Wedding Photographer Nightmare Stories

Although I agree with the OP completely, I do question if he had the right to put the bride's picture on the thread. Did he get a release or permission or discuss this with the bride? If not, he and DPReview should delete the picture from this thread.

We have married off 5 kids. Twice we used our old pro from our small town who only charges $500, however he sees this as his public service and does a very good job. You do have to wait a while to get them back, but he and his wife do a good job of post processing and the photos are professional in appearance. He knows I like photography and let me wonder around with my camera also, and even called me over for a couple of group shots. It was very relaxed and we have enjoyed both sets of pictures.

There is another pro in our area who I understand charges 4 to 5 thousand for a wedding, and his work is excellent. He stays booked up! We also have several part time pros who I cannot attest for their price or work either way.

One son married a great girl from Texas whose sister had had a bad wedding photo experience. Her parents hired one of the best in the area for big bucks and got their moneys worth. Again the photographer allowed me to shoot whenever I wanted, and I especially made every attempt to stay out of the way. While she was shooting bridesmaids, I gathered the groomsmen and posed them peeking out around the columns of a walkway. She noticed from across the churchyard, yelled "good idea, hold em there" and sent over her assistant to grab a couple of frames of that pose.

Another son got married in Michigan at the chapel of a ministry in which he was working. We took a chance on a young lady who had apprenticed a little under a young man who is now a pro, but that young man wanted to be in the wedding, not the photographer as he usually was with all his friends. He was therefore around to advise if she had questions, but she was firmly in control and did a great job. Again we had to wait months for her to find time to get all the shots processed, but we had my pix and ...... she only asked for $250 since it was her first wedding.

I honestly believe the pictures could have not been any better for $2500, which is what I would advise her to charge if she continues on to be a pro.

I have also seen too many wedding books that looked awful....sometimes the photographers fault, sometimes the location or the time of day. If I were a wedding photographer, I would check the venue before I committed. There are some churches that you just cannot make look good regardless of what you do. Maybe a really good pro can work around a bad location but it must be hard.

I let myself get talked into doing a freebie wedding once. It was a second wedding for both and at night, so I could not get nice group shots outside. The couple threw the wedding together quickly and there was not real wedding coordinator. I was so stressed out trying to get everyone together ect...and later trying to process the pix into something special. They forced $100 dollars on me, but it would not have been worth $1000 for the time and stress.

Another time I was informed by my wife that I was to be the photographer at my niece's wedding due to the cost of getting a pro. If I was lucky a young man would be there who had some experience, but they did not think he could come. So basically they told everyone they knew with a dSLR to show up and take pictures. Fortunately the young man did show up, and from what I could tell he was fairly good, however he was not early and we had to struggle through the group shots without him. Also he was most intrusive during the service... getting up on the altar behind the pastor and around the couple and taking pix at a close distance. After the service more group shots were taken in the sanctuary, but with so many cameras and flashes going off it was a zoo. Regardless, between all the amateur efforts my understanding is the couple was quite happy with their pictures.

Now when people ask me to do weddings I simply tell them that I know a good pro who charges a very reasonably amount. If they need it quickly I will do engagement shots, and can do a very nice job of that, but I just do not need the stress of doing weddings. Leave it to the pros.

Overall, I agree with most of the posters that if you are going to drop over ten grand on a wedding you should not skimp on the one thing that you will have forever...the pictures. Although we have had 3 weddings with unusually low fees and remarkably good results, that is the exception. We live in a rural setting where our total cost of living is about 60 to 70% of most of those reading this. I would assume that one to two thousand would be a minimum for a reliable pro, and probably much more in urban areas, and they are worth every penny if they produce good results.
Regards
whvick

Peter Pans said:

Peter Pans said:

It's another to post the URL and name of the photographer online and open problems, so I'm not doing that.

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What about the problems that potential customers of theirs won't have because they were warned of the quality or lack thereof? Products and services are critiqued/reviewed on the net all the time. That's a really good thing about the net. But of course you're free to disagree

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If this person is listed on some sort of a business review site, I'm sure someone could write a review tactfully there and there wouldn't be an issue, otherwise those review sites wouldn't exist as anyone who writes a bad review about someone could get sued. But those are designated business review sites - not public chat boards where you go in and say, "this person stinks, don't use them", which could be considered "slander". Hey, we live in lawsuit-happy USA... it's like walking on ice sometimes.

whvick said:

Although I agree with the OP completely, I do question if he had the right to put the bride's picture on the thread. Did he get a release or permission or discuss this with the bride? If not, he and DPReview should delete the picture from this thread.

