Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
Jody Garber and her family are “huge” fans of the Ellen Degeneres Show and Garber has occasionally e-mailed photos to the show in response to the “Be Part of the Show” feature on Degeneres’ Web site.
“We’ve never heard anything back from them, up until now,” Garber said last week. “Of course, they receive thousands of e-mails and pictures every day from all over the country, so we never really expected to hear back – ever.”
But then they did.
In response to a request for “Bad Photos You Paid For,” Garber e-mailed some shots the family had gotten from Sears in Albany when they had this year’s Christmas photo taken.
The show’s Web site requested “anything that was taken by a photographer who cashed your check. Maybe it wasn’t the photographer’s fault. Maybe the giant mustard stain on your shirt was your fault. We don’t care, as long as the photo is embarrassing. Let us share in your misery.”
Jody and her husband Matt had taken their 3-month-old latest arrival, Taivyn, along with their older sons, Koby, 7, Braden, 5, and Dayne, 3, and their daughter Syndelle, 2, to get the family photo.
It was a hectic day at the studio, Jody Garber said, and the photographer, who had taken the family’s pictures “many times” and “is a wonderful photographer,” was in a rush, Garber said.
“The camera kept going off when she didn’t want it to go off,” she said.
What they got back were some photos that were “especially horrible,” including involuntary shots of the photographer and one that cut out the two youngest children with what appeared to be the photographer’s hand and a stuffed animal. Garber decided to e-mail that one in, along with another bad shot.
On Monday night, Dec. 10, Garber got a call from a representative of the Ellen Degeneres show, who told her to make sure to watch the next day’s program.
According to Garber, Degeneres broke out the photos within the show’s first five minutes, starting with an old, funny photo of herself.
With the TV screen split