What If My Senior Doesn't Like Their Senior Portraits?

At Mike Fox Photography, the process is designed to prevent that outcome before the session ever happens. Families see and hold the actual physical products at the consultation. They see their images on screen at the ordering appointment, before anything is purchased. The direction is specific and consistent across every session. It hasn't ever happened, and the reason is the process itself.

What happens if we don't love the images?

This hasn't ever happened, and there's a reason for that. Loving the images and loving the products are two separate questions, and the process addresses both.

On the images: during the session, we stop periodically so you can see what we're getting. A week or two later, you see approximately 60 to 80 curated images on a screen large enough to see how they'd actually hang on your wall, and you're guided through the selection. There's no gallery link to scroll through at midnight making calls you'll second-guess. You're looking at the photos together, in the same room, with the whole process already familiar from the consultation. If for any reason the session doesn't produce images worth purchasing, we'll refund the session fee or schedule a reshoot.

On the products: this is addressed before the session ever happens. At the consultation, you hold the actual albums and prints, the same products you'll be ordering. Mike Fox Photography uses high-end vendors; the albums are the same quality wedding photographers use for their clients. Before albums or announcements go to print, we send you a proof of the page layouts — one last chance to check that everything is exactly right before the order goes into production. If something comes back from production with a defect or an error, it gets fixed.

Why do families rarely regret their senior portraits?

Because they're not deciding blind.

At the consultation, you've already seen the work across different locations and different types of seniors. You've held the actual albums and prints. You chose the locations, talked through the outfit count. So by the time the ordering appointment comes, you know the photographer's style, you know what the products feel like, and you've seen the images on screen before committing to anything.

The families who tend to regret portrait purchases made them from thumbnails in an online gallery, under time pressure, without having seen the products in person first. That's a different process.