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I've already said in another post that I had their permission to use that photo (or any others in that set if I wished). After all - it's not to criticize the bride - it's a sample of the "photographer's" work.

whvick said:

Overall, I agree with most of the posters that if you are going to drop over ten grand on a wedding you should not skimp on the one thing that you will have forever...the pictures.

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At some point that comment came up and I think it was assumed that these folks spent a fair amount on the wedding. I explained later, they did not. It was held in a public park, with minimal fees, and the reception was actually at a Senior Center that has a community room they rent out for $250 to earn money for the center. The wedding cake came from Costco (actually, don't laugh, a lot of people do that). But regardless, this was a low-budget wedding that I think maybe, MAYBE cost $3,000.00 total to pull off. The family is not well-to-do, so to them, it was a considerable amount of money.

They didn't expect all (or even ANYH) of the usual pro "extras" from this photographer. They knew they were getting this woman for only about 3-4 hours total, and that she was just going to take a series of photos and give them a DVD and that was it. The whole discussion though, was about how blatant some of the errors were in the way this photographer took her shots, camera settings, cropping, angles, quality of the above example editing, etc. etc. I have to be honest, even if I did something for someone and charged even less than this, I couldn't ALLOW my pics to get into their hands at this level of quality - if not for them, for my own conscience.

Anyway - as I said, the young couple is now married and supposedly happy with their new life. This was just to solicit other similar stories and opinions. I fixed up the most important shots and they are happy with those at least.

snake_b said:

What kind of equipment did this person use?

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Per the Exif data, they used a Nikon D5000 and 55-200mm VR lens.

I'm sorry to hear about this bride's story. It really is a shame the photographer couldn't manage the basics of the job since they were hired for a basic job (only a few hours and providing a dvd).

I have a similar story from when one of my daughters got married. My daughter and son-in-law were on a budget of course and my daughter had asked a family friend who enjoys photography etc and she had agreed. This friend was also making the wedding cake, and at only 4 days before the wedding she told my daughter that she felt too overwhelmed/busy to do the photos as well! So we desperately looked for another photographer who could and would come to do it. We found a photographer, nice website etc. who would come. She had an infant child and could only come for a few hours. We met her, looked at some of her albums agreed on the time she would be there for (ceremony and some photos with the bridal party and families afterward).

In the end, there are some nice shots but all of the group family ones are truly terrible. Everyone is lined up in a row, exposure is dreadful (the sky is grey/white when in fact it was lovely blue that day). There is a shot taken all at the wrong angle, my step-son looks like a giant on one end relative to other people in the shot. Other shots are in the shade and no detail. They were married at a waterfront park, a really lovely location that she didn't use at all to her advantage. The group shots partially have the highway in the background!

Given the arrangement my daughter didn't expect a full day with all of the pre-ceremony getting ready shots or photos all through the reception etc. But I do think it was reasonable to expect a technical quality at least similar to what she had been shown beforehand.

I got hold of the shots, cropped and enlarged etc. as I could, did some very basic PP (don't know how to do much beyond the very basics!) and made a scrapbook/wedding album for them last Christmas. They were delighted with the album. The photos and colours of papers and little add-ons and embellishments make the focus be their wedding day and the happiness they felt, not the technical quality of lack of of the photos.

I'm sure the bride in your post is very happy you are able to, at a minimum, straighten things! If she chooses the ones that are the most special to her for capturing the whole moment, find a nice frame and matte the photo, when she looks at it, she'll remember those feelings of joy of the day and the disappointment about the photos will fade.

Unless one can pick the setting, the apparel, the couple, and the "extras" who attend, any wedding job must naturally yield humble "pichers" of ordinary folks (Billy-Bob and Kelly-Mae) gittin' hitched.

There is no point in trying to make people look like anything but what they really are.

The only wedding "horror story" is if the bride or groom fail to show, or if they pass out or become incontinent at the altar. Good pictures won't charm a troubled marriage, any more than bad photos will curse a stable one.

One good picture should be enough. Only the bride or her mother will ever care to ponder the huge album of pictures the come for the usual fee. It might be discrete to keep any shotguns out of the pictures, but a bit of informality to most of the other pictures, save for that one good formal pose, is a welcome relief to all the usual stiffness and garden posing.

Some people squander absurd sums on weddings that might better be spent on student loan repayment, an auto, or home downpayment. Except for high society, $500 for wedding photography should be plenty. New aspirants to the field can do a good job for less.

BRAVO

I agree completely.

Cy Cheze said:

Unless one can pick the setting, the apparel, the couple, and the "extras" who attend, any wedding job must naturally yield humble "pichers" of ordinary folks (Billy-Bob and Kelly-Mae) gittin' hitched.

