Picture People

My girlfriend and I are expecting a baby and she really wanted to do a «baby announcement» photo. Something she can share on social media and she had some pinterest ideas about using chalk boards to write on. We each know a handful of «photographers» but it is hard to determine who someone really is just by looking at a gallery or web site. It seems like there are quite a few people that simply bought a Nikon camera that was over $ 150 and started calling themselves a photographer.
After having (3) options that were at least $ 100 –200 each, I decided to explore a Groupon that was available online for $ 26 from Picture People. This included a variety of prints very similar to the big package you get when doing school photos. It’s actually a great deal, they gave us a poster, 3 large photos, 2 medium, a ton of small ones… and most importantly, our photo in a digital form so we can manipulate it and add text or send it out on social media.
They have a large studio with a variety of back drops but surprisingly very few props. They do allow you to bring your own so we brought the chalk boards and shirts that you see in the picture.
She took maybe 20 shots and quite a few came out good but only one shot is included with the package. You cannot do a «variety» pack of sorts. They try to upsell you on frames, canvas shots, mugs, buying other poses… honestly we just wanted the one photo. If people are tech savvy and using Groupon, why would they ever order $ 500 packages of photo frames?! We all know about
and more importantly
— You can purchase promotional items, bags, cups, shirts, mouse pads for literally a few dollars.
So I see the need this business serves. It’s good to come once a year and update «THE FAMILY PHOTO» above the couch. Especially with a Groupon, it’s worth doing that for $ 26. But the add-​ons are wayyyyyy over priced. I think places like this will be obsolete soon. This is the «radio shack» of pictures. We just need a large corporation like Wal-​mart to offer what JC Penny did back in the day with family photos.
**Picture People, you guys seem to have attitudes with clients, bad customer service, over booking and making people wait extremely long wait times, over pricing promotional products. You did an ok job with our pictures, but your service would only work for a few. Judging by the reviews, you guys should focus on building a better online reputation, affordable packages, digital prints… and get with the modern times. I mean, Jeez… you guys gave me my digital copy on a CD! New computers aren’t even sold with CD players anymore. Check out Vistaprint and buy some reusable flash drives… or here is a better idea, simply email the photo. Maybe that will allow you to create a mailing list and annually reach out to clients to tell them it is time for their annual photo. Be proactive! Offer seasonal discounts for xmas photos, reward repeat clients… etc. Hopefully you take my advice because your business has potential and quite frankly you are doing a mediocre job.

Argh… I cringe…
This place… crowded, noisy, and we ended up with the cheesiest picture of all time. Like, 7^th grade laser backdrop cheesy. The «photographer» if I may call the part time employee with no experience that (sorry that was harsh but necessary). She kept trying to «get to know our kids» who are 8 month old twins that have no interest in sitting still and smiling at a stranger. I get it, my babes are crying, but I’m telling you I am here for like 1 or 2 poses of a family photo. They won’t cry when we are holding them. Stop trying to sit them alone, point there toes this way and turn their head that way. They are babies and I don’t care if you think you have to get «X» amount of poses to sell me some insane $ 600 package. I wouldn’t go here… in fact I’ll prb never try to take «professional» pictures again. The poses I do at home are just as nice and don’t require 3 hours sweating with children crying at the mall.

Worst service. They overbooked appointments, I was there for 2 hours with 2 kids and no restrooms. Extremely disappointed, considering there high prices they should stick to their appoinment times. Unacceptable. Waste of my time. Unbelievable service… will never spend a dime at this place.

I went there with my son and he was a bit cranky because he had just woken up from a small nap. I asked them for a few mins so we can get ready and was rushed by our photographer. There was no guidance in how to pose and we hardly had any good pictures. I was highly disappointed.

