Wedding Photo issues

[Gr8Scott]

Before our wedding on late May, we put down a deposit with the best photographer in town for $150. She explained that she was previously booked for a larger and more expensive wedding that day and couldn't make it to ours, but she said that she would send one of her "people" to take the photos for us. We were on a tight budget and we weren't looking for the "studio" touch per se. What we wanted was a photographer with good gear and some skill to photograph the wedding and then leave immediately after the cake cutting had finished. It would require a maximum of 2 hours of the photographer's time and no setup would be necessary.

The wedding started at 3:00 and we had requested that the photog show up at 2:30 to capture the bride getting dressed etc. The ceremony was short and sweet and it was hot outside. After the ceremony we wanted to immediately do some group photos along with the typical bride and groom driving away stuff and finish up with the cake cutting before the photog went on her way.

The photog showed up at 2:50. I showed up at 3:00 on the dot for the ceremony and it started at about 3:20 or so and finished by 3:45. The photog showed up with a Nikon D200 and a couple of speedlight flashes with a small assortment of lenses. I felt this gear was adequate for the job at hand and was comfortable with letting her do the work. She also happened to be the long lost childhood friend of my wife to be and they hadn't seen each other in well over a couple of decades. Seamed nice enough I guess... It seemed as if everything proceeded as planned other than her being a little late initially.

When I got to the photographer's studio to review the pictures on their computer, I was angered by what I saw. Our photographer didn't bracket any of her shots. In this digital age, bracketing costs almost nothing and it's great insurance against improperly exposing your shots and losing precious detail. She also screwed up the focus on 8 shots including the wedding cake. She focused on the back of the table instead of the wedding cake. Focus was extremely off in roughly 8 photos out of 142 and is just a tad soft in most of the photos she took. I have had to correct for improper exposure on 28 of the shots excluding one photo of the bride before the wedding where the photo was completely out of focus and as dark as the inside of a whale's butt. There were NO re-takes on improperly exposed or focused shots by the way. Correcting for improper exposure increases the color noise in the photos as you brighten the dark ones (most were dark) so all the black tuxedos now have a grainy appearance. In my eyes, this isn't the work of a professional photographer. It's not even on par with what an amateur does. It's so sub-par that I am furious with the photographer that took the photos and also with the woman who we initially contracted to take the photos.

My problems are as follows:

Other than the deposit itself, we had no formal contract or agreement with the woman who we contracted with to take the photos. We had a basic game plan for roughly 200 photos or so and we trusted the good name and previous good work of this woman to be our guarantee of an acceptable product.

The woman who runs the studio that we contracted with is working with us on the price of these photos. She initially intended to charge us $500 to burn us a DVD of all the photos and then extra for any albums we wanted etc on top of that. She knows that I am unhappy with the photos and I am pretty sure that she would sign over the rights to the DVD to us for the price of the deposit we paid.

Here's the part that is eating at me. The woman who owns/runs the studio is smack in the middle of a family crisis. Her husband died from cancer about a year ago and now her mother is dying of liver cancer in a hospital about 50 minutes from where we all live. The woman that took our wedding photos used to work for her and then went out on her own to start her own studio (which is failing by the way for obvious reasons). Our wedding was her first attempt to do a wedding in this manner and it completely backfired. I know all this isn't my problem, but I have a conscience and I feel terrible at the thought of being unfair to a woman who is in the middle of what can only be a hellish personal crisis. Part of me wants to strangle her for subbing out our wedding photos to someone with no talent and a terrible work ethic, but the other part of me wants to be a nice guy and throw her another $100 so she doesn't lose money on this deal. I don't want to be the guy who kicks a woman when she's down with a dying mother.

Also my wife and my mother-in-law both think the wedding photos are excellent. Anyone who knows anything about photography that has seen these photos immediately recognizes bad work, but my wife and her mom aren't shutterbugs and they wouldn't know good photography if it smacked them in the face. They both think I'm being a hyper-critical d-bag.