There is no point in trying to make people look like anything but what they really are.

The only wedding "horror story" is if the bride or groom fail to show, or if they pass out or become incontinent at the altar. Good pictures won't charm a troubled marriage, any more than bad photos will curse a stable one.

One good picture should be enough. Only the bride or her mother will ever care to ponder the huge album of pictures the come for the usual fee. It might be discrete to keep any shotguns out of the pictures, but a bit of informality to most of the other pictures, save for that one good formal pose, is a welcome relief to all the usual stiffness and garden posing.

Some people squander absurd sums on weddings that might better be spent on student loan repayment, an auto, or home downpayment. Except for high society, $500 for wedding photography should be plenty. New aspirants to the field can do a good job for less.

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Cy Cheze said:

Except for high society, $500 for wedding photography should be plenty. New aspirants to the field can do a good job for less.

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LOL. Ya, sure they can.

snake_b said:

What kind of equipment did this person use?

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READ the OP.

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snake_b said:

snake_b said:

Bill Turner

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Greg Henry said:

Peter Pans said:

Greg Henry said:

It's another to post the URL and name of the photographer online and open problems, so I'm not doing that.

Click to expand...

What about the problems that potential customers of theirs won't have because they were warned of the quality or lack thereof? Products and services are critiqued/reviewed on the net all the time. That's a really good thing about the net. But of course you're free to disagree

Click to expand...

If this person is listed on some sort of a business review site, I'm sure someone could write a review tactfully there and there wouldn't be an issue, otherwise those review sites wouldn't exist as anyone who writes a bad review about someone could get sued. But those are designated business review sites - not public chat boards where you go in and say, "this person stinks, don't use them", which could be considered "slander". Hey, we live in lawsuit-happy USA... it's like walking on ice sometimes.

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They could be tactfully criticised on here. You see camera sellers, manufacturers and photographers criticised all the time on here and I think they'd have a hard time doing anything about it. Same goes for photographers "out there". If you don't want to name and shame them, that's OK, but if you did, I can't see how they could do anything about it, except maybe improve the quality of their work. We have TV programmes in the UK that specifically target cowboy outfits in all arena's. I think they are a deterrent and many businesses have either had to shape up or ship out. I appreciate your view Greg ~ we just disagree, which I'm fine with

snake_b said:

It's like blaming people who cross the borders for work. If the work wasn't available, then they would not come here.

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This is absurd. Comparing someone who makes a dumb buying decision to someone who knowingly breaks the law and knowingly steals money via tax avoidance is idiotic.

Greg Henry said:

"this person stinks, don't use them", which could be considered "slander". Hey, we live in lawsuit-happy USA... it's like walking on ice sometimes.

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Libel, actually. But I understand your point.

I think Kate Middleton is gorgeous.

DaveO

Wow. Anyhow.

Some people have different rules and varying rules. A $500 photographer could work out, but it's dependent on the situation and local market. Sometimes, if you know the person and their work, $500 can get you a lot. Or in LA, the $500 mark might be $5000. I also agree that the pricing for weddings are out of control and that's a significant sum that a family can use to start themselves off in an advantageous position in life and society.

Biggs23 said:

snake_b said:

It's like blaming people who cross the borders for work. If the work wasn't available, then they would not come here.

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This is absurd. Comparing someone who makes a dumb buying decision to someone who knowingly breaks the law and knowingly steals money via tax avoidance is idiotic.

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This is why I stay in photojournalism! I would much rather go on a midnight crack house bust with police than deal with Bridezillas and her ilk!

There is no law against not being very good. Is seems the photographer did exactly what they were was contracted to do, take pictures and put them on a CD.

You can only take issue with the photographer, if they deliberatley misrepresented their ability and/or the quality of the submission.

Otherwise, generally speaking, you get what you pay for. Caveat Emptor!

Cy Cheze said:

Unless one can pick the setting, the apparel, the couple, and the "extras" who attend, any wedding job must naturally yield humble "pichers" of ordinary folks (Billy-Bob and Kelly-Mae) gittin' hitched.

There is no point in trying to make people look like anything but what they really are.

The only wedding "horror story" is if the bride or groom fail to show, or if they pass out or become incontinent at the altar. Good pictures won't charm a troubled marriage, any more than bad photos will curse a stable one.

One good picture should be enough. Only the bride or her mother will ever care to ponder the huge album of pictures the come for the usual fee. It might be discrete to keep any shotguns out of the pictures, but a bit of informality to most of the other pictures, save for that one good formal pose, is a welcome relief to all the usual stiffness and garden posing.

Some people squander absurd sums on weddings that might better be spent on student loan repayment, an auto, or home downpayment. Except for high society, $500 for wedding photography should be plenty. New aspirants to the field can do a good job for less.