This place deserves zero stars! Our appointment started close to on time but it took them over two hours for us to leave with zero pictures. The pictures came out ok but the staff kept saying the would go to get our pictures loaded and they’d disappear in the back for 20 minutes. We also had to wait to see our pictures an extra 20 minutes because they had to stop to print someone’s pictures who stopped in. Same problems when I came back the next day to choose a few pictures. Also the man taking the pictures kept rudely talking to my son who has a developmental delay. That all was bad enough but the worse part is they do not have a bathroom for you to use at all. I have a 7 year old and a 3 year old and we had to keep running to other stores for them to go.

It was supposed to take an hour and instead is taking two between them running 50 minutes behind and editing being so behind. There is not a toddler friendly place to play to stay entertained during this long wait either. When you have little kids, running this far behind can ruin your day.

I think our overall experience was somewhere between semi-​okay to I-wouldn’t-come-back-here-again. We arrived on time, had to wait about 10 minutes or so to start the shoot. We had our entire family there (7 people) but I told the woman we wanted our 3 year old and 8 month old taking pictures together first. Our youngest one was instantly freaked out by the woman trying to gain her attention and make her smile (throughout the ENTIRE shoot she never gave this up, unfortunately). This woman making clicking noises and trying to tickle her just made her scream louder and cry harder. We got a few shots in between the tears, and I told her that we’ll switch to the set with the girls and just my husband and I. We started that nightmare and that’s when I noticed the woman didn’t seem to have many ideas for positioning us or suggesting «Tilt your head slightly», different backdrops or anything of the like. My older daughter was smiling for her and listening to her, but she continued to creep out the baby. There came a point when I had to hold the baby instead and she looked over her shoulder at the woman and started crying more, and this is when the woman says «Aw, is she scared of me? I think she’s afraid.» Either the woman was dense in the head or new to this whole situation of taking pictures with a baby present. My husband half way through just whispered to me to ask the woman to stop and all I could say was, «Okay…maybe we should just get the entire family in here and take those instead». So, we began that and at this point (25 – 30 minutes later) my 3 year old is getting tired of taking any pictures and posing — good thing we got a few okay ones in at the beginning. The lady struggled through much of the entire family set because she, again, seemed like she lacked much idea of how to position or angle everyone. I personally think we needed a larger area (which I later spotted while we were reviewing the photos, they do have an area that’s larger), but I guess we squeezed everyone in, as she said, «like you love one another». After we got maybe three different awkward positions in with everybody, and my oldest daughter was beginning to cry as well, I declared that we were done. The lady said it’d be about 15 – 20 minutes to develop the pictures. We waited and I was talking to my grandmother and she was saying, «Who the heck was making all those awful noises before? You could hear it through the entire store!»…yep, who do ya think. Well, the pictures were eventually ready and we looked through them, we took five different sets, mostly for the family ones since it was so difficult getting everyone together, and we got two different ones of both the girls together. That would be my only reason for 2 stars actually-​because thankfully we got some alright photos. I recall my experience at the old Sears photo center two/​three years ago at Golf Mill mall and I honestly feel like that experience was better than this — my 7 month old at the time was NOT deathly afraid of the photographer there, and that photographer wasn’t scaring the crap out of my child without end. In order to get a few good baby photos, I’m positive we’ll have to go elsewhere — I think there might be a more professional place in Northbrook Court, and we’ll have to forewarn them of this situation — PLEASE do not try endlessly to make the child smile when it’s freaking them out — I would rather have a few beautiful natural pictures without the kid smiling and looking straight into the camera. Two hours later with $ 160 spent and feeling super exhausted, I don’t see why I would ever go back there.
By the way, I’d like to mention there are NO PUBLIC BATHROOMS here! Half way through reviewing the pictures, my 3 year old says she has to go potty. My husband says «Looks like there’s a bathroom around the corner». My mom walks over there with her and come to find out it’s a changing room, apparently for wardrobe changes. We look to the other side, there’s an office-​type area that our photographer walked into with the manager, and my mom calls into there, «Hello? Is there a bathroom anywhere?» At this point my daughter is crossing her legs. The manager begins to say there’s no public bathroom here, and I immediately say, «What? You have kids taking pictures in here and you have no bathroom?» Nope, no they do not, but she said «Here, follow me» and let her use their employee bathroom… Once again, this boggled my mind how a company is promoting baby pictures, back to school pictures, pictures of the kids, pictures of the family… but you have no bathroom. On their website it states, «Bring along necessary items to help keep your child happy and clean, including diapers, wipes…» So I would guess if my 8 month old had wet her diaper, I’d be changing that baby on the floor or across my lap? Not very nice. Throughout a 2 HOUR PHOTO SESSION, kids will have to go.

