I thought the company was some sort of a franchise with a few local
outlets, but upon digging, I've found that it is a well-established outlet
with one office and a studio in Austin, and just contact phones (look
like cell phones) in 5 more Texas cities, including Houston (covering
Eastern, Central and a portion of Western Texas, but not North Texas), and
seemingly no studios/offices in those cities.
So, I suspect there are local photographers who are employed by the "head
office" to take photographs at school-age organizations, and probably
some regional home-office-based coordinators who are answering calls and
providing some customer service.
The ordering is done via standardized printed forms (and some reordering
can be done online). I suspect that printing and order handling is done
from the central office.
So, I don't know what the photographer gets.
The company seem to have established relations to schools in many ISDs
throughout large portion of Texas, as well as children sport clubs
and outlets. (From my experience, schools and kid-sport outlets are very
conservative and do not tend to shop around.)
They have a few standard scenarios with schools.
With our school it works as follows:
They require parents to preorder the group photo.
(Actually they push "packages", including mugs, magnets, etc. with
the option of 8x10 for $13 buried deep.)
On the Picture Day, they take group photos and individual photos.
Then they send an order form with two individual photo thumbnails (2x3)
on it.
With some other schools they require pre-orders of the individual photos.
The prints aren't cheap (and I understand that the "session fee" is
built-in into the packages price).
For these individual photos, the cheapest "package" that includes
a 5"x7" (two of them, and then a few smaller ones) is $31. A package that
includes an 8"x10" (one) and a bunch of smaller ones is $46.
The individual photos (as far as I can tell from the crappy 2x3
"proof"/thumbnail), a head shot, and a 2/3 of a body shot, seem to be
of a reasonable quality in our case.
Here is a more generic order from for a different school that I've found
online that gives an impression of their package pricing:
https://www.fortbendisd.com/cms/lib/TX01917858/Centricity/Domain/7977/Photo%20Texas%20Fall%20Order%20Form.pdf
http://www.santaannaisd.net/userfiles/19/my%20files/picture%20forms/doc080116-08012016124701.pdf?id=167
Most of Yelp reviews are negative:
https://www.yelp.com/biz/photo-texas-photography-austin-3
They seem to over-promise and under-deliver. But the quality of service
varies, most likely depending on the local photographer and his/her
skills and ethics.
Ghm.. I see that, indeed the photographers aren't paid much (at
least one of them: $15/hr), - according to Glassdoor:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Photo-Texas-Photography-Reviews-E886139.htm
Well... Paul, your question was helpful in finding the answer to mine.
Igor
Tue Feb 20 19:58:00 EST 2018 Paul Stenquist wrote:
Depends on what the photographer was paid. Probably next to nothing, so
the results are proportionate.
Paul
On Feb 20, 2018, at 7:01 PM, Igor PDML-StR <pdmlstr at komkon.org> wrote:
Dear PDMLers,
I'd like to hear your opinion on this, especially from the point of view of
those who did/does "seating session" photography (if anybody).
We just received the annual class photograph for my child. (We usually do not
purchase individual ones, but buy group photographs, as a memory for the
kid.)
We've had some photographs from the previous years, and the quality varies.
Most of the time all these photographs are ... ghm ... at the
"OK" level. But it is expected, so, I am sort of content with that.
It was only once that the quality was above my expectation.
And I think it is typical for different times and places:
I remember that most most of my formal class photos were mediocre. One was so
bad that the parents rebelled and made the photographer to redo the shooting
properly (or maybe they got a different photographer, and forced the first
one to refund the money, I don't remember).
So, here comes my question: On this year photograph, I see two kids with
their eyes closed, and three with their eyes not visible at all because
their glasses were totally covered by the flash reflection.
So, 5 out of 19 kids (and 3 teachers) have their eyes not visible.
Do you think this is normal?
My thinking is as follows:
Seating-session photographs (i.e. posed) is a separate area where one needs
to have a skill to have it right (setting, light, poses, people
management), plus some when it concerns kids. And that's what the
photographer gets her/his money for. I do not expect
a masterpiece, but I'd like to see no trivial problems.
Is my expectation unreasonable?
Thank you in advance,
Igor
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