I have some of the photos, but we don't have the rights to them yet and I don't want to give the studio owner grounds to sue me. I'm not posting anything as a result. Take my word for it, this is really amateur stuff IMHO.

So what are your thoughts on this situation? What would you do? I'm going to drop by the studio tomorrow morning and finalize everything.

[MetalManiac]

Either buy them and perhaps ask for a discount, or lump em, and lose whatever photo record you have of the wedding. Its pretty cut and dried at this point.

[exnihilo]

Would you mind posting the contract?

cg

[Gr8Scott]

No formal contract. That was our biggest mistake. This woman is widely regarded as being the very best in town if not the very best within this half of the state. If we had her doing the work for us, I have no doubt that the photos would be excellent and I wouldn't have a problem shelling out $1000 for the rights to the photos. Given that she had already been contracted with someone else, we were under the impression that one of her assistants would be taking the photos with her gear.

[innerdreamrecords.co]

Get married again? J/K

Negotiate a reduced rate.

[MetalManiac]

No formal contract. That was our biggest mistake. This woman is widely regarded as being the very best in town if not the very best within this half of the state. If we had her doing the work for us, I have no doubt that the photos would be excellent and I wouldn't have a problem shelling out $1000 for the rights to the photos. Given that she had already been contracted with someone else, we were under the impression that one of her assistants would be taking the photos with her gear.

So now you know EXAXCTLY wht to ask at youtr next wedding...WAit..D'oh!!

Go in there hopping mad, and say you want 70% off the photos or you wont buy and you'll sue for breach of contract/ damages ( make an appointment with a psychologist to prove your emotional pain and suffering ). Plus say you'll post your bad expereince all over the internet.
Play her bluff is about the best you can do at this point.
BTW, I know you hate me and refuse to talk to me, But Im talking to the forum here, not you.

[Jessie's ghost]

Politely ask her to pay for having a professional Photoshop artist randomly insert members of the Rat Pack into the photos, until your overall satisfaction level increases to match what you're spending.

[uOpt]

OK, so here are some photography bits:

Normally a photographer can screw up as badly as she wants because you are required to make sure she meets your requirements before you book. Unless she lied about qualifications or wrongfully claimed other's photos as her own (explicitly, just floating around the website or studio doesn't count).

However, she isn't really allowed to send somebody else without much inferior gear and then have that person screw up.

I would make it clear that you want the raw pictures right now, at the original price, or her Internet reputation is in the dumpster by Wednesday morning.

[Gr8Scott]

So now you know EXAXCTLY wht to ask at youtr next wedding...WAit..D'oh!!

Go in there hopping mad, and say you want 70% off the photos or you wont buy and you'll sue for breach of contract/ damages ( make an appointment with a psychologist to prove your emotional pain and suffering ). Plus say you'll post your bad expereince all over the internet.
Play her bluff is about the best you can do at this point.
BTW, I know you hate me and refuse to talk to me, But Im talking to the forum here, not you.

No hate here bro. You're fine with me.

[BTMN]

Given all you posted, esp. MIL and wife are happy.

I say cut the losses and give the original lady a break given her situation. You say the wife is the shooter's old friend. Maybe make a new friend and teach the photographer about her mistakes in a creative way. Share your photography skills.

Tell her how disappointed you are and exactly what she might have done to improve the shoot. Ya never know how it will all turn out.

[Gr8Scott]

Given all you posted, esp. MIL and wife are happy.

I say cut the losses and give the original lady a break given her situation. You say the wife is the shooter's old friend. Maybe make a new friend and teach the photographer about her mistakes in a creative way. Share your photography skills.

Tell her how disappointed you are and exactly what she might have done to improve the shoot. Ya never know how it will all turn out.