This was a pretty terrible experience. We came in about 5 minutes after our appointment time and we were checked in promptly. She told us it would be a few minutes. Then we waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, after a half hour, I asked a woman if she knew how much longer. She asked our name and when I gave it, her reply was, «Oh! I’ve been waitin’ on you!» What? We’d been there, checked in, ready to go for a half hour. How is she waiting on us? From there it just got worse. I have a 4 year old and 1 year old — a photographer needs to be patient, and quick, she was neither. I told her what we wanted done (family pictures, pictures of the kids together, then birthday pictures) and that they were going to wear the same outfits and she asked at least 3 times what we wanted done, if we had outfit changes, etc. Finally, once we were done, she said it would be about 15 minutes. One plus is that it’s located right by the play area in the mall so the kids happily played out there. My husband went in to check if they were done after 15 minutes and one of the photographers told him, «Yep! You’re ready, you’ll be at that computer there» So we brought the kids in and sat and waited and waited and waited. Finally after 10 minutes (of kids who are now super whiney because we are making them sit and wait for pictures instead of play), I asked another employee what we were supposed to do to see the pictures. She said she’d find out, went in the back and it was another 5 minutes before she came out and told us they weren’t ready yet, but almost were. None of the pictures was very good and the price per sheet was outrageous ($ 18! That’s more than private photographers charge). The whole place seemed extremely disorganized and rude and it is definitely the first and last time we’ll go there. Save your money and go to JC Penneys. The photographers are better, and it’s considerably cheaper.

I got a groupon and the reviews for the company were somewhat decent so I decided to try it out with the groupon before we went with the baby AND dog for Christmas card pictures. I should’ve read the reviews for this specific location and thank goodness I checked it out, because it was a horrible experience and I will never go back.
We showed up ten minutes early for our pictures like their site suggested, and the woman at the desk said there was a session in front of us, would we mind waiting? Not a problem, gave me a chance to feed the baby. Didn’t realize until later if the baby in front of us hadn’t had the meltdown he had, we would’ve waited for probably an hour until their session was done, instead of going in between.
The photographer was friendly, that’s the reason for two stars as opposed to one. But our session seemed relatively short compared to everyone else’s (maybe it’s because we had a groupon). After she was done, she told us to come back in about 15 – 20 mins to give her some time to edit.
Everything up until this point seemed to be going fine. We went to go get a tea next door while we waited, and then returned in twenty minutes. This is where things started going down hill. They made us wait 20 more minutes. «Oh it’ll be coming up to view in 5 – 10 minutes.» 15 – 20 minutes later… «Let me go check…» The woman who was supposed to go check stops to talk to another group for ten minutes. At this point we had been waiting over an hour from the original 15 – 20 minutes it was supposed to take. We were finally able to view our shots, and at first I was worried it’d be hard to just pick out one print. Not hard at all. The editing that was taking so long was minimal, and knowing that they choose the «best» to include in the previews, I could not believe some of the ones they chose.
We quickly picked the only one worth printing and waited another 45 (they said it would only be another 15) minutes for everything to print. They were almost all done until they told us something was wrong with the printer, could we wait for them to redo it, I asked if they could just mail it, and the other woman at the desk who was ringing up another customer snapped at me instantly no. I was about to say forget it after all this time, but I didn’t want to leave with a print of my baby laying around. After reading other reviews, apparently they blame their printer a lot.
I thought this horrible customer service was maybe because we were using a groupon, but they treated people spending hundreds of dollars exactly the same.
One of the nicer workers apologized eventually, saying they were short staffed and that’s why everything was hectic, but other reviews also make me believe that this craziness is their norm.
Avoid at all costs!

