough how bad it made me feel that this mother was going to have to settle for this substandard photographic offering, and that they will have to live with these poor images in their home until the kids have grown up sufficiently to warrant another photo shoot. Though perhaps the family will decide that professional portrait photography is not worth it – “look, the last lot we had done are rubbish!” – and simply not bother getting any more done ever again.

I really did want to just say look, there is another choice. There are many professional (and I use that term advisedly) photographers out there who could do a proper job for you, and produce images for you that really show your family off in their best light. It may cost a bit more, but what value have you gained by saving a bit of money?

Poor lighting setup

Poor exposure

Poor expressions

Poor choice

No post processing 

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