Venture photography

[louise2011]

'Won' a sitting & 7x5 photo. My friend had photos done with them & they really are beautiful. I nearly keeled over when she told me her order came to £850!

I really want to get some lovely pics of my children & also of DH & I before we become too decrepit!! I would love them to touch pics up so I look young & beautiful. (this may take some time).

I have spent an evening looking at lots of local photographers work & haven't been impressed with many. I few I liked seem to charge a fortune even for the sitting!

Question is- can you really just take your free photo or is this impossible to do? Will I need to take out a bank loan to fund these pictures?

Do you have a digital camera?

I recently went on a photography course to learn how to use my camera properly and I'm now taking lovely photos of my DCs which are all in natural settings and not blown up onto canvas (and not a white t shirt in sight ). I really enjoyed it too.

Still doesn't address the problem of there being no decent pictures of me though!

Personally, I really dislike venture style photos though so this suits me better.

We got given a voucher for venture while I was pregnant, went when DS was 4 months old. I have to agree with Pps here; the whole atmosphere was just 'fake' and made me feel very uncomfortable. Fortunately we had taken a lot of pictures ourselves in previous months so knew what a 'good' picture looked like.

I was expecting to be wowed with the finished products but I wasn't that impressed at all, they took literally hundreds of photos and only showed us about 30 - obviously the ones they liked the best, there wasn't a single one where all 3 of us looked our best!

I was completely at the prices - £800 for a print not even as big as A3! And of course they offer a very affordable payment plan... We came out with our 'free' 7x5 framed print 'worth' £90 (I've bought identical frames from Wilkos for about £1) which we're not even allowed to reproduce.

My exact words to the salesman were "we just can't justify spending that much money on a photo" I also told him I'd seen better pictures taken on a phone - I think perhaps I was still on a bit of a post-partum high... I'm not usually so rude upfront.

The bottom line is they are there to sell, sell, sell.. That is all they care about. Some companies are just like that. I think you'd be better off going with a local/independent company or freelance photographer. Ask for recommendations on here or facebook or through family and friends. You'll be better off all round. Hope you get some lovely shots!

I have to agree with most of the comments on here especially girlsunday regarding Venture. I too have had a nasty experience with the Venture studio in Marlow. Having completed a questionnaire at the Eden shopping centre in High Wycombe, I too was told that I had been selected to receive a free picture, and after going to the studio with my family for our shoot, we were invited back to a viewing to select the pictures that we wanted. I nearly fainted when the staff told me that the price for the pictures I was interested in was nearly £1,000. I protested, thanked them and said that we would just have our 7 x 5 frame. The young lady who was doing the viewing tried to persuade us to change our minds and when we declined, she got very irritable and noticibly annoyed and said that if that was the case then the session was over and she had other work to get on with and the smile disappeared. She escorted us downstairs and out the main door with hardly a word of thanks. A rather nasty experience from a very unprofessional and nasty studio. Give them a miss at all costs.

Hmm, I am going to say that we did a photoshoot with venture over 8 years ago, and I (we) loved it, we bought 8 pictures from them which did cost a bloody fortune, but they're still all up and are amazing. I didn't find it a hard sell, and we left the studio to ponder it with no hastle. Maybe they got worse with their attitude but we love our pics and have no regrets.

I'm sure that there are people out there who have had a pleasant experience with Venture but I can only comment on our own not so pleasant encounter. Perhaps it's just the Marlow studio that has serious issues with bad customer service, high prices and average quality pictures.

You are not alone in the way that you feel marie64, I know of many people who have had a bad experience with Venture studios.

Yes venture employ "photographers" based on their sales skills. Your not paying the high prices for great photographic talent but for talented sales.

Taking a payment plan for photographs of children is highly immoral in my opinion. If someone cant afford to pay for the photos outright, they don't need them. Children need other things a lot more yet sales persons make parents feel like they are letting there kids down not spending hundreds on their photos.

