I almost feel bad writing this review, but future potential customers need to know. The owner of AP seems like a very nice guy who tries hard, but unfortunately, he's just not a good photographer.
AP was hired by my child's daycare to take all of the kids' pictures and class photos. I should have been concerned as soon as I saw that AP was using a green-screen backdrop for all of the portraits. I don't know if this has become standard in the industry, but I do know that you must have the correct equipment and skills to make the pictures look natural. A simple matte backdrop would have been much easier and better suited to kids' portraits.
When the proofs came in, I quickly realized why a green screen was chosen. AP was trying to cover up poor composition and lightening with a garish excess of processing and digital gimmicks. Oh, where to start with the ridiculous shots?
There was one where my child was superimposed with a unicorn in front of a purple tree, wherein the unicorn and tree were heavily pixelated. So not only was it a bizarre choice of editing, but the digital stock was of insufficient resolution.
In another, AP flipped my child's image (in mirror) to shift the gaze towards a slightly transparent version of a different pose. Any parent will tell you that a mirror image picture does not look like your child. Slight differences left-right make the whole appearance look strange.
Further still, the color processing was a mess. The same yellow top my child was wearing in one picture looked bright orange in another. My child's blue eyes looked black in several pictures, as they were washed out by the replacement of the green-screen. And what low quality work with the green-screen! My child looks like a cut-out, similar to the old rotoscope film technique. The lightning during the shoot must not have been setup correctly because in every picture there is clearly a green hue on the sides of my child's face. I assume it is a reflection from the green-screen.
I think all of the digital effects are being used to compensate for a lack of skill, and I think AP might already know this. If you go to AP's website, you'll see some good and some mediocre pictures. First, there is the obvious question: these are really your best pictures, the ones you feature on your website? Second (and this is a problem), the good pictures aren't even his. For example, the picture of the female soccer player (http://apstudioz.com/IMAGES/apstudioz_-_marketing_sports_soccer_girl.jpg) is actually from Shutterstock (http://shutr.bz/17pIiZG), and the picture of the wrestlers (http://apstudioz.com/IMAGES/apstudioz_-_marketing_sports_wrestling.jpg) is actually from 123RF (http://bit.ly/124SUYy).
The best I can figure is that nobody has ever given AP honest feedback. Maybe he thinks all the digital effects are what make a good photographer; I can only guess. He needs to know, however, that he is not good enough to bill himself as a professional photographer. And customers need to know to spend their money elsewhere. read more
