So a few months back the family was strolling though the mall (I’ll be honest, there aren’t many instances where I feel comfortable claiming to “stroll,” but the mall and the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica are two that definitely qualify) and a local photo studio was having a promotion – you could get a session valued at $500.00 (valued by WHO is a legitimate question) for a mere 50 bucks, and they would throw in one 8X10 shot for free. We would find out later that this 8X10 picture was valued at $250.00, and yes, those of you familiar with story structure, this rather scary revelation is a harbinger of things to come. So stay tuned and pay attention.
This past Sunday was photo shoot day. We prepared for our hour of modeling with gusto, making sure the kids were bathed (as were we), lots of outfits were brought, and we even brought props for fun (Ariel’s bicycle, some red sox hats, etc.). These kinds of activities are always fairly stressful for me, between wondering whether Ariel will feel like cooperating that day and dealing with logistics, but she looks beautiful in a well-taken photo, and Jasmine’s a cutie too, and frankly, at the moment, our walls are way too bare, so I was optimistic. I figured it would generally be fine, occasionally be painful, and result in some beautiful shots of the kids and hopefully the entire family.
So how’d it go? Well, the shoot itself wasn’t exactly hassle free, but it wasn’t too bad either. Jasmine is always so easy, but she was teething and uncomfortable, so getting her to smile and stay still was challenging. Ariel was Ariel, she was awesome, difficult, cute, funny, and infuriating all at once. Say what you want, but my daughter is nothing if not versatile. We knew going in that the highlight for her would be the pictures of her while blowing bubbles (bubbles are BIG with her), and unfortunately that didn’t come until the end. So, we were treated to being asked approximately 465 times during the hour whether it was time for bubbles. So that was fun. She also has been into making strange faces lately, which isn’t a big deal at the dinner table but makes taking the perfect family picture fairly difficult. But she didn’t have any major meltdowns, and the photographer was pretty good with her, so overall, you can’t really complain.
My favorite moment came during an outfit change for Ariel, when she was changing into a red dress, and pointed at the photographer and yelled, “You can’t WAIT to see how beautiful I’m going to look!” You tell him, Ariel. You just freakin’ tell him!
But now we have to circle back to our harbinger from before. You forgot about that, didn’t you? Sure, whatever. Anyway, we finish up and they tell us to schedule an appointment in a week or two to meet with a designer to go through the images and pick out what we want. The walls of the studio are of course adorned by some of their best shots, and their framing is creative and stylish. They gave us a pamphlet showing our options. Which was great, since we were then able to start debating whether to buy a moderately sized picture of the family, or go another way and take that money and take the entire family to Hawaii for like a month. Seriously, the prices were utterly insane. $6,000.00 may be what some people pay for art, and apparently they consider their pictures “wall art,” and that’s just super, but no, that ain’t happening folks.
The bright side is we can get all the digital images separately. For $1,500.00. And we can’t DO anything with them, except look at them on the computer. So, not like a VERY bright side, no.
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