Samantha did an amazing job photographing our family, especially our twins. We have several shots to choose from as it is typically hard to even get one or two portraits with both kids looking as well as smiling. Samantha was very interactive with our kids and got them to laugh to get some beautiful photos for us, which we greatly appreciate. Thank you Samantha! You were wonderful to work with and so pleasant. Keep up the great work!

Very disappointing. Our CD of «High Resolution» photos were 640×426 pixels, an extremely low resolution that results in unusable prints, even at a small 4×6 size. When we called to complain we received a sheepish apology of embarrassment; they failed to save our photos and thus were unable to provide us with a replacement CD. We will not be coming back here.

I just had a great experience with Deanna at Picture People today. She was very patient with my children and took many amazing shots. They also just moved into their new location, and it seems bigger and brighter inside than the old location. The props were in good condition. I called the morning of, and they were able to accommodate me the same day at a time that was perfect for me. There was no wait when I arrived, and the editing and printing was done very quickly. We will be back!

I never write reviews but it’s been 3 days since we’ve gone in and I’m still annoyed by it. I called the day before and made an appointment. When I arrived, I stood at the front desk for 10 minutes while the girls were just hanging out in the back. When someone finally did come to the front, she looked surprised to see someone there, like they didn’t know someone they an appointment.
Overall, it was a long process but I was in no rush so it didn’t bother me. The photographer was great with my 6 month old and did get amazing pictures of her. When she asked if I had her newborn pictures done there, I told her I didn’t have any done, and she actually rolled her eyes at me.
After the shoot, she became so rude. I’m in sales myself and get that we have a quota we like to meet, but if someone says no the first 5 times, give up. She repeatedly kept mentioning this $ 240 package and would roll her eyes or sigh loudly when I told her I only wanted a few pictures. She then walked away and came back with a glass block with my daughter’s picture in it, and actually brought it up with her at checkout, once again asking me if I wanted the «doodag» (because even she didn’t know it’s purpose) and mentioning other packages I should get.
I’m glad her pictures at least came out gorgeous but I won’t be returning to this location. Both of the woman working that day were incredibly fake and as a hairstylist, I was appalled at the customer service that was provided in this studio.

This is our 2^nd visit… first time went without any issues. This time… Super slow service. Did not get called for our photo session until 50 mins after checking in! Granted that it was a Holiday Monday but when we first checked in and asked how long is the wait, the lady at the front desk said that it’ll be «very soon». Almost an hour later we get called! Afterwards, the photo session goes smoothly. Already an hour and a half at this place and the kids are starving for lunch. They tell us it’ll be 25mins to get the pics on the computer. We tell them we’re going to lunch and we’ll be back in an hour or so. When we get back we speak to the front desk they tell us that all the computers are full it’ll be a «few minutes», 20 mins later we get called! We quickly pick our pics and they tried to sell us a $ 150 cd even though the last time we were there a couple of months ago it was offered for $ 99. Had to wait another 25 mins to get out pics printed! Halfway between that time we flagged someone down to ask about our pics and she went back to check. She came back a couple of minutes later and told us that some of the pics came out «goofy» and they had to reprint them and that it’ll be another 7 – 8 mins… how convenient! All in all a super slow experience and no one really tried that hard to help. It seems that they are more focused on quantity than quality of services. Maybe it was because we had a Groupon?

