Venture Photography?

SiD the Turtle

SiD the Turtle

SiD the Turtle

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My fiancée has just bought one of those £25 sessions to Venture Photography, thinking it will be a nice present for the two of us and has agreed to pay for extra photos herself.

Now I've heard a little bit about hard selling and extreme prices. Anyone had any experience of them? Are we both likely to end up emptying our wallets and bending over? I don't want to go in and upset her because we can't afford any of it. I look at some of the photos and wonder if all they are doing is using filters in Photoshop, which I could ask any of you lot to do :D
 
My missus 'won' a free session which would result in us getting an hour photo session and one very small print (which is what I think you'll get for £25).

For a long time we've wanted to have some nice professional studio portraits done, and we we're very happy with the contemporary style of both the pictures and the frames.

We ended up spending a fair bit on 0% interest over 10 months, and it is something that we both really wanted and will last us a lifetime. As for the hard sell - we found the photographer and the sales assistant to be very nice and pleasant from start to finish, and we never felt pressurised into a sale.

The final product is stunning; it's 18' square, and has 16 individual portraits of us. Very happy with it, but would only recommend spending the money to someone who, like us, was already looking to get portraits done.
 
My dad won a free photo session for our family, and we went not long ago for the session.....they ended up coughing up £900 (I kid you not) for 15 5x7 photos. (and one "free" photo which came with the shoot)

They are really nice photos, but no way are they worth 900 quid. Ive since scanned them in onto my pc and it cost me nothing. They wouldnt let Mum and Dad buy a disc with all the pictures on. Once Mum and Dad had seen the pictures they just couldnt bear to say no, and that was their lowest price package to get more than a couple of pictures.

They also dont keep the photos, so you cant go back and buy a few more in a couple of months or something. When I had mine done somewhere else I ended up paying £150 for the disc with all the pictures on, which included the release of the copyright so I can make as many copies as I want.

Id go somewhere else if I was you.
 
Me and the missus got given a £165 voucher from her parents, they got it free when they moved out with a certain estate agent. We had our photoshoot on Thursday and it was really fun, then we got the price list. There are two prices on the list, the initial "viewing price" and the RRP, if you buy the photos you want at the viewing, you get the viewing price. They also boast about 0% finance, but this is on photos over £1k paying on a 10 to 12 months basis - all the others are 14% or 19%. We are getting two desk photos which cost £95 each, although we pay nothing for the first one and a bit of a discount on the second one because of the voucher. I will dig my camera out and try and get a decent photo of the price list - I wont beat around the bush here, its a total and utter rip off.

Price list uploaded, see post #7.

Craig
 
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My girlfriend did one of these sessions from a rival company & ended up having a half day session that consisted of :

The experience : Going to the studios, champagne, lunch, makeup etc,

The photoshoot: 40 'thumbnail' style photos- printed on sheets of a4 (say 10/15 per sheet) but also on CD so they can be enlarged & printed etc 11 of these professionally printed at a4.

Sounds a lot but she had such a great day & has these brilliant, professional studio shots forever.

Money well spent & a great experience.
 
BigDannyO said:
Not true, we spent WELL under £1k and got 0%, you just have to 'um and ah' a bit when they tell you the prices :)
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Well I didn't know that, maybe they do have a heart. I still wouldn't pay £900 for 5 photos though!

Anyway, here's the price list - Warning, its huge: Linky
 
why are they so expensive? do they use magic cameras or something?
even considering the cost of the most expensive camera, software and photoprinter, those prices are ridiculous.
 
Aod said:
why are they so expensive? do they use magic cameras or something?
even considering the cost of the most expensive camera, software and photoprinter, those prices are ridiculous.
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I like my photography so I was like a child in a sweet shop in the studio - They use Nikon D2X with a Sigma 17-70 stuck on the end, expensive but still doesn't justify the prices they charge! I think they just buy a copy of Nik Color Efex Pro and go mad on the photos for the effects too!

Just a snippit from the other side of the price list:

"Because of the true bespoke nature of our products we are unable to take deposits for orders (except when using our Easy Payment Plan); you must pay in full at your preview."

"Special Preview prices are discounted from the RRP and are only available at the first preview appointment booked."

"Venture Easy Payment plan is subject to status and requires identification to be provided at the time of the preview. APR: 12/24 months - 19.9%, 36 months - 14.9%. 0% interest is also available on orders over £1000 for 6 or 10 months."

Meh, can you tell I don't like giving my money away? ;)
 
Cr4iG said:
I like my photography so I was like a child in a sweet shop in the studio - They use Nikon D2X with a Sigma 17-70 stuck on the end, expensive but still doesn't justify the prices they charge! I think they just buy a copy of Nik Color Efex Pro and go mad on the photos for the effects too!

Just a snippit from the other side of the price list:

"Because of the true bespoke nature of our products we are unable to take deposits for orders (except when using our Easy Payment Plan); you must pay in full at your preview."

