The cost of your session fee covers the photographers time and expertise before, during and after your session. We dedicate all of our skills and expertise to ensure that your images truly capture the personality of the subject, and that they are of the highest quality. You will not find a "get you in - get you out" mentality at Life Prints Portrait Design. We care about our clients and put a great deal of effort into making sure you are happy with your final images.

With all of our portrait sessions, we will take as much time as necessary to create the images you are looking for with us. A typical session lasts between 60-90 minutes, although sometimes newborn sessions can go longer. Don’t worry if the baby fusses or if you’re little one needs a break. We can stop for feedings, diaper changes, snack breaks ... whatever you need to make this a comfortable and enjoyable experience.

In addition, with your session fee you will receive an online viewing gallery to share with family and friends, and 3 web ready images on CD for use with email, Facebook, etc.

We certainly understand that the economy is making it tough for a lot of folks right now.  Because of this, we have implemented a payment plan option for our New Beginnings Collections (1st year baby plan) and the Seasons of Change Collection (four year toddler plan).

Ask us about it when you call and we can give you all the details.  Also, we do accept major credit cards which allows many customers to split up their portrait payments on their end.

A reservation fee is required to hold the date & time of your portrait session or event.  Once you have paid your reservation fee, we stop taking requests from other clients for that date and time.  This protects both you and Life Prints,  as we can plan ahead knowing that we have a session or event scheduled for that date and time, and you can be assured that we will be there at the scheduled date and time.  The reservation fee is non-refundable and will be applied towards your final balance. 

Portrait Sessions:  If you should have to change a session date or time, we will gladly reschedule for you based on our availability, with at least 48 hours notice.  Cancellations with less than 48 hours notice and no shows will forfeit the reservation fee.  The reservation fee on Portrait sessions is $90.00.

We want you to take a look at this article written by our photographer Lora.  We think it will help you to understand what to expect when you call and why in fact this type of session is such a great idea.  One of things that we want our expectant moms to understand is that this portrait session is about you.  We want you to be as comfortable as possible.  Part of that is that it is your decision how much or how little clothing you want to wear for your maternity session.  You can be fully clothed and not even show a bare belly or we can have just your bare belly peaking out from under a shirt.  We can also use luxurious draping material rather than clothing to showcase your beautiful pregnant self without actually exposing too much skin, or we can do fully nude, wonderfully artistic and gorgeous portraits where we truly showcase the beauty of your pregnancy.  All of these options will provide you with stunning portraits of this special time in yours and your unborn child's life.  And don't forget that we can make this a family affair and include siblings, spouse/partner, the family pet... whatever makes it special for you.

Do you give us the negatives or digital files from our session?  I want to make copies of the pictures to send to my family.

The short answer is that we do not sell the files from our sessions.  However, we'd like to give a bit more of an explanation on that since there are a lot of photographers out there who do give their clients the digital images.

We generally provide small, low resolution images for use in email, Facebook, etc, but we don’t sell the larger, high resolution files used for creating prints.  Our reason for doing this is that we are unable to control the quality of the images being printed when we give or sell the files to somebody, and that affects our reputation as a quality photography studio when others see images that may not meet our standards of what we want to have out there.  Our goal is to always provide our clients with the highest quality customer service, experience and images we are capable of. 

When you meet with us, we can show you some examples of prints made from our professional lab vs. prints made at local photo finishing shops such as Costco and Walmart.  You will be amazed to see the difference in quality.

We also fully retouch any image that we print for our clients, include special coatings to protect the final prints, and for images printed at 11x14 and larger we mount the images on special backing materials to add further durability.  While you may find many photographers out on craigslist and similar sites who simply give you a CD of images after your session, what we provide to our clients is expertise and quality that comes from our passion for what we do.

Another point related to the previous question is that of copyright.  Sometimes people are confused about this because they are in the pictures or paying the photographer, so therefore assume that the images belong to them.  This can be a confusing subject for many (both clients as well as new photographers), so we try to educate our clients about how copyright works. 

When a photographer is hired to take pictures, the images that are created are the work of the photographer. Because of this, the photographer has all rights to the images that they have created, and only the photographer has the right to make copies of the images or use the images in electronic format.  The photographer is able to turn over his or her rights to the images to a client if they wish, which is usually done with a written copyright release. 

On the other hand, you as the client do have a right to say that you do not want your images used in the photographers business for any reason, or only for specific reasons.  If a photographer wishes to use your images for anything other than making prints, etc. for you, then they must have you sign a model release.  The terms of use for the images are then outlined in the model release and you can say how you do or do not want the images used.  For instance, if our studio would like to use one or more of your images that we take during your session for use on our website or to enter into a photo competition, then we would ask you to sign a model release stating that we have your permission to do so.

So while the photographer always has ownership of the images, you as the client have the right to not let those images be used for any public uses.  Of course, either of those things can be changed through the use of a copyright or model release.

Our biggest concern is that people understand that we put all of our expertise and a lot of effort into creating the images we make for our clients, and we hope that they will respect that by not copying the images they receive from us or taking electronic copies of the images from the internet.  We know there are ways around the protections we have set for our images, but we feel that it is really an issue of education and respect.  In return, our promise to our clients is to always give you our best work and make sure that you have beautiful images to display in your home and to share with family and friends.

We hope that clears this question up a bit.  We're always happy to answer any question you may have about this.