Columnists, Opinion
 By  Nathan Strickland Published 
8:00 am Saturday, June 5, 2010

Baby photos break the bank accounts

I have been caught slightly off guard a little by how much it costs to get pictures made these days.

I figured diapers, wipes and formula would be the top money takers when it comes to supporting my infant daughter, but I have been sadly misinformed and mistaken. It could possibly be because we haven’t used up our stock pile we gained from the baby shower, but the fact of the matter is, pictures aren’t cheap if you go get some developed or taken by a professional every week.

We have accumulated lots of picture frames over the last couple of months and my wife is fully convinced that she must fill every one of them.

One frame in particular has 12 spots for photos representing each month in my daughter’s first year of growing up.

Thank you to whoever got us that gift!

Now we must go get a professional shot done every month.

My daughter won’t have to worry about not having photos of herself as a baby because we have a million of them.

Now don’t get me wrong, my daughter could win every beauty contest in the world, but do we really need 10 different sizes of the same pose.

You also have to watch those photographers closely. When a person goes into photography they must take salesman classes as well because they are pretty good at suckering you into buying every shot that was taken.

For some reason they always go after the mother, maybe because most men are tight wads and some men will cave in to their wives rather than give in to the photographers negotiation tactics.

Sears has got it planned out pretty well. We worked with a lady that was nice and really helped with our first set of family pictures. She was great and all, but slowly she began pulling us in by saying for each sheet you get one free of the same sheet.

It seemed like it wasn’t that expensive, but then they hit you again when you go to pick the photos up.

It usually takes about a month to get the photos back and the people they send the pictures off to make extra sheets with different sizes highlighting different poses so that when you go to pick up the photos you have already bought, they suck the mother in again and convince her to spend a little more.

The thing that serves to be the most convincing is the question of what are they going to do with the extras?

My wife asked that question and told me she didn’t want a picture of her child floating around some dumpster, so that in return pulled me in to fork out the additional funds.

Honestly it wasn’t that bad at Sears, but I’m sure it could have been way worse somewhere else.

We probably would be better off buying a $600 camera and developing them ourselves before it is all said and done, but who can afford that?

There, I’ve said my peace. Until next time, Later Dayz…

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