A Snapshot in Time

I am considering whether to continue our family portrait tradition next Christmas.  The holiday portrait is something my parents did with my sister and me throughout my childhood.  It was something I was excited to continue once I had my own family.  For the past four years, my husband, stepson, and I have gotten our portraits taken at JC Penney for Christmas.   None of the years has been a particularly good experience, and I am seriously considering discontinuing the practice next year.

Personally, I like having a family photo done every year.  Although I know that it easy to take and print personal photos now with digital cameras and photo-editing websites, I still like having the professional photos done.  I find it hard to get very many quality photos of our family throughout the year.  My stepson is only here part of the time, so we start with limited opportunities to capture the perfect moment.  We do not do many things together as a family (I wish we did, but we do not), so most of the photos I do take are just snapshots around the house.  I am not a very talented photographer, so I seldom take pictures that I actually like enough to share with other people.  Plus, I am almost never in the photos, so that would not work for a holiday family portrait to include in my Christmas cards.  The professional portrait session guarantees I have some quality photos with me actually in them.  I want these photos to keep as a reminder of our family growing throughout the years and to share with my family who we do not see very often.

However, the photo session has become a chore that no one likes to endure.  My stepson is not a very cooperative participant in the process.  Of the four years that we have been doing this, he has only behaved during the photo session once.  The first year he pouted and cried during it, leaving us with only one or two photos that were usable.  The second year he loved the attention and did a great job posing and smiling for us.  We had many cute options to pick for our family photo.  The third year he would not take it seriously, moving around and making funny faces during the photos.  Again, we had a limited selection of usable prints, but the shenanigans did actually produce a couple adorable pictures even if they were not perfectly posed.  This past year was worse than the first year.  He did not want to be there, and we did not end up with a single picture where he did not look angry.  We finally chose the one where my husband and I looked best despite his grumpy presence in it.

In addition to being really upset with his son, my husband was really annoyed with JC Penney over the process.  He was very impatient about the wait during our session.  Over the years, we average about an hour and half from check-in to leaving.  After letting the front desk know you are there, it is usually about a fifteen to twenty minute wait until you go back into the studio.  Then, the actual photo session takes another fifteen or so minutes.  You wait about a half hour until they are ready for you to look at the photos.  Then, we normally take around twenty minutes to look through the photos, make our selection, and order our prints.  I do not feel like the process is too cumbersome, especially considering it is only once a year.  I also recognize that we are there during the holiday season when they are booked full.  Plus, I think much of the delay comes from other customers taking their time with the photo selection and order process.  My husband however thinks it is badly organized and that they are wasting our time by making us wait for so long throughout.

My husband has suggested that we consider using a different studio to take the photos next year, but I am not sure I want to take them at all.  The reason I chose JC Penney in the first place was due to pricing.  We are only buying a couple of traditional portrait sheets each year (3 8x10, 2 5x7, 1 3.5x5, 1 wallets), and JC Penney’s has the cheapest sitting fee and least expensive single prints.  The deal becomes even better if you sign up for the two year membership, which gets you one free upgrade on a photo and essentially makes the sitting fee free for one of the two years.  Plus, we get coupons which makes the traditional photo sheets even less expensive.  We probably would get better quality photos and perhaps a less stressful wait if we went to a higher tier photographer, but we would definitely pay more.  When you add in the difficulties of getting my stepson to cooperate, I just do not think it would be worth the extra money.  Why do I want to pay more for pictures if my family is still going to look miserable in them?

What do you think?  Should I continue to get the cheap JC Penney photos?  Should I pay more for a private studio?  Should I just learn to take better pictures and do them myself through Shutterfly (or the equivalent)?  Should I just forget about getting photos of us each year completely?

At least I look great in this year’s photo.  See you next week!