Portrait Innovations

Many factors contributed to the one star rating. The staff was great no doubt, very professional. The waiting room is rather large but lacks seating.The wait times are just stupid. We waited an hour past our appointment before we were seen. Once we finally took a picture, seems like I was buying a car because we had to look at all the pictures we took and see what extra packages to get. This is how they get you, send you a special for a package then they show you all the nice pics at $20 a pop or you just buy another package with more stuff. This place is not cheap, and I see why the wait time is so long. The poor employees have to sell lines and lines of products to clients. The company should make the appointments an hour long. Not fair for anyone to waste their day getting ready and dressing up to be told sorry we are an hour behind. I left spending $120 on a visit that was supposed to be $19.99. This pictures were nice and had to purchase, but the company should have been up front to allow me to plan better and have expectations of paying lots for pictures.

Bait and SwitchI will never go back. They were relatively professional and handled our large group well. That was nice, but after the shooting is where things got bad. Some of the shots had massive composition errors, but still some of them were fine so that was forgivable (thank goodness for digital photography). When we sat down to review the photos and order prints the screen we used to preview them on was terrible. In many shots we literally couldn't tell if someone's eyes were closed or not, or if one of the babies was looking in another direction. I do not think it is too much to ask for a business that is selling images to have proper hardware to view them on so the customer actually can see what they are buying. Even this however would have been forgivable, because we were told we could purchase a CD with high resolution files for all photos and we planned on Photoshopping them ourselves and getting prints else where. We sat with the photographer for about an hour and were chatting about this. The photographer handed several of us copy right waivers as we were sitting there and we thought we were in good shape. We spent about $500 on prints and the CD only to find out that the high resolution files are proprietary to Portrait Innovations. In other words you can't do anything with them. You can keep them, because they don't store anything (this was used to bait us in) but you can't even open them. Everyone in my family was upset and felt misled and even coaxed into buying the CD. The said thing is if we had known we couldn't go home and manipulate the photos our selves we likely would have spent more money that night to order other prints that we wanted/needed instead of what their forced packages limit you to. Now I doubt any of us will go back or have anything to do with them.

We scheduled an appointment and arrived 10 minutes early. Unfortunately, we had to wait more than 40 minutes until we were finally got the pictures taken. This was our first visit to this portrait innovation and we will not be returning. Personally we feel like they were not considerate of their customers schedule.

Made an appointment for 5 PM today- they were not joking when they said they were booked solid. We showed up at 4:30. We checked in and had 6 groups ahead of us. We were told they would call us in an hour or so. We waited in the car for 1/2 an hour. At 5, we didn't want to chance being skipped or forgotten, so we came back, re-checked in & sat in the crowded waiting area. We were told we had 6 in front of us the first time we walked in. Now we had 7 in front of us. Ok. We could have left & eaten somewhere, but we didn't want to take a chance getting dirty or risk being skipped. It's 5:40. Most families came in wearing their outfits, others had wardrobe changes. Slows down the process. Overall, expect a back up on the scheduling, you can leave & they'll call you when it's your time. Once you're in, depending on your how large a group and your kid(s)' ages, it's a pretty quick process. We only had one tween so we were easy. After pics are done, you get to see all the shots- good, bad & ugly. We narrowed it down, were shown packages. The first was $399. We had a mail coupon & declined the first few packages. We walked out happy with our lot. We were told to come back for our prints. We jammed home, changed into sweats, had dinner, then returned. I suggest you eat before you arrive if you are scheduled close to lunch or dinner time so you don't get hangry. The staff is really nice, over worked but still friendly. They need to space out their appointments better or have a dedicated receptionist to answer the phones and maybe call families ahead of time to tell them there are delays.

This place is awesome! Chrystal was awesome!! Very professional and courteous. Very relaxed comfortable atmosphere.

We are very pleased with our pictures! The staff was very friendly and did a great job working with our baby who was a little camera shy. The service was excellent and we had our pictures within 15 minutes. Can't beat the price!

This was our second visit and i thought this visit would be better. WRONG!!!!! Our appointment was at 4:20 pm and we were called back at about 5:00 pm. The staff was not very friendly granted they were working with 2 infants, a 4 and 2 year old but I'm certain it was not their first time working with children and especially infants. If we did not have to wait more than 30 minutes it's possible that they would have finished before the babies got hungry. The photographer asked if we wanted to come back on another day. Really!!!! They do not listen to the customer, I stated I would only be purchasing a group special and individual picture were not necessary and a waste of time. By the time we left we were all tied,hungry and frustrated. Unfortunately my experience was horrible on two separate occasions. We will not be going back.

What a waste of $130.00. The "photographer" was just a kid who was just interested in selling packages, not in taking good pictures. She told us we could not do a change of clothes, but we did it anyway. I wanted a picture book that my MIL could take with her for the holidays. About 50% of the pictures were terrible and the book looked cheesy and cheap. Not to mention that they reused about 20% of the same pictures, twice on two facing pages. My daughter thought that the "lady" didn't like her and told us that she wanted to go home. No other families were there and the photographer/salesperson acted like we were wasting her time. Poor product and poor customer service. By the JCPenney package off Groupon for $25.00 and you will be much happier. The JCP in Hampton does great work and are much cheaper.