Quincy has had a busy (at least for him) past couple of days. On Friday, we drove up to Buffalo for 1) cousin Nathan’s first birthday party and 2) to have Quincy’s picture taken by “professionals”. Quincy did well at the party and his gift was well received by the Buffalo crowd (it was a toddler sized Tom Brady Patriot’s jersery). It must have been good luck because the Pats beat the Bills last night (sorry Debbie – had to get that in) 🙂 His photo experience, and ours, was a little, mmm, erratic.
I’m not going to name the department store that we went to, but it similar to the name KD Nickel. Dara put a lot of thought and effort into this whole enterprise. Just getting him up to the mall on time and awake and fed and clean was a chore in and of itself. The atmosphere at the photo place can be summed up in one word: chaotic. The people there aren’t professional photographers, just people who try and sell you as many pictures as they can while getting you out the door as fast as they can. Quincy was about as cooperative as could be expected and of all the pictures that were taken, we liked just one enough to buy. This is when they try and confuse you.
We had a coupon for a small package of photos and no sitting fee for x amount of money. We, however, were going to need more pictures than that because, I was told, we have to send out this picture to every person we have ever come into contact with on the planet. So the exchange with the young female “photographer”/salesperson went like this (slightly exaggerated for effect):
Photographer/Salesperson: “So it sounds like you will be needing more photos than just what you can get from the coupon?”
Frazzled Parents: “Yes, much more.”
Photographer/Salesperson: (Pulls out pricing sheet that might as well be written in Sanscrit – I can see that she turns to the chapter titled: First Time Parents and How to Sucker Them) “For _only_ xx.xx you can get all those pictures from the coupon and you also get 6 sheets of mix-and-match pictures with edge enhancements which is 4 more sheets than if you just did it the logical way that you already explained to me twice, but you shouldn’t since you need x number of pictures. So, do you see how you it only costs an extra .03 cents for all those pictures?”
Frazzled Parents: “What?”
Quincy: “I want to leave.” (loosely translated from the noises he was making.)
Photographer/Salesperson: “Oh, I also would like to show you these effects we can add to make him look different. This filter ages him by 3 years, this one shows him as a Wookie, this one is great for blah blah blah blah. That, of course, changes around the pricing schemes. Have you decided?”
Frazzled Parents: “Uh, can you explain this again so that we can actually understand it before we drop some serious cash on pictures that, oh by the way, really can’t be looked at very well because your computer system is not very good at all.?”
Photographer/Salesperson: “I’m sorry, I am not allowed by management to make this any easier for you. In fact, if I wait until your child starts screaming, then I can get whatever I want out of you.”
Quincy: “zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.”
Photographer/Salesperson: “Drat!! Since your child has fallen asleep, there is no way that I can extort huge sums of money out of you.”
Frazzled Parents: “Don’t be so hard on yourself. He’s our first child, you had us the moment we came in.”
Photographer/Salesperson: “So then you’ll take the package deal that I desrcibed earlier?”
Frazzled Parents: “Would it help us any if you tried to explain it again?”
Photographer/Salesperson: “I really doubt it.”
Frazzled Parents: “We’ll take it.”
So, after that experience, I can’t say that I’m too excited about going back and having more pictures taken of Quincy. It just seemed like they were hustling people in and out as fast as possible. When did everything become about quantity and not quality? I just hope that one picture is really, really good. It looked fine on their shoddy computer system, but you can never tell with digital pictures. Not too worry, if you are reading this entry, then you’ll most likely get a picture and if you don’t, let us know, because we bought about 1,000. 😉