Crappy Photo+Bridal Studio Experience

Been having really bad mood swings lately. Nah… can’t blame it on the hormonal changes cos it’s not the time of the month yet. It’s all the wedding preparation that’s screwing me up.

Evil problems  are starting to show their faces. It started with the studio photo shoot done over 2 months back. We got conned by the bridal shop of our money. We went to one particular studio in SS2 to have a few shots of us  in a wedding outfit. Since it’s only a simple 1 outfit + 10 poses with 1 poster size photo with frame package, we thought it’ll be cheaper & faster. Initial package costed us RM550 for the gown rental, make-up, 10 poses shot for selection to make the 1 framed poster plus a softcopy of 1 pose claimed to be in high resolution in CD-R. When I asked for the size of the softcopy, they answered 5MB per photo. That sounded big enough.  So, I requested for the price of an additional softcopy & they told me it’ll cost RM25 each. Since there will only be 10 poses, so I agreed to purchase the additional softcopies too. Deposit paid & date for shooting confirmed.

When the day came & we went to the studio to have my make-up taken, the photographer told darling to have his glasses taken off. I told darling of their request earlier but darling refused to comply with their wishes. His reason was that being a professional photographer, a good photo can be taken irregardless of the presence of eye-glasses. Glare can be avoided if the photo is taken from a certain angle with proper lighting technique. I agreed with darling cos I know I can take photos of people with eye-glasses without the worry of glare. Especially easier if it’s in the studio with the many light diffusers, etc.

The photographer requested to have darling’s glasses claiming he wanted to test the lighting with the glasses. After taking the glasses, he disappeared into a room which we tot was the studio room. Mins later, he reappeared… Handing over the glasses to darling, with 2 pieces of napkins containing darling’s lenses! He dismantled the lenses from the frame without asking darling’s permission! Boy… imagine the fire burning inside darling’s head!  I could hear him loud & clear from my make-up room.

Gosh… my heart started beating faster. I started to get upset. Darling saw my upset face & decided to cool down for my sake. All we want is to have our photos taken fast & in good mood. So, he told the photographer to have the lenses back where they belong & luckily the young chap obeyed. Our photos were taken with darling wearing his glasses.

After the photo shooting, we were given a piece of printout to choose which poses we wanted for the frame & softcopies purchase. We were told that the photos were not digitally touched up yet & they will do that after we’ve given them our choices. The lady manager (very “tai tai” look: translation = rich, overly groomed old lady) managed to persuade us to have another smaller poster made. After we agreed & given our choices of the photos, they insisted that we pay the full lump-sum before we leave. So we did… in CASH! They required 3 weeks to produce the frames so we agreed.

Time came & we went to pick up our things. I was a little disappointed with the quality of the framing. They were done in a very cheap manner, fragile & very plastic feel. The artwork was done without a second thought to the composition. But I decided not to stress on them too much. We took the CD-R with the 2 frames & went home. Upon opening the files, I was shocked to find that the photos were in very low resolution. Good only for web usage or passport size photo printing. Further more, the photos were not touched up as they claimed. Each was saved directly from the RAW files without any color or noise retouching.

 I was upset so I decided to clear the matter with the bridal shop personally. Upon reaching the studio & laying out my concern, they argued that they’ve saved the file in the proper size. I insisted they open the files in Photoshop software & pointed out the dimension of each photo was below 2 megapixels. Each file size was only 100+ kb each, NOT the 5M they claimed. But they kept pointing at the “pixel dimensions” corner of the image size window & claimed that that was the 5M they meant when they agreed on the file size to me. They refused to budge from their beliefs when I explained to them based on the document size as reference. In the end, they offered to resize the files for me to 8M. I was in such furious state that & decided to end the whole conversations  & agreed.

I took the new softcopies (which was only a mere 3 megapixels each) and went off, vowing never to enter that shop anymore. My final words to them was “Whatever I paid for these softcopies are far beyond what they’re worth each!”. The lady manager continued to reply but I just stormed off, refusing to hear her irritating high pitched voice any longer.

We will never recommend Victoria Wedding Collection in SS2 to any couples who are looking to do their wedding shots. UNLESS they are willing to splurge their money unnecessarily. Come to think of it, they treated us the way they did MAYBE cos we didn’t want to get the bigger packages they offered. Heck… we’ve paid a total of RM1200 for only 10 poses with 2 poorly done frames! Later I found out that we could’ve employed a freelance photographer to do a 6hrs shoot with 300-400 poses in real high-resolution files with that amount of money spent! And each photos are retouched!

I wonder how many innocent, uninformed couples have they conned so far?

Hence… the beginning of my pre-wedding nightmares…

~ by Asther on October 26, 2007.