to be honest i never really got the whole deal part of the photo pass. You can always ask a friendly CM and they'll take a nice photo of you (my avatar) and you dont have to pay a penny or deal with going and doing it, i just plug in and i have all my pictures for life. maybe theres been less b/c it isnt as lucrative in a bad economy when everyone has a digital camera
Please don't take this the wrong way. Your avatar photo sucks. It was taken too wide. You can't see your faces. Too much un-needed stuff in the photo. It should have been zoomed in more. If you'd given your camera to a photopass person, they might have taken a better shot. If the photo we take with your camera comes out fine. Don't buy ours. If we got a better photo. ... Well, t hat is up to you. See comment below.
We've used the Photo Pass system, but find we also hand them our camera. Our last trip in January, we didn't buy any of the Photo Pass pictures as the ones taken on our cameras were just as good, if not better in quality.
Sometimes we have camera issues and we don't realize it till an hour later. That is why it is good to use your camera. Sometimes we have photographers that are just learning. With a precise camera such as ours, mistakes can be made. When using an amateur camera, such as yours, mistakes are erased.
The average photographer on the street doesn't care a flying fig whether you buy a photo or not. That is the care of people 5 levels above them. They care about not being bored in their locations. So use the photographers. Be polite and give them your photopass card with your camera. Management seems to key in on how many sessions you photograph. They think more sessions equals more sales. Grrr But that is a subject for another discussion. Help the photographers out. Let them take a photo with your camera and theirs. They get their sessions in. You get better quality photos.
As to the original poster, you are right and you are wrong. If I'm in World Showcase and a person tells me I'm the first photographer they've seen, I know they are unobservant. There is a photographer at Epcot, right when you enter the turnstiles. If you ran past them to get to Soarin'...not my problem. There is a photographer behind SpaceShip Earth. If you ran past them to get to WSC...not my problem. There are photographers with characters. If you aren't into that....you get the point.
However, due to the economy, the department is required to produce as much revenue with much less expenditure. So ALOT less photographers are out there. You have to search them out. Depending on the park, our hours are reduced to about 35 hours per week, rather than the 45 we were getting before.
So, if you see a photographer, grab them.
It isn't hard. Use photopass as a back up system to your camera. If yours came out, you don't need ours. If your camera isn't the great, maybe ours might be better.
