Lee Botton

Review of Clifton Photography

The most despicable business I've had the misfortu...

The most despicable business I've had the misfortune to willingly deal with.

The complete point blank lack of ethical consideration made by this company is astounding. The hard sell model completely diminishes anything good that could be said for the photographer herself and some of the staff aren't worried to make you feel like you must rush else blame you for someone 'missing their lunch' (which I was actually blamed for in a follow up email).

I am not an awkward person and I give praise where praise is warranted but I also get angry when businesses make their profit by exploiting people's emotions to get lots of money out of the public (targeting individuals who probably can't afford it no less) with apparently no scruples, no matter how good the quality of their work. I will first say that it is true that the 'free' session photo shoot we got (a joke really because that's the hook of course) was fun and the photographer was friendly and assertive and I'm sure quite experienced. That part of the experience was good and of course, on the high resolution, perfectly optimized, massive Apple Mac screen, the images looked pretty awesome too. Many were actually very good and there was a lot of them so it was very hard to choose when there is this overwhelming sense of pressure.



Clearly, many people feel very disheartened by this companys behaviour from Google reviews and other reviews elsewhere on the web, I expect that the majority of the 5 star reviews are only due to the fact that customers are bribed to leave one aftewards. The problem is not about wanting quality work for nothing as suggested in one other review, its about putting pressure on people and holding the threat of imminent loss of the images if they dont choose to immediately part with increasing amounts of their cash which is the problem. If they offered some secure system whereby customers could take heavily watermarked thumbnail sized images home to think on but no such advance is extended or intended to be.

At the end of the day, I think the fact that they make you sign a great big disclaimer before giving you your photos says it all about this company, they know that their model is immoral and they just want to try to ignore it and redirect from it so that they can continue to exploit people to keep making money which many of their customers feel bitter about. The photographer/s working there are fools as they are doing themselves a great misdeed associating with these light-of-day-conwomen (and men if any are involved, I didn't see them though).