"Special Preview prices are discounted from the RRP and are only available at the first preview appointment booked."

"Venture Easy Payment plan is subject to status and requires identification to be provided at the time of the preview. APR: 12/24 months - 19.9%, 36 months - 14.9%. 0% interest is also available on orders over £1000 for 6 or 10 months."

Meh, can you tell I don't like giving my money away? ;)
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a D2x and Sigma Lens? bloody hell, for those prices i'd have expected something like a Canon EOS1Ds MKIII with Canon 85mm f/1.2 lens!

whats so special about these photos? weird effects or something?
 
Aod said:
a D2x and Sigma Lens? bloody hell, for those prices i'd have expected something like a Canon EOS1Ds MKIII with Canon 85mm f/1.2 lens!

whats so special about these photos? weird effects or something?
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Some of them have odd effects (I think they look ok, but are do-able in photoshop yourself...) check them out for yourself: http://www.thisisventure.co.uk/images.aspx?cat=4
 
Venture is overpriced beyond belief. They take loads of digi pictures, then do the Photoshop stuff and stick them in crap frames and charge stupid money. Sure, some of the shots we have and others have are nice, but any good photo shop should be able to do as well if not better for MUCH less money.
 
Cr4iG said:
Some of them have odd effects (I think they look ok, but are do-able in photoshop yourself...) check them out for yourself: http://www.thisisventure.co.uk/images.aspx?cat=4
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from what i saw on their site, their photos are oversaturated and overexposed. something any halfwit with an EOS 400D and a couple of flashguns and a white curtain/studio-wall could do.

if i worked there i'd be embarrased.
 
SiD the Turtle said:
My fiancée has just bought one of those £25 sessions to Venture Photography, thinking it will be a nice present for the two of us and has agreed to pay for extra photos herself.

Now I've heard a little bit about hard selling and extreme prices. Anyone had any experience of them? Are we both likely to end up emptying our wallets and bending over? I don't want to go in and upset her because we can't afford any of it. I look at some of the photos and wonder if all they are doing is using filters in Photoshop, which I could ask any of you lot to do :D
Click to expand...

My ex-gf and I had a session there.

She bought me the #25 gift voucher as a gift (even though my uncle is a studio photographer - duh!)... we went there - the experience was a laugh and yes they did try to push for us to go for the extremely overpriced increased size pics with contemporary frames - and yes they do look good. The look is acheived by specific studio lighting and photoshop comes into the equation too.

One thing to be aware of... when they were showing us the presentation, the projector they were using must have had quite a low contrast ratio as the output had a lot more contrast in it than what we saw. Which for most things would be a good thing, but not this photo. I don't think they put much effort in the photos for the 25 quid voucher.
 
Not read the whole thread but I'd recommend them! Maybe not ideal if you want a whole shoot from which you intend to buy many photos but certainly worth it for a little bit of fun!

My girlfriend bought me the package last Christmas and we had our shoot a few months later. I'm fairly shy and certainly didn't like the idea of being infront of a camera but the staff were brilliant and we came away having had a really fun time.

Two weeks later we returned to view the photos and the majority were good... They did charge *a lot* for prints but the girlfriend and I had decided before going back to get only the free photo but nothing else. We failed a little bit by paying an extra £50 for a slightly larger print (As we were really happy with the photo). I'm sure the guy could have tried to sell us a little more but he seemed to understand our stance and left it at that.

In all it was a fun few hours for the whole experience and certainly something I'd recommend. If you can ensure you only stick to the free one (And see the shoot as solely that) then I'd say it's definitely something to look forward to... And doesn't break the bank.

Wanting a few pics though? If so, I'd probably suggest elsewhere...

Cheers.
 
RastaManBob said:
Not read the whole thread but I'd recommend them! Maybe not ideal if you want a whole shoot from which you intend to buy many photos but certainly worth it for a little bit of fun!

My girlfriend bought me the package last Christmas and we had our shoot a few months later. I'm fairly shy and certainly didn't like the idea of being infront of a camera but the staff were brilliant and we came away having had a really fun time.

Two weeks later we returned to view the photos and the majority were good... They did charge *a lot* for prints but the girlfriend and I had decided before going back to get only the free photo but nothing else. We failed a little bit by paying an extra £50 for a slightly larger print (As we were really happy with the photo). I'm sure the guy could have tried to sell us a little more but he seemed to understand our stance and left it at that.

In all it was a fun few hours for the whole experience and certainly something I'd recommend. If you can ensure you only stick to the free one (And see the shoot as solely that) then I'd say it's definitely something to look forward to... And doesn't break the bank.

Wanting a few pics though? If so, I'd probably suggest elsewhere...

Cheers.
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you do know that £50 will buy you a 6x5 foot full colour gloss print from a professional print shop?
 
I wouldn't go there with any kind of desire to be purchasing prints.

I wouldn't however, mind working there :p
 
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