JCP Portrait Studio

My husband and I went there with our dog to get Christmas pictures taken. The website let us choose times up to 7:30pm, which we ended up choosing, and when I called they said we were the last ones.
When we got there the place was super busy. I don’t even remember the photographer introducing herself. The whole sitting was uncomfortable and felt very rushed. The photographer did try to work a little with our dog, but totally forgot to pay attention to us. Didn’t help with creative posing, no real directions even though I told her ahead of time that we need them since this was our first shoot. She also didn’t pay good attention to make our «problem areas» look good. Because of that some pictures are just awful. I expect more from a professional photographer. I feel like we would have been better off talking the pictures by ourselves. And since I thought we were the last ones, I was very surprised when we were passed on to her coworker while she continued on to the next customers.
I was sad that we didn’t get to look at the pictures in between the shoot to decide if they are what we want or if we want to change things. But like I said, she didn’t have enough time, everything was rushed and the next customers were already waiting.
We did get a good discount in the end, or at least that’s what we were told. But it was still $ 100 just for the digital files, which is way too much, in my opinion.
Overall I didn’t like the experience at JCP Portrait and I wish she would have taken her time and paid more attention to details. We will choose a different place for next year’s Christmas photographs

Avoid. We were kept waiting for 30 minutes past our appointment time and by then all of us were tired of waiting. The photographer rushed us through in order to get back on schedule. There was no attention to detail and nothing creative or interesting in the poses.

Really, I should have known that going to a big box store and expecting some good photos really wasn’t going to happen. JCP was running a promotion with no sitting fees, a free 8×10, and a free digital file and we needed Christmas cards so I figured why not.
They are basically a big queue, trying to get people in and out as quickly as possible. I think they schedule sittings for every 15 minutes which isn’t a lot of time. The girl who took our pictures (I hesitate to actually call her a photographer) seemed inexperienced and had no idea how to really pose us. She had us stand, each holding a child, and took a picture and then seemed at a loss as to what else to do with us. I suggested we sit and it was like she’d never thought of that before. We also missed out on what could have been good pictures because she forgot to adjust the lighting as we changed poses. With a 5-​month-​old, you have to get the shot when you can and not screw around with lighting.
I think we also missed out on good shots because they didn’t have cameras that take multiple shots with one click — we had a bunch of pictures with someone blinking which could have been avoided if more than one picture was taken at that time.
I will give the girl credit, she did well with the baby and did get her to smile a few times. We ended up with 2 decent photos but no good ones of just the 2 kids together, which I said I wanted. Not all her fault, the baby didn’t want to cooperate after a bit.
We did get our free photo and purchased a few others and got out for $ 12, not bad. The digital image is low resolution though and I’m afraid to actually use it on cards as I think it will be pixel-​y.
Chalk it up as a lesson learned — we won’t go back.