They don’t even deserve a half a star… Extremely slow, pictures are not that much better either for the price you pay. Waited 2 hour to get a salesperson take the order and I’m still waiting (30 min and counting) for the pictures. I suggest you monitor their computers to see if your name shows up, choose the pictures you want, grab a sales person and make them order it for you or simply stay away…

I wish I could give them negative stars. Literally THE WORST customer service ever. The first woman who dealt with us was nice and told us we would just have to wait about 20 minutes (we were late due to an issue with one of our children and we had called before coming to ask whether we could still be seen or if we should just reschedule, and she had told us we could still be seen). A second lady (dyed blonde hair, early 50’s) came up to us after about 40 minutes and very rudely and dismissively told us that we could not be helped and would have to come back another time. When we told her that we had called and been told to come in even though we were running late, she straight up accused us of lying. We are normally very patient and non-​confrontational, but her attitude and the fact that she loudly accused us of lying in front of a room full of people caused us to get up, approach the other lady and ask her, in front of everyone, what she had told us on the phone. After she had confirmed our story and apologized, the older lady simply began ignoring us and literally giving us the silent treatment. She refused to give us her name so that we could report her to the manager. Worst experience ever dealing with someone who is supposed to be representing a business. To this day we have not received an apology and we were never able to use our groupon. It would be wise to stay away.

Picture people in old orchard super slow service, they need to stop scheduling more customers then they can handle, always running behind, never enough staff. People come in happy to take picture but get upset with the wait time, they should call customers when they are running late or behind. Something needs to change.

I would definitely agree that it depends on who you get and when you go. I was able to figure out a good time right after school and before dinner to swing by on a weeknight in which they weren’t packed at all. Sara R. was our photographer and she was amazing! In a sufficient amount of time (maybe 20 minutes), my kids had some fantastic pictures and poses and weren’t cranky or distracted. She was able to get them to look and laugh naturally and be comfortable with her. It maybe took about 5 minutes to get ready to review the pictures and I loved that Sara wasn’t pressure at all to order more. If anything, she won me over and my business with her pleasant and helpful demeanor. I had snagged a Groupon as an intro to Picture People since we used to go to Portrait Innovations in The Glen before they closed. The cherry on top? We were told that it would take about 20 minutes for the printing, but literally, the printing of our photos were done in 5 minutes!
Overall, if this was just on Sara R. and her service, this review would definitely be 5 stars! However, the quality of the print was so-​so and I’m glad that I snagged the hi-​res cd so I can make better copies on my own. The unisex bathroom also had a horrid smell to it and it would have done better with a recent cleaning, as well. We will probably be back and requesting Sara R. again!

Very sloooooow. First of all, the photographer was scary. yelling and scaring my kid with her crazy loud noises. That didn’t help much and neither did calling him «dude» instead of his actual name. Second, don’t come on the weekend. Only reason we did is because we had a groupon that was about to expire and I can’t take off work during the week. Third, it has been like a hour and 15 minute wait now to review the pictures and I don’t know how long to actually print the ones we want because I’m still waiting to actually see the pictures. My appointment was at 11 30. It’s about to be 2. Fml… Don’t come here. Go to jcp or target. This is a mad house.
Update… The review and the final product all took about 20 minutes. Good luck

I purchased a Groupon to Picture People. It was a great deal & my boyfriend and I wanted pictures with our puppy for fun. We set up an appointment over the phone because there was an animal. They followed up with an email and phone call reminder. We arrived 5 minutes early the day of & the woman wanted us to wait outside with our dog. It was freezing outside & the reason we were scheduled at the time was because it was ok to bring her. We waited 5 minutes after the scheduled appointment & a differently lady was very friendly and said it was no problem that we wait inside. That was confusing…
The session itself was a lot of fun. She was able to get our dog’s attention in cute ways. It went by quickly and most of the waiting happened afterwards to look at the pictures. They have big computers lines up to view your pictures which was nice. Of course there’s a little sales pitch which was tempting because I like the majority of the pictures. Overall, I was satisfied with my experience here. Other reviews make me worry if we lucked out though.