Venture Photography Experience (Venture)

Member Name: Man with no plan

Product:	Venture
Date:	04/09/09 (399 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Makes you want to take up photography!

Disadvantages: Very, very, very, very expensive. Standard photo poses, poor quality and choice of frames

I too paid £25 for an "experience" which included a 7x5 framed photograph and an hour in the studio. I also "won" an additional 7X5 framed photo in a "competition" run by Venture.

Each of my 7x5 was valued by Venture at £90 and could be swapped for discount on larger framed products. E.g. if I wanted a photograph costing £500 I could take £180 off this and not get the two 7x5 pictures.

The shop was stunning, "free"quality coffee and tea, pine floor, entry by being buzzed in, soft white leather sofas...the list goes on!

Alarm bells started to ring about how much this was all going to cost...

The photography session lasted about 45 minutes, and took place in a room which had half the walls, ceiling and floor painted white. The other half was stuffed with lighting equipment and camera equipment.

We were asked to get into several poses and perform several tasks e.g. have the kids run at us, swing the kids by their arms etc.

It felt very unnatural and we felt we were being put through a series of pre defined poses etc. All the photographs were taken against the white background.

After the session we were told to book an appointment to come back and view the photographs, which we did for a week later.

Before going back we visited a few friends which included two couples and two families with kids who had also had the Venture experience.

They kindly showed us the photographs they had bought, and as I was looking at them I realised they were exactly the same poses that we had been in, although these had been taken by different photographers at different shops! Same format too, all on a pure white background, and all with the same frames.

Then they told me the cost. For a 26x26 plain black frame with five small (not much bigger than a standard photo) it was about £1000. For a set of three photos in a similar frame £500.

We went to Venture to see our photographs. Air conditioned room, cinema style seating and screen, mood lighting, music, man in an expensive suit who said only positive words and smelt of expensive aftershave...

Yep, lots of lovely pics of the kids. Lots of familiar looking ones (actually the same as our friends photographs with us in them instead!)

Then a lot of hard selling.

We stuck to our guns and took our two "free" photographs because:

- I believe that every photographer for venture uses a standard set of poses and photographic techniques e.g. lots of light, lots of colour, lots of close up i.e. there is no originality

- The choice of frames is very limited and the photographs are not mounted in the frames. You are certainly not paying for a professional framing service!

- The quality of the frames are really poor. You really could buy the frames at a pound shop.

- You cannot buy the coppyright to the images and cannot buy images on CD to print and frame yourself. You have to buy them framed. According to the Venture salesman this is a big part of the Venture product i.e. the framing service. The Venture USB costs around £300 and you get ten images on it, however, you cannot print the images from it, they can only be used for computer slideshows and backdrops.

In my opinion you would get far superior and far cheaper results by hiring an independant photographer and taking the printed images to a framing shop.

Remember, that the Venture "experience" i.e. lovely building, white leather sofas, cinema style playback of images, coffee etc. is NOT free. It all has to be paid for some how.

If you do use Venture, be prepared for standarised photography, cheap framing, a hard sell that makes you feel "cheap" if you purchase anything under £500, and a very expensive un unique end product.

And, yes, I have made all of the above known to Venture.

Summary: Mass produced photography sold with a price tag of a one off experience