I think the woman that took the shots needs to find a new profession. She has been a photographer for years now and her work is just terrible. She just doesn't have the knack for it. I'm not going to spend any time around her because I'll probably end up trying to kill her for all this trouble and needless expense. We could have had an amateur photographer in my wife's family do these shots for free and they likely would have turned out much better. Because this woman looked like she knew what she was doing, most of the guests didn't bother to take photos with their own cameras while she was there. They left it up to her.

I'll probably toss another $100 at the woman I contracted with and call it a day. I think she will probably break even that way and I don't want her to suffer yet another loss while she is dealing with this painful crisis. I think it was admirable of her to try to help out an old employee etc, but I think her old associate needs to find new employment or at the very least learn how to properly operate her camera before she ruins someone else's wedding photos.

[uOpt]

I still recommend that you secure the raw shots as long as the issue is in flow. I am sure you will regret it if you don't. You'll want to look at your wedding. And sending them to some Russian service for photoshopping will make them look better than you probably think now.

[LesStrat]

She needs to know what is wrong with the photos and why you are disappointed. Otherwise she'll send this person out on other jobs and damage her good reputation.

[Gr8Scott]

I'll be sure to ask for the RAW images. Hopefully that will allow me to better correct the underexposed photos. JPEG color noise is greatly amplified when you try to brighten up these images as JPEGs. Maybe that effect will be mitigated by the RAW files.

[Gr8Scott]

She needs to know what is wrong with the photos and why you are disappointed. Otherwise she'll send this person out on other jobs and damage her good reputation.

She knows exactly why. Her assistant wrote down all my complaints when I called in and spoke to her about it.

[LesStrat]

[LesStrat]

My youngest and his wife used a girl from church. She previously did good work on the DIL's graduation photos a few months prior.

For the wedding, she was slow to get the pics edited, then the final product was below par.

One of the things that slowed her was editing for a SUBSEQUENT wedding for someone she apparently preferred. The girl usually does stellar work, yet her work ethic leaves much to be desired. She is too flighty to ever run her own business successfully. We did not know that prior to hiring her.

The kids decided to let it go.

[Powdered Toast Man]

I mean no disrespect here, but $150 deposit plus another $100 = $250 for wedding photos? I'm not sure what the market is like around you but where I am, wedding photographers on the low end of the scale start around $1500. That's about what we paid and our photos are just decent. Not bad, but not spectacular.

I know you were on a budget, but I can't help but think you get what you pay for. Probably best to just reach a settlement with the photographer and let it go. Best idea would be to contact all your friends and family at the wedding and request copies of all their photos. You may be able to piece together a pretty decent album to commemorate the day that way.

[Aceman]

The bottom line is you have a few directions:

1. Suck it up, lessons learned (hopefully) and life goes on.
2. Take the high road and see if the photog does the right thing
3. Go to war.

I Suggest the following Strategy:

1. Go to the main owner. Present the pics. Ask her what she thinks of them and what can be done. The CORRECT answer is one of a few things, but, Free, Major Discount, Major personal editing, and/or redo on some at no cost should be in the ballpark.

IF that happens - Accept and go forward,

or just pay and life goes on. Wife will be ok or not. If wife is ok, cool. If not, see below.

2. If that does not happen you have to decide:

Go to war, or Let it go.

If you chose go to war, consider:
- Did you see the actual photogs work? Did you get references? Did you have a contract, and what did it say in case of dissatisfaction?

But - if they took crappy pics, there is something to be said for "You crapped on my day and it should cost you, or not cost me"

If you chose to let it go:
- Be sure to consider how your wife will handle this for the next 4 or 40 years.
You might let it go and have ANOTHER photog do some "new" wedding pics. You can't redo the event - but have some fun with it. Gte some romantic shots, some arty pics, whatever. Something nice to remember the day/event. And then put the crappy ones in the back of the album.

If wife will be ok, let it go.

If not, see go to war.

Bottom line: Sounds like long lost wife's friend did it for the business, not love/respect. Also sounds like she hires photogs for reasons other skill and performance.

That's all I got bro. Good luck. Decision trees rock.

[Aceman]

Isn't that what i just said?