How much have you spent for professional family photos?

[Anonymous]

I'm considering getting a professional photographer to take some pictures of me, DH, and DC. For those of you who have done it, can you run through the finances of it? How much have you spent on the shoot (and how long was the shoot)? How much did you spend on the pictures (how many did you get, what kind, did that include the digital images or was that an extra cost, etc.)? Did you feel it was worth the money you spent? Have you done it more than once? It seems like it's big expense, so I have to decide if it's worth doing and then convince DH. Thanks in advance for any info!

[Anonymous]

Total spent was close to $1000. Had it done with two different photographers on two different occasions. First sitting fee was $325 and spent the rest on photos. In retrospect, I should've just purchased the cd for $200 and printed them myself but still happy with how everything turned out. It was an hour and so worth it. My Picture People photos are night and day compared to this. Second session was only $150 sitting fee but the cd was something like $800 and photos were just nice photos with a good camera, not the quality I experienced with the first. Would totally do it again if I could get DH to not complain and kids to sit still. For each I got 30-40 photos.

[Anonymous]

Even getting 30-40 photos for $1000 is a great deal. I just had a session recently and while the session fee was free (won a contest) I spent $200 and received 2 sheets of photos (5x7, 8x10, 4x6 all = 1 sheet) and ONE digital original. Each digital original ran $100 per, which is just ridiculous. I know that photogs do a lot of post processing work but at the same time, if they're a good photog there shouldn't be that much post processing work to do.

Be advised, if you want a large gallery wrap print on canvas, that will run you 250+ with a photog. If you buy the dig file, you can order them for around $80 with good quality.

From my recent session, I was pretty limited in what I could afford but my husband was also able to get non-watermarked originals off the preview the photog had posted. They aren't the highest quality but are suitable for printing wallets and holiday cards.