I had a peculiar and irritating Groupon experience with Froz'n Motion ($60 for 200 photos). I wanted a set of professional head-shots that I could use for LinkedIn profiles and project proposals etc.
Scheduling the session was tricky, and when the date finally came 'round, I was kept waiting for 20 minutes in the under-construction lobby of the rental apartment building in which they live and work. The session before me was some pregnancy shoot and it was running substantially late. I was seconds away from cancelling in anger when I was convinced to come up for my session -- which I did, but in a bad mood. Cameron must have sensed this, because he had me pose for a number of shots with a 'screaming' face: trying to diffuse my anger? Subtly teasing me? He also had me pose for photographs with Steve Jobs biography, because of my visual similarity to Jobs' look -- but when I finally got to see the photos, my on-set hesitancy was justified since they're not very flattering (they make me look either like a pretentious poser or an unoriginal follower and I like to think, god help me, that I'm neither). As I imagine is typical with photography sessions, many shots were taken with only extremely minor variations in pose, angles, or expressions.
At any rate, on the way out the door I asked about next steps and was told "All the pictures are mine", and that I could choose to have 3 printed as part of the Groupon and the rest on a DVD. Fine.
Then the two of them went to India for some project for 7 weeks. My photos had no pressing urgency, but still, a very long wait.
Then I was told of the additional costs. If I wanted to forgo the prints and have ALL the photos that Cameron took, 362 of them i.e. 162 photos over the allotted 200 in my Groupon, that would cost $99 . . . and if I wanted the additional 162 photos plus my 3 printouts, that would cost $199. Wait - what?
Well, I knew I wanted to see some of the shots taken towards the end of my session, but I was equally sure that at least half of the first 200 shots would be not useful, being minor millimetre variations of the previous shot . . . but after several emails back and forth trying to reach some agreement on this, in the end I gave up and paid the $99 plus tax - extremely grudgingly. Henna explained that the $99 is charged for the photos, and not for the 55 seconds of time required to drop my digital folder of images onto a DVD burner software, but the idea still grates. It's not my idea of the meaning of "all the pictures are mine". I would have much preferred if I had been told, at the 200 photo mark, that any subsequent photos would carry a surcharge, so I knew this was going to happen while it was happening. Perhaps I lack the requisite respect for unprinted digital files. It's particularly jarring since my session was supposed to be an hour and, after starting 20 minutes late, we did all my photos in 45 minutes . . . so it's not like I was paying for any of their overtime.
When I got the photos home this week, finally, 2 months after the shoot, they were OK -- I ended up with about 5 usable shots out of the 362, and 2 shots I can use for my intended LinkedIn profile/professional purposes. My wife was pretty unimpressed, to be honest, and I felt vaguely embarrassed showing her some of the more peculiar ones (like a set where I'd been asked to pull down on the neck of my t-shirt).
Henna and Cameron seem like lovely people -- and they have lots of good reviews here -- but if you're going to take the Groupon option with them, be aware of the strict guardrails around it. I can imagine Cameron being terrific with boudoir and wedding photography, but perhaps for professional headshots, it's worth doing further research. read more