Venture Photography Sessions

nabbeybloke

Hi everyone.

My best friends are christening their first child soon and I want to buy them something. Being child-free I'm completely clueless, but I figure they have enough baby clothes and toys and was thinking of something a bit different. Their daughter is almost ten months if that helps.

I'd started looking into a family portrait and found a promotion on the Venture website offering an hour session with a framed photo at the end for £25. Has anyone been to this and can share their experiences? I cant help but be a bit sceptical that they wouldnt get to choose their favourite photo of the day to be framed. I also assume they get their money from charging alot for reproductions?

Can anyone recommend anyone else or even a present that is a little bit different? This being a moneysaving site, I don't want to spend too much if possible haha

Thanks

Doozergirl

The venture photographs are beautiful. You can choose your £25 print - it's not exactly big though!

And the experience is really fun, my kids had a whale of a time and we had fun too! It's a really good experience. I think you're in there for about an hour - they take a LOT of photos. You back about a week later for a viewing; they sit you in a room with sofas and coffee, and they turn the lights down and do a slideshow presentation with music etc. the pictures absolutely took my breath away.

We went to the one in Birmingham and at no point were we put under any pressure to buy anything, they would have let us out of the door without buying anything else - in fact they did let us go quite happily but I went back in a few days later once I'd made my decision. I did buy a set of pictures, which were horrifically expensive but they are really precious to me; they take pride of place in our lounge and I did manage to knock another 20% off their offer price on the set.

I think it's alovely gift and I'd be really happy if someone gave me another one!

amandajim36

to be honest i think venture is way to expensive they get u there with the £25 offer and then any other photos are an absolute fortune. I dont know whereabouts u are but i can recommend a great girl in bangor who does sitting and photo package of 2 large 2 med and 2 sml for approx £60 then extras are very very cheap compared to venture prices

Milko

Agree with KMCP.
It's a nice idea & a lovely gift but you may actually end up costing your friends money as it's very difficult not to want to buy any photos ...:rolleyes:
Yes we ended up spending close to £1700 :eek::eek: (not at Venture but one of their competitors). My mother in law however, spent a small fortune at Venture when she decided she wanted photos of all the grand kids.

SnowyOwl_2

Venture are fantastic at marketing which perhaps explains why so many people know who they are and what they do. However IMO because they have a high profile it does not follow that they have the most talented photographers. Try a few photographers in your locality to see who can give an affordable quote, and of course inspect some of their work to see who can actually produce the sort of shot you are after.

Other types of gift...maybe open a bank account in the child's name and put some dosh in that...

Jaime-V

Venture - well I don't know anyone who went for the £25 photo and hasn't come out spending less than £1500 the week after!

If you do want to go down the photographers route try Annette @ www.4everphotos.net highly recommended!

ooo000ooo

I'd recommend http://www.studio22photography.co.uk/ cheaper than venture but as good (if not better, compared to a friends venture pics). We were given a session plus free pic as a gift, when we went to choose the pics we bought 2 additional ones and got a 3rd one free, all framed and for about £300, half the price of venture

o_t_e

As long as you just want the free photo I'd say go for it. However if you think it's likely you'll want a selection of images it will work out much cheaper if you check the work and prices of studio photographers local to you. Ask them if they can do 'the venture look' - in practice most, if not all, will be able to give you venture style images significantly cheaper than venture themselves.

dianeio

Bought this as a gift for my sister a couple of years ago. They went along to the Lisburn Road branch for the photo session. The photo's were terrible - and she told me later that the guy taking the photo's just didn't interact with her 3yo son and just didn't try to make the experience a good one. My advice would be to check out the photographers work - not the company name.

gibbyni

We did he Venture one last year, we have done some photography ourselves so when they said when they cornered us in abbeycentre with our wee one we just went to see what it was like. It was something like do you want to enter a competition to win a free photo shoot and a £25 picture. Its to qualify you to see if your likely to spend money with them. most people win.

The photo shoot itself was fun and we enjoyed it, photographer was good with our little one (1yo).

A week later we got the call to say the photos are ready to proof, we went up knowing we where going to get the hard sell, we went into the room and where shown all the photos and we dwindled them down to a few and then given the options for them. To be honest the prices where in my opinion stupid prices. they are nice but to be hones you can get the same quality from local companies doing the same thing for a lot less.

When it got to the end we said that all we anted was the £25 quid one you could tell the where not happy but to be hones we didn't care. The photos where good but in my opinion not brilliant. Again I think a local company would spend more time processing each picture.

So in my opinion I wold stay away from them and go for a local company offering the same service for a lot less. I like the look of the studio 22 but have never used them or known anyone who has so dont know what thay are like.

Also with Venture we where told if we didnt order on that day and came back to order later the pictures would be more expensive, that was also something I wasnt happy about, but again all part of there hard sell.

dianeio

Yes go local, check out Parkway Photography in east Belfast http://www.parkwayphotography.co.uk/ as least this way you can check out the portrait photographers portfolio and book knowing what your going to get on the day - and no hard sale at shopping centres or after shoot.