CADY reviews

This company is a great example of deceptive practices and exploitation of team members. In the interview everything is painted about love for team, students, and staff. Pushing for incredible results and curating an awesome senior photo session. All my coworkers either have their first year or second year with this company. The people I meet who have been here for years are mentally unwell and barely getting by on rent. My day to day was needing to do the most to protect the company's image, their branding, and how they carry themselves. Photographers are overworked with no breaks, no benefits, and the most chaotic scheduling you could ever witness. The people running the studios are under pressure all the time, aren't trained, and really this job is hyped to be the best when it's not. My manager treated us like we were in elementary school and I am sure we were the same age. I wanted to work here to be exposed to more of a creative industry and I am just witnessing my young peers being exploited by low pay, insane expectations, and false lies. Truly if your only options has been fast food, this is a set up. But really do yourself a favor and keep looking.

Low pay, low mileage reimbursement for hours spent traveling to and from schools/events, management really does play favorites with assignments and shifts which I almost understand with how high the turnover rate is for photographers. The next step up from photographer is Lead Photographer and those poor souls are totally overworked. The hours WILL be crazy even when just starting out. You'll have a start time of 4 am and an end time of 6-7 pm. There is usually an hour scheduled into the day for a break but most times you won't get to take more than ten or fifteen minutes break the whole time as the event is overbooked with students and not enough photographers to take the workload down. Most of the job is customer service as you deal directly with students and parents who often have very strong opinions. Again, some of that is understandable but when parents come into the studio for a session and have no idea what they've paid for and are extremely underprepared for the 6-8 hour studio session they've booked it gets complicated and most of the responsibility is placed on the lowest paid photographer to make the session a good experience and not a stressful one. The studio is often overbooked during the busier seasons in summer, fall, and winter.