Bruce Covill Photography

I purchased a Groupon-​type package and have only positive feedback regarding my interactions with Bruce.
I called to discuss location options, Bruce was very patient and explained the plus and minuses of each location. When the weather looked bad for our photo shoot, he contacted us the night before and directed us to reschedule-​without any limitations of the original coupon.
The shoot itself was very pleasant. He was prompt from start to finish, he kept everyone at ease with his shooting style, (even with two teenagers in 95+ degree weather), and he handled strangers in the background diplomatically.
He sent easy to view and order proofs from dozens of choices. The final prints arrived within 2 weeks of ordering, and are top quality.
I highly recommend him for anyone looking for photographs with a casual and natural setting. Bruce is not a newbie to this profession, and I appreciate how comfortable he made my family feel, and how easy he made the ordering.

First of all the photographer was nice. However, the entire shoot from scheduling to receiving the prints was a big pain in the butt. I first called to schedule our shoot at the 360 pennybacker bridge which the photographer calls «the rock». It was until after calling that I found out one must jump through many hoops on the website to find out you can only schedule these groupon and living social deals during the week in a four hour limit during the workday. It was extremely frustrating on the phone bc I had already stated four times very clearly that we cannot make Monday through Friday before 8pm because we have very solid work schedules. He was nice and worked around this but only after I felt he became pushy and insincere by pressuring us wanting to know exactly what we did and why we couldn’t make it during those times. The statement of we work was not valid until I finally stated that I wish we would have never purchased this on living social then. He then said he would be flexible and work us in on a weekend. When we got to the photo shoot again he was a very nice person. Unfortunately, the poses he put us in were horrible. They were very old-​school and extremely uncomfortable. Which we tried to say something during the shoot but he laughed it off as a joke. As we suspected all the poses looked horrible in our digital shots. We can’t use them because it looks like we are trying to put our bodies in awkward positions, leaning on trees with our body twisted awkwardly or unnatural does not make for good pictures. I also specifically requested shots with the Austin city skyline in our background. He happily posed us and started taking shots. Unfortunately, he posed us in a way that our bodies covered up at large portion if the skyline in every single shot. It was very annoying going through the proofs. Additionally, we had horrible white spots because he was using a flash outdoors even when there was no need for it. There were only 2 photos that we could use from about tons off images that he took. Throughout the entire 45 minute photo shoot there was graffiti and garbage everywhere (obviously no fault of the photographer) and the photographer kept making comments and repeatedly commented throughout the shoot that he has a nice tool to get rid of the graffiti and garbage so we didn’t need to worry about it. Come to find out when we got access to the digital website with our password we couldn’t access the high resolution images from the site. The photographer said that we couldn’t get high resolution on the website because it was to prevent piracy. Well first of all, that does not prevent piracy. All good photographers today will provide high resolution images on websites when they are password protected, which this website was. It was a very bad excuse. Piracy can also occur when digital images are put on a disk or printed and scanned which he allows. The photographer was very nice about getting us an image early because we wanted to use one for our Christmas card. However, graffiti had to be removed before he could email us the digital because I could not download it high-​res from the site which should have been allowed. He removed the grafitti and then emailed the digital image for my cards. A few days later I went back and chose the image for our print package that comes along with the living social deal. I chose the image we actually wanted printed for our home (a reminder there were only two usable shots) and noted in the comments section to remove the graffiti. I didn’t realize that there actually wasn’t any graffiti in the second shot however the photographer felt the need to make this a point to me. He also felt the need to say that he already removed graffiti from the digital shot for the Christmas card which he typically does not do for digital photos. Well he is the one who spent the 45 minute shoot telling us that he had a ‘nice little tool to remove all the graffiti so we have no reason to worry’. It was very trivial and I ended up replying to the email that I was only under the assumption of comments he made during our photo shoot.
Honestly, the whole thing was a mess. Bad photos and not the best service. But the guy was nice which is hard to come by these days. However, I wish I never would have bought the deal as I would have much rather paid full price for a more relevant up-​to-​date photographer. Lesson Learned!
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¾/​2014 update based on owners comments. Owner was aware that I tried using the website automated system and that it wouldn’t work properly because I was on the phone for approximately 20 minutes with him trying to help me navigate the system. It never worked and he ended up having to manually make changes. This review was sent to him months prior to posting on Unilocal for his review via living social marked as «share with the business» and many disappointments were expressed in direct email to him after the shoot with no response

I purchased a Groupon for a one hour photo shoot after researching and reading lots of positive reviews about Bruce. I was apprehensive due to hearing some recent friend’s disappointment with various professional photographers they had used. However, I figured worst case I was out $ 60.
The photo shoot location I picked was the 6^th Street location. The purpose of the photo shoot was for my daughter’s freshman year in high school and to get some pictures of my daughter and her mentor from the BBBS program.
He got rave reviews from my daughter and from her mentor. And if anyone knows 14 yr old girls, they know that speaks volumes.
It took 1 ½ weeks to be able to preview the proofs online. It was well worth the wait! There was not one bad picture in the bunch. It was really fun to see how he edited some of them. He had before and after editing pictures available online. He edited out things like cars, people’s shadows, people in the background of the picture, etc. and the only reason you could tell the after picture had been edited was because I could see the before picture! Fantastic job!
There were lots and lots of poses, location changes, etc. They really moved around and got a lot of work done in an hour’s time!
I cannot express how happy I am with Bruce’s work and how the pictures turned out. He did an amazing job and I will recommend him to anyone I come across looking for a photographer!
His prices for prints is very, very reasonable. And if you get the Groupon, it’s downright unbeatable!