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I hope you never offer to photograph a wedding!

btolley said:

There is no law against not being very good. Is seems the photographer did exactly what they were was contracted to do, take pictures and put them on a CD.

You can only take issue with the photographer, if they deliberatley misrepresented their ability and/or the quality of the submission.

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According to the OP, the work was not up to the standard of the work that the photographer shows.

It may not be illegal, but it is immoral to charge for your services without bothering to learn how to do the job properly. If you don't know how to do a job, any job, don't pretend you're a professional and take people's money for it.

VncvrIslandGirl said:

I'm sorry to hear about this bride's story. It really is a shame the photographer couldn't manage the basics of the job since they were hired for a basic job (only a few hours and providing a dvd).

I have a similar story from when one of my daughters got married. My daughter and son-in-law were on a budget of course and my daughter had asked a family friend who enjoys photography etc and she had agreed. This friend was also making the wedding cake, and at only 4 days before the wedding she told my daughter that she felt too overwhelmed/busy to do the photos as well! So we desperately looked for another photographer who could and would come to do it. We found a photographer, nice website etc. who would come. She had an infant child and could only come for a few hours. We met her, looked at some of her albums agreed on the time she would be there for (ceremony and some photos with the bridal party and families afterward).

In the end, there are some nice shots but all of the group family ones are truly terrible. Everyone is lined up in a row, exposure is dreadful (the sky is grey/white when in fact it was lovely blue that day). There is a shot taken all at the wrong angle, my step-son looks like a giant on one end relative to other people in the shot. Other shots are in the shade and no detail. They were married at a waterfront park, a really lovely location that she didn't use at all to her advantage. The group shots partially have the highway in the background!

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From whvick to VncvrIslandGirl:

Post some of the pix that you would like to see done better on the "software/retouching" forum.

I caught one frame of my daughter that we all really liked, while the pro was taking the rest of the families near some shrubs at the church, and she had this happy relaxed expression while she was teasing with one of my grand sons/ her nephew. My flash misfired and I had gone to program mode, as my poor brain could not handle all the pressure,(another reason to hire a pro) and I wound up with a picture that had a large dark area and too small to print.

I posted it on the software/retouching forum and they guys did a great job making it very usable!

original:





retouched:

















Give it a try and if the guys here do a great job you can have a few printed for her anniversary!
whvick

sean000 said:

From the one photo in the original post, I don't think the dress is bad at all. The tan lines are unfortunate, but more unfortunate is the facial expression like she's squinting into the sun. As for tattoos, as you know those can be removed from photos... for a price of course ;-) But that would go way above and beyond your rescue operation, which was already above and beyond.

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I live in Atlanta, but further out. These folks live a few miles further out, still. In the particular area where they live, it's still I guess what you would call "blue collar, pickup truck, yeehaw". It's (unfortunately) extremely common in that area for women to plaster tattoos on their backs, arms, wrists... I'm expecting forehead tattoos to be the norm there within a couple of years. They actually get upset if you remove them from photos. In the case of the coworker, I did remove them for HER copies on a couple of pics, and yes, as the Mother, she was happy they were removed.

The "tans" were a combination of tanning beds and spray-on tans that nearly every girl involved in the wedding went and had done... a few of them the SAME morning as the wedding. Even I know that you don't do tanning beds/spray within 72 hours of a wedding (or more). But again - "yeehaw tattoo" place. Sigh.

sean000 said:

Not everyone can afford, or even wants, a dream location... but it sounds like they wanted to have it in a lively festive urban setting...which is cool, but not the easiest for a photographer to get great shots in I imagine.

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In all honesty, this involved the family being slightly naive as to the location. The location was in a town square of an Atlanta suburb, where you have a "Mayberry, USA" type of look: Shops in a square, and a small park with a large fountain in the center of the square. Very picturesque - in the 1970s. The parents also were wed in this same square, so, it meant a lot to them to have the daughter wed there as well. Unfortunately, when Mom and Dad married there, it was the 1980s, and this was still considered a small, Southern, sleepier suburb. Today in 2011, the park had a few vagrants, kids playing loud Rap/Hip Hop music off to one side, immigrant workers setting up for a festival on the other side screaming Spanish at each other, and a bus of Korean tourists a few hundred feet away. :-D I kind of KNEW where it was headed when she told me where they wanted to hold the wedding... but I let them roll with it due to the sentimental aspect of it. Later, she was like, "Oh geez, what was I thinking TODAY to try this??". But hey, sometimes you just have to let folks do it.

Anyway.. the ones I did fix seemed to make them all happy, so what's done is done.