Vendor review: Jerod Foster Photography

www.jerodfosterphotography.com

After getting engaged in December, we decided that we would have the wedding in DFW. As much as I wanted to get married in Houston, we knew it would just be too hard to plan long-distance, especially if I was also in the process of looking for a job. I knew that toward the end of the planning I'd be commuting to Houston every weekend, and we quickly realized how expensive that could get. So we setlled on DFW and began looking into doing engagement pictures. We thought about where we would like to have them taken since we knew location was a big part of any photo shoot. We had moved to DFW in the beginning of the year and I really didn't feel like it meant anything to me, or to our relationship. Of course the logical choice was the Tech campus, because that's really where our relationship was formed and nurtured. So we began talking to wedding photographers to see what we could come up with. Initially, we were thinking that we would do engagement pictures in Lubbock, my bridal portraits in Houston (since we were living so close to Jason's family, I wanted to involve my family in as much of the planning as possible) and then the wedding in DFW. We talked to a few DFW photographers who had packages that included all three shoots, but everyone we talked to threw out pretty hefty traveling charges (one guy flat out refused to travel, which is totally understandable since it would essentially mean 18 hours of round-trip travel for maybe 4 hours of shooting time.)

So we contacted some photographers in Lubbock about doing just our engagement shoot. While the pricing was mostly decent, it still seemed pretty high for an hour or two on campus plus a disc of images. Honestly, photographers make the most money on their packaged deals, so to do just a single shoot for us, it really wasn't economic unless they upped their prices.

Then I got the idea to talk to Tech professors. I contacted a few photo profs, as well as some people in the Mass Comm college who taught photocommunications, to see if any of them did photo on the side as a hobby/small business. I also emailed a few students studying PhotoComm, thinking maybe they'd want to offer a good deal in exchange for using our pictures in their portfolios. I talked to the guy who does most of the photo work for Tech - I'd actually met him while working at the campus computer store because he was friends with my boss. He suggested one of his students, a guy who is somewhat an assistant to him in teaching some of the classes. I got in contact with Jerod, and we had plans to meet on the Tech campus one Saturday in March to play around and take some photos.

I was so impressed with the results! For $200 we got Jerod for about three hours, and he wound up taking over 400 shots. We showed up in formal wear (the red and black) took some photos, changed into nice casual (the purple) took some shots, then changed into our Tech shirts and took some in and around the stadium. Jerod was great with posing us, but also he let us try some things that we had in mind too. It was kind of anything goes. A few weeks later, we received a CD in the mail of the 64 best shots that he had taken, and they were all in high-resolution. They turned out really well thanks to his fabulous camera. We took the disc to Walmart to get prints done, and they were so cheap! We definitely saved money this way, as opposed to having to buy copies from a third party.

I highly recommend that anyone in Lubbock who needs photos done (of any kind) talk to Jerod. If we hadn't already booked a wedding photographer when we hired him, we would have asked him to do it because he was that good. If you're not in Lubbock or if you can't get in touch with Jerod for some reason, I encourage you to check out your own local resources. College kids, especially those in their junior and senior years, really do have a lot of skill in the area they're studying, and will definitely be cheaper than professionals with lots of experience, often with just as much talent. You may even be able to work out a deal of some sort where you exchange something other than money for services (trading trades, if you will.)

All in all, I give Jerod an A+ because the whole experience was so wonderful. It took him a little time to get back to us, even after leaving him several messages, but it all got figured out (just remember he's a teacher/student, so if he's off in the middle of nowhere on an assignment, he may not have cell phone signal to get back to you right away!)