To think Venture's prices are daylight robbery?

[Olifin]

I mean the 'artwork' they produce looks pretty good, I'll agree, but...with prices starting at £500ish (and most are double that) for what are essentially just photographs...sheesh!

We only had a shoot because we had a voucher for the session + one print. Can't wait to see her face next week when we tell her we have no intention of spending any money whatsoever

Cynical b*stards. Hate they way they try to make friends with you; getting you in for a slideshow, complete with emotive music, designed to make you want to buy.

Bet there are some MNetters with Venture 'artwork' on their walls. Is it really worth the money, do you think?

chunkymonkeysmum: you say that you had £2000 worth of images for £200. I think what you actually paid was the cost price. Of course the images are only worth what people are willing to pay, but those large format prints are not expensive to produce at all.

DH runs a printing company and we produce many large format images, large canvases etc and I can tell you that the price that Venture charges is no where near the cost of production. What people are paying for are the costs of the salespeople, the HIgh St and therefore expensive shop locations, et. What you aren't getting is an expensive product.

llareggub - That's what I said, because I worked for them, the studio manager offered me the images at cost price as a wedding present.

I know why the mark-up is so high, due to staff wages & overheads etc. If you also read another of my posts further down, I also stated how much the images and frames actually cost Venture to produce.

I don't see your point.......

My point is that the images themselves aren't worth £2000. The quality, style etc is no better than your average amateur photographer who can play around with photoshop.

Those large canvases? We sell those for £22 and still make a profit.

To have bought them should have cost me £2000, but the cost price was only £200, so effectively, I did get £2000 worth of images for £200. I apologise if I didn't word it as you would have liked me to have done

katiestar - "natural" doesn't often mean looking at the camera. Lots of Venture shots are with kids not looking at the camera anyway. Look at the pic of my DTs on my profile - neither of them are looking at the camera, but it's still a lovely shot. I have photos of my DCs with my nieces done on a white backdrop with bubbles to make them all look in the same direction, and it's nowhere near as nice. I just don't see why people pay so much for photos that really aren't that great.

They are very expensive and very much over priced IMO. A local independent photographer will be able to create the very same style of images, at the same quality or better, and at much lower costs.

We got given a voucher for a photo shoot as a gift, and were prepared to only take the freebie and leave it at that, but the photos they took are pretty special imo, so we ended up paying quite a bit of money, for a large wall print of all three of our DC, and a desk print of each of them.

I absolutely love them and am glad we did it, but we had a bit of savings and reckoned it was the only time we would have that amount of money spare.....

The prints are done on archive quality paper which is, according to my DH who used to be a photographic printer, a lot more expensive than say getting them from snapfish or somwhere like that as they won't fade over time like normal prints will. They are also pretty heavily retouched so there is some element of man time involved in that.

We hated the hard sell though, and stuck to our guns on what we did and didn't want. DS2 was only three weeks old though so I was a bot hormonal and suggestive, otherwise we might not have spent as much

At the end of the day, if you aren't prepared to pay for the resulting images, don't even go there for your "free" print.

There is a lot of work that goes in to the Venture images. As LatinDAISYcal pointed out, they are printed on very high quality paper. In fact, it is quite thick card, so there is no risk of creasing etc.
Plus, the photographers do actually spend a lot of time touching up the images after the session before you have your viewing.
In each session, there are usually over 150 images taken. The photographer will then go through all of these afterwards choosing a selection of between 30-40 of the best for you to come back & view. They will then spend a long time enhancing these images.
Everyone I know who has been to Venture has been really happy with their images & feels that they are actually very special, more so than if they had gone to an independent photographer. I have had pictures done by both, and my Venture ones are definitely better quality & more special.

chunkymonkey - yes they did give that reason, but I also know they like to have your credit card details so that when you go for your viewing and say 'oh I cant go for the bigger ones because i didnt bring my chequebook/card etc' they say 'oh thats ok because we have your cc details'

This happened to a friend of mine.

Sorry but no matter how much you stick up for them, you will find far more people unhappy with venture than those who are happy paying the price of a small family car for some photos

That's fine mosschops30, but Venture have been around long enough now that people know they charge a fortune, so why moan about it ??

If you don't want to pay their prices, steer clear. TBH I think if anyone wants their "freebie", then they have to put up with the supposed "hard sell", as surely not anyone is stupid enough to believe that they can just go along and get their freebie without Venture trying to sell them other products ?!

Also, I believe the situation your friend found themself in is actually very unusual. I worked for Venture for 2 years & our studio would never have told someone that it was ok because we had their card details on file. We would have known this was being used as an excuse not to buy, because if someone genuinely left their card/chequebook at home and had every intention of buying something, they would have asked if they could call with card details/drop cheque in later on.

We got the free voucher for a photo session and a 7 by 5 in framed photo.

I sent DH to pick up the free photo because I had been pre-warned that they would do the hard sell. I am a soft touch but DH is a tight wad. It is a lovely photo but am still shocked that some people pay £2000 for some photos. Madness.

I don't really get the whole special memories arguement though.

My most precious photograph memories come from the snapshots we take when out together, on holiday, at a party, on Chrstmas Day, and the ones we capture just by chance. I carry my camera with me most of the time, just in case.

They may not be the most perfect loking shots at times, but they are the ones that hold the real memories of good times in out past. Not some photograph taken in a studio (and we do have some of these from when DD was smaller). I like the story behind the photo. Looking at some of these bring such a warm feeling when I think about the times we were having at that time.

Besides I can think of everything else I'd rather do with £100-2000 than buy a photo or two - that pays for a holiday away!!!

Just my thoughts on it.

Just forked out the cash last night for our recently completed venture shoot.

I agree in principle with a lot of what has been said here, and looking at the obvious facts 9 photos for £1200 sounds ridiculous, but there is more to it than this.

I have paid a £100 or more in the past for a single large staged family portrait for the wall, and it looks ....staged.

The talent I saw at Venture was the ability to capture those natural, unrehearsed genuinely personal reflections as you have fun with the family.

I have thousands of photographs at home from holidays,etc but none have the up close detail combined with the genuinely antural expression that come from the venture photos.

Yes the price hurts like hell, and it will bug me for weeks, but as others have said this pain will fade, and I will be left with a great set of photos to look at, as well as about 40 shots in lower resolution which are no worse in definition qulaity than most of my personal snaps.

It may be true that other photographers are capable of generating similar materials, but they aren't visible, and the reality of a big name, is that they do come with some gurantee of quality and reputation.

Dont know if Venture are offeting the same in every area but here in Darlington they are currently "selling off" old sessions.

I've had 4 sessions with them and bought a pic as well as my free one each time, but they got in touch recently and they offered me a CD for each session with all pics on, copywrite removed for £44.

Got tyhe CD's and could not be happier! Its so nice having EVERY pic they took! Love it!