So I’m taking my board exam this week and boy is it coming up fast. I’ve read thru most of USMLE Step II Secrets and my USMLEWorld scores are coming up slowly but surely! Stay tuned for the recount of the exam experience!

Well after 2 trips, 1.5 gallons of gas, 30 minutes of photoshopping a nice older photo of myself, I am empty handed. An hours worth of my life gone because of Wal-Mart’s “We don’t print your pictures because they look too professional” policy. I just wanted a 61 cent photo of myself to put in a picture frame for my mother’s birthday, nothing more.

Anyway, originally I photoshopped an old picture of myself last night and put a nice “clouds” background on it to give it a nice look. My fiance uploaded it to her wal-mart.com account to be picked up the next day. After getting done with our surgical cases today, we went to Wal-mart to pick up our 61 cent picture. I sent her inside to get it and she came out 10 minutes later seemingly flustered. The girl behind the counter said she needed to see “The original photograph” before she could give us the picture. So I drove all the way back home, picked up the original picture I had cropped myself out of to paste on the background and drove back to wal-mart. Upon arriving, I went in with my fiance to pick up the pictures. Upon seeing the photograph, the lady scoffed and said that it looked “professional” even though it had NO SEAL or any special type of photograph paper to indicate it was a copyrighted photo. They refused to discuss the situation with us. We left empty handed. Yes, a 61 cent photo of a child that was standing in front of them (In grown up form of course)

The reason why this happened is that Wal-Mart tries to protect itself from infringing on “photographer’s rights” by having a strict policy on not printing professional pictures. While the sentiment is admirable, unfortunately, most employees will not take the time to look for watermarking on original photographs. Therefore, they just deny everything that looks remotely professional. This means if you have one of the nicer 6.1 megapixel cameras and you take a really nice, professional looking photograph…they will not print it for you, nor will they be likely to print ANY of your photographs from that order. If you use any type of photo editing program like Adobe Photoshop…just forget it. They won’t even consider printing your photos.

Save yourself the time and frustration. Choose somewhere else to get your photos printed. CVS pharmacy has never given me a lick of trouble for small orders of photos. If you are going to be printing your digital photos in bulk (20 or more), I highly recommend Shutterfly, whom I have ordered multiple times from and never been disappointed at all. In fact, here’s a link to them with some free prints:

Shutterfly - Get 15 FREE prints to get started. Plus, enjoy free photo share and unlimited photo storage!

Take that WalMart!  Happy picture taking gang!

-Richie