Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Portrait Innovations

What it is: It's officially that time of year again.  I noticed that Renaissance Center by Southpoint already had it's holiday garland up and the weather has a nice chill in the air.  The holidays are almost here.  And with the holidays for our family comes holiday and Christmas card photos.  Portrait Innovations is a great place to get either or both at a very reasonable price.  You can head in with the family, get countless different poses in two different outfit and background changes.  Then, you can look at your pictures on a big screen and crop them and add effects as desired.  Then, pick the poses that you want, have them printed while you wait, and take them home that day.  You can even get packages for as low as $9.95 with no sitting fee.  (Their $9.95 package includes 1-10x13, 1-8x10, 4-5x7, 4-3x5, and 32 wallet sized pictures as well as 9 free holiday cards.)  The photographers are educated in their field and knowledgeable as well as friendly and good with kids, we've had a great experience everytime (and we've been 10 times already since my two year old son was born!)

**Disclaimer-I do have family members that work for Portrait Innovations, so we definitely have a connection.  However, the pictures are really wonderful and I don't hesitate to recommend them to any of my friends or family that need pictures.  Almost all of the Stir Crazy Moms have headed over there at one time or another and gotten great pictures of their kids!


What we liked: We love the reasonable cost for the quality and amount of pictures that you get.  I don't know of anywhere else where you can get so many, high quality pictures for the price.  Since their Christmas Cards are also so reasonable it's a great place to get them done.  In addition, I like how many poses your able to do.  They just keep snapping pictures until they get a good one and since the camera isn't sitting on a tripod they are really flexible.  My favorite part is the fact that you can see your pictures immediately after you take them, pick them out, and take them home that day!  It's no fun having a to wait for your pictures after you take them.

What we would change: As with all portrait studios, they can get incredibly busy around the holidays.  So, my recommendation would be to get holiday pictures done as soon as possible.  In addition, in our experience, we have the best time when we make the first appointment of the day on a weekday so you don't have to wait for everyone else in front of you and the kids and the photographers are both at their freshest.

Website and other important information:

Website: http://www.portraitinnovations.com/

Address: 7001 Fayetteville Rd # 101, Durham, NC 27713-9643 (They also have another studio in Cary and many others throughout the state.)

Phone Number: (919) 806-1085

Hours: Open Tue-Sun 9am-6pm **Call ahead to book your appointment.

Photos: 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We've used Portrait Innovations for our last 4 or 5 portrait sessions, including last year's Christmas cards, and have always been pleased with the quality of the portraits. The pictures are reasonably priced for the quality; however, if you go, be prepared for a big upsell! I always go in with fairly tight budget in mind and repeatedly have to tell the photographer that upsizing isn't an option. I know that's part of their job, but that aspect always makes the experience a little less pleasant.

Anonymous said...

I second the "be prepared for a BIG upsell"! My advice: go in with one outfit (don't take them up bringin on 2-3 changes of clothes) and decide ahead of time if you want a head shot or full body, otherwise they'll take a ton of each and make you feel like a deadbeat parent if you're not interested in dropping $300 on collages and enough copies to wallpaper your bedroom. With just the $9.95 special, we still had enough leftover to wallpaper the half bath!

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