I received a gift experience with Venture as a Christmas present from my brother. For £25 for the experience and a free framed photo you can't complain... As long as it stops at the free photo!

Venture is a large number of portrait studios accross the UK, around 100 (as well as a few in the USA and Hong Kong), that specialise in contemporary photography.

Our experience began with a phone call from our local studio to arrange our photo shoot (when booked they took a contact number for the recipient). We were told to bring (along with ourselves and our daughter) any items that would bring out our personalities, a bear, a book or such.

On arrival of our appointment we sat in the very stylishly furnished reception, beautifully decorated with numerous Venture photos on the walls. After being offered drinks (the usual tea coffee...beer!) we were taken into one of the studio rooms and introduced to our photographer, who was a very nice woman who immediately made us feel comfortable. We then continued to have numerous shoots taken until we were close to being permanently blinded! You have an hours shoot time which was just enough. We then had to arrange our viewing of the photos which was for about two weeks time.

When we returned for our viewing we were ushered into a viewing room which resembled a small cinema room featuring various stylish photos on the wall. They then dimmed the lights and began the slide of photos to a lovely song (Bruises by Chairlift) of which I had to track down and buy after the viewing as I loved it... anyway back to the review! There seemed to be hundreds of photos to choose from all of which had been well edited by the digital artits to look irresistable, then we had the hard decision of choosing one of the photos.

But there was an answer to this tough choice, we could choose a number of photos, as many as we liked actually. The only problem, the price! Now I can't remember the exact pricing but for the free 7" x 5" photo and frame it would normally be priced at £95. After this the prices were just too much to bear as they reached the £100's.

Now I had a completely unrelated meeting with an area manager for Venture for business reasons and remember I was told the average spend for a family was around £3000+ a time. Now if you are happy to spend this sort of money on portraits of your family then Venture is definately for you as the portraits are stunning but just out of most families budgets.

Back to my experience, after viewing the photos and having to choose one, we had to make it perfectly clear to the chap that we were only after the free photo. Although I felt a bit cheap for not wanting to splash my cash the chap there didn't change his attitude at all and was just as helpful as before which was nice.

Once we had chosen the photo of our choice we had to wait a couple of weeks for them to work their digital magic the we received a call from Venture to say our portrait was ready, it then involved no more than a short stop into the studio to pick it up and we were more than happy, the little fella now stands on a table in our lounge.

Now I can't fault the Venture experience at all, we had a great one it was relaxed and the staff were very friendly and helpful. We were also over the moon at the portrait we had chosen and they made it look great. The only downfall is the pricing as it is very expensive and after going to some similar places I think it is stupidly expensive as we have got the same results for a fraction of the pricing Venture charge.

I would definately recommend Venture for the £25 gift experience as you get and hours shoot time and a free 7" x 5" framed portrait. Now if you have the money to go wild and get a few portraits you can but if you don't have a big wallet you should be more than happy with your portait as it looks very stylish and brings out your personality.