As a parent and a professional photographer I feel I have to comment on this thread. I?ve seen a darker side of the industry since we had our daughter and this began when a 'photographer' ambushed my wife hours after birth and starting taking pictures of Olivia without consent, having my wife fill a form and bill her for £400.00 two weeks later. She had no idea she had signed it and what made it worse was the fact my 8 year old niece snapped a better photo on her camera phone! It was terrible!
Nursery photos are another area where prices are inflated tenfold. I have recently started massively undercutting the big companies and making minimal profits as I feel parents have the right to a professional photo without paying over the odds. My advice to all parents is this. Invest in a good camera; this doesn?t need to be a fancy DSLR, just a safe, easy camera. Then snap away, there is no way an overpriced photography company can know what you know about your child meaning they'll never capture there character. If they are under 2 just lie on the floor and snap them playing, over two? Get the willies out and jump in moody puddles, get the football out? Whatever your child likes doing. Within a month or two your photos will improve vastly and your child?s life will become documented which is amazing and quite frankly a Venture photo is the last thing you want to hang from a wall on at their 18th, you deserve to have your photos embarrass them.

Smalley, I'm assuming you meant 'wellies'!!!

We got one of these, went for the viewing and took all the spiel.
Then my AMAZING hubby said look mate, they are lovely we want the flash drive and a 12 x 12 image (in the fancy glass and wood thing)
He was made up, and then DH let he process it and said, ive only got 500 to spend.
And he gave it to us. Original cost 1500.
Be upfront and strong on ur budget and what u want and ull be fine, they want the sale after all...

I got a free picture from Venture when they did a session in Gap in Leeds! I had to find and download my picture off their website (and crop the logos off!) but it was free. Nice little snap too.
I've actually been to one of their studios in Rochdale where the staff were genuinely nice - I had no idea about their prices but had had some professional shots of the kids done elsewhere and had naively assumed it would be similar...they were quite up front about the prices and at no time tried to mislead me, I declined to go back for the viewing as by that time I'd checked about a bit more and came to the conclusion their 'style' is not to my taste and their prices certainly weren't - but to be fair, the girl on the phone said why not come in a just pick out the one you're entitled to.

We had a venture picture taken of our son aged 8 months 4 years ago and it had pride of place in our lounge. I know the prices are extortionate, but it is something we will have forever and despite the hard sell it was absolutely our decision to spend the money.

Ill be returning later in the year with our second child as I want my children to have to same. Seems people are getting rather get up about venture, I just think, I like the picture, it's of my loved ones, so if I can afford it, why not?

We had some done of our three children, 2 years ago, I bought 3 more extra photos (had my free one of the 3 together), one of each of the children.

The one of the 3 of them I had in black and white. I love them. We paid about £350, I still think it was a lot but I loved how they took about 30 shots of them, and not one was the usual, sitting down still pose!

It will probably be the last professional photo of all of them together as oldest ds is now nearly 15. Diddnt feel pressured to buy, also I went to the viewing on my own, dh was working. We used the Chester branch.

Con artists. They did a number on my poor SIL. She spent money she didn't have. They convinced her that she was investing in art! Art is an 'investment' because it has a resale value. No one is going to pay to buy used pictures of someone elses kids. I didnt have the heart to point that out to her. I just smiled and nodded. The photos aren't even that great and she has since had another child so they are no longer representative of her family.

Try to find, if you can, a keen photography student who needs to practise. A friend of mine is doing photography alongside his main career, as he is keen to change jobs. He needed 'subjects', so we all went out into the local park/woods, were out and about for several hours, and he took hundreds of shots of us and DD. They are absolutely amazing, beautiful pics. He even practised his editing skills by touching them all up before giving them all to us. All completely free - he was grateful to us for giving up our time!! Everyone who's seen the pics has commented on how stunning they are, and the family all have copies. Oh - and he entered one pic of DD into a portrait photography competition, (with our permission), and won first place!
So, it's worth asking around, or possibly even contacting local colleges.

It's a well-known con. I rather bought myself a fancy camera and I can photoshop if I need to.

Don't think you are allowed to advertise on mumsnet stewartwalker

If you find a local course or college, you can find a cheaper photographer who will take different styles of photos, and will be cheaper as they're still building a portfolio.
I'm a photographer, and when I was starting out I'd take loads and loads of different pics as I was still trying to define my style. And people loved them!

Another poor experience in Cambridge here some years ago. We "won" a shoot which was supposed to include a 7x5 print. The shoot itself was fine but the viewing was incredibly hard sell. In the end we walked out with nothing, not even our supposed free print.

Another poor experience in Cambridge here some years ago. We "won" a shoot which was supposed to include a 7x5 print. The shoot itself was fine but the viewing was incredibly hard sell. In the end we walked out with nothing, not even our supposed free print.