Helping others

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A wedding is supposed to be the happiest day of someone’s life.  For me as a wedding photographer, I am honored and privileged that I am chosen by my clients to document and share in their day.  It’s always my goal to leave my clients with excellent photos and a sense of confidence they hired the right person.

 

But for some people, who they hire to photographer their wedding photos turn out to be a disaster.

 

The case of Sheri and Bryan*** is just such an example. ***Just so you’ll know, these are not their real names.  I changes their names to protect their privacy.
Please let me be very clear, from the start Sheri and Bryan were not my wedding clients.  But I wish they were.

 

Back in October, I received an e-mail from Sheri asking me for my help.  She hired the wrong wedding photographer.  This is what she wrote:

 

 ”Hello Karen, I’m contacting you because I was married in August 2010 and unfortunately I still don’t have a wedding book, prints or any of the products that I paid my photographer for.  My photographer was also from North Little Rock and ended up filing bankruptcy with the business we hired her under and then changed to another business right before our wedding.   We had no idea all of this was going on, we just knew she kept putting us off.  Now she is out of business again and we still have nothing we’ve paid for.  It is a long story and a complete mess!!!  I am just one of who knows how many more brides that this has happened to.  

Anyway, I finally received CDs with the rights to the photos but am not sure if they have been edited.  I think they have, but I don’t know anything about that.  There are like 1700 of them!  I really want an album and at this rate, I may never get what I paid my photographer for.  I’ve been checking around to see what it would cost for me to hire another photographer to design an album for me using my CDs.  Is this something you would be willing to do? If so, can you send me a price quote? Also, do you use Vision Art Books? 

I’ve been married over a year and haven’t been able to show a book to anyone.  It has been awful! Thanks so much, look forward to hearing from you.”

 

My heart sank.

 

I wanted to help Sheri.  In fact, I could not wait to help Sheri.  I returned her e-mail stating that I was more than happy to help her.  We scheduled a meeting at a local coffee shop for the next week.

 

When I met Sheri, she was bright, bubbly and full of life.  We sat down and talked for just a few minutes about non-wedding issues and then I asked her to explain what happened.  She nearly broke down in tears while explaining to me that over the past 14 months (in October) since her wedding, she has been fighting to get her wedding photos.

 

She had hired a wedding photographer (who I will not name) for her August 2010 wedding and at first, everything seemed OK.  They met for their engagement session and everything went smoothly.  The problem began when it was several weeks…and then months…before she was able to proof her photos.  Then it was time for her bridal session.  The same thing.  The photos were taken and it was several weeks…and then months…before she was able to proof her photos.  Sheri contented to say that she had to hound her photographer to get the large bridal portrait that she had prepaid for.  Sheri barely got it in time to get it framed for the wedding.

 

Sheri admitted to me that she started to get a bad feeling that this was not going to end good.  Even her wedding planner, strongly suggested she find someone else.  But Sheri, being a kind and trusting person, decided to stick with her chosen photographer.

 

Then came the wedding day.

 

Sheri told me the photographer was an hour late and completely missed her getting dressed and all the fun that surrounds those images.  Other than being an hour late, everything went smoothly.

 

After waiting several weeks to view her photos, they were finally posted.  She and Bryan placed her wedding order for all of the albums in November of 2010 and the photographer responded that she got it.  After that, Sheri didn’t get any kind of response until finally in March 2011 Bryan stopped by the photographer’s house and he was told that our order was in the works.  The photographer immediately responded to Sheri by email she was told she’d receive her CD’s.  The CD’s were dropped off at Bryan’s place of work, but the photographer never bothered to speak to Bryan.

 

That was pretty much the last time they heard from their photographer.  Sheri’s lawyer sent the photographer letter and they said they still intended to get us our order but all of their photo equipment was sold and the photographer had to get another job to help pay for the orders that were owed to past clients.

 

Sheri’s family had invested more than $3,000 with this photographer.  She was supposed to get:  An heirloom wedding album, an engagement guest book, a brides album, two parent albums, a bridal portrait, a photo collage, and a decorative DVD case for their images.  All she received was the guestbook and the bridal portrait.

 

Sheri handed me the DVD and I popped it into my laptop to look at the images.  To my surprise, the quality was quite good.  The photographer used a Canon 5D which is one of the two cameras I use.  Since her wedding was during the day at Garvan Gardens, all of the photos were brightly lit, crisp and clear.  Even her bridal photos looked good.  The photographer even took the time to do basic color-corrections.

 

So we discussed the size and type of album she wanted.  Sheri chose the largest album I offer: 60 pages that holds 120 photos.  I asked her to choose her photos and I’d get stared.  She just looked at me and asked if I would simply do everything for her.  She gave me complete freedom (Yay for me) to choose a combo of bridal and wedding day photos.  She even said I do a combination of color and B&W images.  It’s rare when my clients give me this much freedom, but when I do get it, I love it.  It allows me to pick the photos that work well with one another.

 

I explained to Sheri that it would be several weeks before I could get started.  I had 2 or 3 albums of my own clients in my work queue.  I do my albums in the order that I receive them.

 

Once I began working on her album, I started opening images and my heart sank — again.  Not only did the photographer do a little color correction, but they were downsized as well.  All the images were re-sized to 4×6 at 300 DPI.  GULP!  I nearly cried myself because the size album Sheri chose typically required much larger images, four times larger.  For an example, the Canon 5D shoots a photo that’s 36MB when opened as a JPEG.  These images were about 7MB.

 

But since these files were so crisp, they held up just fine, better than I expected.  I proofed the album to Sheri and after two small changes, it was uploaded to my printer.  In less than 10 days, the album was back in my hands and it looked perfect.  I was thrilled with the way it turned out.  I was a little nervous about the sizing, but it was perfect.

 

I called Sheri and she and Bryan met me at Starbucks on a Sunday evening.  I sat with a smile on my face as she flipped through her album with an even bigger smile on hers.  Both she and Bryan were so happy to receive their wedding album, nearly 16 months after their wedding.  I addition to their album, I had a small surprise for her.  I gave them an 11×14 float wrap as my gift to them.  I felt they deserved something to hang on their wall.

 

As we headed to our cars, she gave me the warmest hug and a big word of thanks.  It was all I needed.

 

A couple of weeks later, I received a Christmas Card from Sheri,

“Dear Karen, I just wanted to thank you again for taking the time to design a wedding album for me.  It is absolutely beautiful and tells the story of our day perfectly!  After everything we’ve gone through over the past year, we appreciate you more than you will ever know.  I show our album to everyone!  It was very sweet and thoughtful of you to get us prints and a canvas wrap for us too.  You went above and beyond for us and we can’t thank you enough!  You were awesome to work with.  I can’t wait to recommend you to anyone I know that is looking for a photographer.  I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!”

 

I wish Sheri and Bryan had been my clients from the start, but they weren’t.  I was more than happy to help them, but it infuriates me that I need to help them at all.  When bad wedding photographers rip off people, it gives good wedding photographers like myself, and the many others like me around Arkansas a bad name.  The bad photographers make people not to want to trust the good ones.

 

So if you’ve hired a wedding photographer and you’re getting a bad feeling from them, listen to your instinct.  You’re probably right.  Don’t be afraid to break your contract with them and hire someone else, even if it costs you the deposit or more.  Because when it comes to your wedding day and your wedding photos.  There aren no “do overs.”

 

There are lots of wonderful, talented and reputable wedding photographers in Arkansas.

 

And we’re here for you.