Target Portrait Studio
Thursday, October 11, 2007 by Amy
I had to get this one off my chest, so no time for pictures. Besides, my camera batteries are currently inside the girls' train set, so I'll have to re-charge them.
So, I took Riley and Avery in to Target Portrait Studio to get their portraits taken. I wanted pictures of them together and of each of them separately. Well, it was an absolute fiasco. The girls weren't the problem. They acted their ages. No biggie, right? Well, we got there at 10:20 for a 10:30 appointment. We waited for over half and hour to be taken back to the studio. And after a few shots, the photographer proceeded to yell at my children and complain about them in front of them!! Many photographers tend to be over-zealous and this frightens some children. She made some half-hearted attempts at getting a photo of the girls together. Then when she was photographing Avery, she gave Avery a teddy bear which she was very interested in. Avery was more interested in examining the new bear (sorry, my kid's not stupid, she likes to observe new objects. They're not Target Portrait Studio for Retarded Children Only, so I though she could have given her a minute! Sheesh!) The lady started saying "Avery! Avery! Avery!" to get her attention and quickly escalated into full-blown yelling at her "AVERY! AVERY! AVERY! (insert big nasty exasperated exhale) OH MY GOD, SHE IS JUST TOTALLY IGNORING ME!!!!" There was a sad little picture of Avery resulting from this which captured her blue eyes nicely. One of the sales girls who wasn't in the studio for the sitting remarked that it was a serious picture and looked like she was going to cry, and I'm like "Lady, she was about to cry! She was being abused!" Then it was Riley's turn for individual shots. She has an admittedly aggravating habit of pointing her face at the camera with her eyeballs elsewhere. So the lady was like "look in the camera, Riley, can you look in the camera? RILEY! YOU KNOW WHERE TO LOOK, NOW LOOK IN THE CAMERA!" She kept making those snotty little exhales throughout the whole experience.
So we wait for more than an hour to have our pictures brought up on the computer so that I can look at them. None of them are worth anything. One of Riley was passable. I'm looking through them to find the best of the worst and since we'd been there for over two hours, the girls start complaining about being hungry, thirsty, etc. And it's about Avery's naptime. The photographer apparently gets a break from her stressful job and says to me "is there a place where you can dump them off and come back without them?" What? Excuse me? I was flabbergasted! So I went home and I am ashamed to admit that I was so stressed out by the whole thing that I was short with the girls.
So I called customer service and it turns out that this lady is the manager of the location, has been there a long time, and has a good record. But they said that they absolutely didn't doubt that this happened to me, etc. and that they really wanted me to give the studio another chance and is giving me the package of the one picture that was okay and sending coupons for three pages free (big whoop). I told them that there is no way that we will go back when that lady is there, even if she's not the photographer. My children don't need to see her again. They were really nice on that end and really apologetic. I think I'll take the girls back separately and get the $7.99 package for each since they'll be separate visits and it will be a lot less stressful that way. If there happens to be another pose that I like I'll use one of the coupons.
So Riley and Avery took short naps when we got home, and when Riley woke up I apologized for being impatient with her. I told her that the picture lady was mean to her for no reason and that Riley did nothing wrong, nothing to deserve it, etc. I told her that the picture lady made me angry and instead of being angry at the picture lady like I should have, I got angry at Riley, so on and so forth. We discussed how it's okay to be angry as long as we're angry at the right person, blah, blah, blah...I told Riley that when we go back I'll make sure that lady isn't there and promised that if she smiled really nice I would let her take a funny face picture and I'd buy it.
Just had to vent.
So, I took Riley and Avery in to Target Portrait Studio to get their portraits taken. I wanted pictures of them together and of each of them separately. Well, it was an absolute fiasco. The girls weren't the problem. They acted their ages. No biggie, right? Well, we got there at 10:20 for a 10:30 appointment. We waited for over half and hour to be taken back to the studio. And after a few shots, the photographer proceeded to yell at my children and complain about them in front of them!! Many photographers tend to be over-zealous and this frightens some children. She made some half-hearted attempts at getting a photo of the girls together. Then when she was photographing Avery, she gave Avery a teddy bear which she was very interested in. Avery was more interested in examining the new bear (sorry, my kid's not stupid, she likes to observe new objects. They're not Target Portrait Studio for Retarded Children Only, so I though she could have given her a minute! Sheesh!) The lady started saying "Avery! Avery! Avery!" to get her attention and quickly escalated into full-blown yelling at her "AVERY! AVERY! AVERY! (insert big nasty exasperated exhale) OH MY GOD, SHE IS JUST TOTALLY IGNORING ME!!!!" There was a sad little picture of Avery resulting from this which captured her blue eyes nicely. One of the sales girls who wasn't in the studio for the sitting remarked that it was a serious picture and looked like she was going to cry, and I'm like "Lady, she was about to cry! She was being abused!" Then it was Riley's turn for individual shots. She has an admittedly aggravating habit of pointing her face at the camera with her eyeballs elsewhere. So the lady was like "look in the camera, Riley, can you look in the camera? RILEY! YOU KNOW WHERE TO LOOK, NOW LOOK IN THE CAMERA!" She kept making those snotty little exhales throughout the whole experience.
So we wait for more than an hour to have our pictures brought up on the computer so that I can look at them. None of them are worth anything. One of Riley was passable. I'm looking through them to find the best of the worst and since we'd been there for over two hours, the girls start complaining about being hungry, thirsty, etc. And it's about Avery's naptime. The photographer apparently gets a break from her stressful job and says to me "is there a place where you can dump them off and come back without them?" What? Excuse me? I was flabbergasted! So I went home and I am ashamed to admit that I was so stressed out by the whole thing that I was short with the girls.
So I called customer service and it turns out that this lady is the manager of the location, has been there a long time, and has a good record. But they said that they absolutely didn't doubt that this happened to me, etc. and that they really wanted me to give the studio another chance and is giving me the package of the one picture that was okay and sending coupons for three pages free (big whoop). I told them that there is no way that we will go back when that lady is there, even if she's not the photographer. My children don't need to see her again. They were really nice on that end and really apologetic. I think I'll take the girls back separately and get the $7.99 package for each since they'll be separate visits and it will be a lot less stressful that way. If there happens to be another pose that I like I'll use one of the coupons.
So Riley and Avery took short naps when we got home, and when Riley woke up I apologized for being impatient with her. I told her that the picture lady was mean to her for no reason and that Riley did nothing wrong, nothing to deserve it, etc. I told her that the picture lady made me angry and instead of being angry at the picture lady like I should have, I got angry at Riley, so on and so forth. We discussed how it's okay to be angry as long as we're angry at the right person, blah, blah, blah...I told Riley that when we go back I'll make sure that lady isn't there and promised that if she smiled really nice I would let her take a funny face picture and I'd buy it.
Just had to vent.
