AG Gallery

My husband and i had a similar experience as the previous reviewer. As parents of a newborn, you do put some trust in the people you are working with and base decisions on previous experiences. We felt pressured into spending way more money than new parents should have spent. Since this experience, we have been able to a) sleep a little more and thus b) have the where-​with-​all to make better decisions, and have since found multiple photographers who did just as good a job in terms of taking the photos but were significantly more professional in their handling of the job and the resulting photographs.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and ours is that we wouldn’t recommend this studio in the future.

We learned about AG Gallery through a promotion on The Bump. A free shoot with your kid or kids, and you view the proofs and pay for what you want. Seemed like a fair deal for both sides. The shoot was pleasant, and the gallery owner and her assistant were professional and good with the kids. The only thing that I was confused about when we left was the pricing structure, which we were given some information about, but ominously, very little direct information.
When we got to the proof review session, everything was again very professional and slickly put together. We were welcomed in and shown a series of curated (and edited) photos in a powerpoint style presentation set to a happy soundtrack. A lot of good photos, and we were interested. But then the high pressure sales tactics began.
At first, we got the «our paper» «our books» «our canvas» speech about how much better their work was than any of their competitors — better quality paper, canvas, books, etc. It all sounded nice, and we were interested, but little alarm bells started ringing for me. We asked for and got a little more detail on the pricing, which was fairly steep but not impossible for collection pieces. If the quality was as good as they said, it would be worth it, right? We asked for photocopies of the photos to see how they might look in our house. They said they couldn’t do copies, and seemed to balk at giving us a proof sheet, but after we insisted, we got a sheet of tiny (1×1) prints in a camera strip style orientation.
So, after our lecture on how good their product was, we walked out and started talking about what we were going to do. You only get original files if you spend a significant amount, and we resolved that we would spend that much, given that the photos are of our kids. We didn’t have a final decision on what the expenditure would look like, but we were prepared to spend between $ 2000.00 to $ 3000.00 on the final product.
Then life intervened. We had a roof leak, and then another, and paying for home repairs became paramount. After a few weeks, the reminder e-​mails started coming, and despite telling them that we hadn’t made a final decision, we kept getting increasingly frequent e-​mails and texts pressuring us to make a decision. Given that we needed some more time to clear the home repair process and hadn’t yet made a final decision about what to do with the photos within the house, we told the owner (Gina) that we were dealing with home expenditures, remained interested and would be back to her shortly.
Her response, in short, was «pay up or I delete your files.» It wasn’t quite that stark, but the options were: #1 — make a decision and pay them money immediately for their product; #2 — pay $ 200 to «archive» the files, or #3 — have the files deleted. (Why a digital file requires an «archive» fee is anyone’s guess, but I interpreted it as a means to force us to give them money. No word on whether the «archive» fee is applied to your final order, so your mileage may vary).
So, feeling backed into a corner and without a final decision on what we would do, we chose to approach Gina about buying our favorite files outright and figuring it out later. $ 175 per shot, we were told. We said ok, and told her 4 files we were sure about and one we were unsure on. Rather than engage us nicely, she sent us an invoice for 5 files, payable that day or she would delete our files. From the text: «Hello. We have invoiced you for the digital images by email. This must be completed and paid for by 7:00 p.m. tonight to avoid the images being deleted.» Given her response, we asked her to resubmit the invoice for the 4 files, and we ended up paying the $ 750 (with tax) for the four digital files. So, instead of getting $ 2000-​$ 3000, which we would have likely paid if they hadn’t continually pressured and eventually threatened us, they got $ 750 and some bad customer karma.
As a final, ‘insult to injury’ coda to the story, the digital files are not sent to you on a USB or some nice packaging. For $ 750, you get a download link link set to expire the next day (implying yet again if we didn’t get our files and go away we would lose our now paid for digital files forever).
All in all, AG Gallery was a very frustrating experience. Gina takes some nice photographs but is terrible at customer service. From the way she handled this situation, the «free» sitting is a form of bait and switch, where they get you in for shots and then try to extort you later. As a matter of comparison, we also did a shoot with Classic Kids in the city (for a sitting fee) that involved photographs of equal or better quality, and surprisingly, significantly less cost than AG. (Strange that a gallery on Armitage in Lincoln Park can give you a bound photograph book for less than half of the cost of an AG gallery bound photograph book). And with much, much better customer service to boot. I guess you get what you pay for…