The Philadelphia Picture Company

Earlier, while on my way to buy a few cookies for my 5 year old, I walked by this business in the mall. An employee asked if I could stop and talk, to make it look like he was working (yea he really said that). I shook my head no, said no thank you (not exactly sure if he heard me) and continued walking. My brother (who has a tbi) however, went over to talk to the employee. After purchasing cookies, I walked over to my brother and told him we had to leave, in order to pick up my mother. He still wanted to talk and I could tell the employee was trying to sell him a package. I explained to the employee that my brother has a traumatic brain injury and wouldn’t be purchasing anything, yet he still tried to sell my brother a package. I told my brother we have to leave now. It was at this moment that the employee caught an attitude and became aggressive saying things like, «You can buy cookies, but you can support a black business. They’re not black owned, But you won’t support us».
That employee was extremely rude, and extremely ignorant. I’d never support a company who employs someone so unprofessional, especially when there are so many amazing, professional black owned photography businesses in Philly. Zamani Feelings is an amazing one. Anthony James is a great one too.

I’m somewhere in between giving 3 and 4 stars for this business. I think I’d like to go there again, so I’m keeping an open mind.
This business specializes in green screen photography. This means, they shoot your photos in front of a green screen, then you choose the background you want (so it could be just about anything). My issue with the business is that «you,» as the customer, don’t actually get to pick the backgrounds. Let me explain how things went for me:
I scheduled an appointment to have photos taken of my kids. I went on a Saturday morning and the photographer, a young man, was really great. He showed me some of the shots and they were adorable. When we are finished I’m told I will need to make an appointment for Monday or Tuesday to see the photos with the backgrounds. OK, really? It’s kinda a pain to get all the way here… but fine… I come back on Tuesday to select the photos I want prints of. The kids look adorable, but the backgrounds they chose are SUPER CHEESY. Nothing that I would ever hang up in my home or give to someone else. So I tell the woman, «I like this pose, but can we change the background to something more… traditional»? She says yes, but that isn’t something they usually do… OK, at least she’s willing. She did that for a couple photos, but cropped them really poorly. I just felt like she didn’t have an artistic eye. I don’t know if it was just her, or the whole company, but she made it seem like that is her main job there.
So I did get some cute photos, but I also got a lot of cute photos with ugly backgrounds. I asked if I could have any photos with just the green screen background and they said they can’t do that because it is their whole business. I totally get that, but if you can’t let people choose their own photos and own backgrounds, your business kinda sucks.
I’ll go again sometime, because it is a local business and I think the photographer was highly skilled in getting good shots of the kids. Next time I’ll know to be super specific about what I want for backgrounds. I don’t know what to do about the cropping issue (seriously, why would you leave a huge space above their heads while cropping off their toes?)… But I’ll get through it.
Oh, and I had to go back there a third time (the following Saturday) to pick up my pictures. Three times is too much if you want to reach people outside of a half mile radius of where your business is. They should aim for doing the shoot and having the images ready for viewing on the same day.