Problems with our wedding phographer

AoifeCork

Unfortunately OP, if you pay peanuts you will undoubtedly get monkeys. I am in the wedding business myself and often feel if people I know ask me to provide a service for their wedding, I am expected to do it a knock down rate. A few times in the past, these particular weddings are the ones that require a whole new list of repertoire, early set ups, consultations up the country, recordings of particular songs, etc etc I could go on! In this case you got a very very low rate for your wedding photographer. So he was probably expecting to offer you a low value package including less time editing, liaising, etc. waiting a year for couples to pick photographs is not unheard of, but I can kind of sympathise with your supplier and his change in circumstances. Maybe he feels like he has provided everything within his brief and provided you with €550 worth of his time and work. And the bottom line unfortunately is... No contract, no dispute. The added awkwardness of him being a friend can't be helping the situation. I suggest you chat to him face to face or over the phone and try and go from there. Best of luck!

candytog

LOD wrote: »

Hi,
Apologises for the long post
We are having some problems with our wedding photographer. He is a friend of my husband’s family. We booked him because of this. My husband did all the dealing with our photographer before the wedding and it was all verbal. We got a good price €550. I thought that it was a mate’s rate price and because he was only starting out on his own (He had been working with his Dad before this). I now feel we got what we paid for but am still looking for some advice on what to do next.

We got married in July ’13 and received a 60 page photo-book album September ’13 that we are reasonably happy with. We received a disc with around 350 water marked photos on it. I asked could we get the disc without he water mark so we could print them ourselves, he refused saying he wouldn't trust anyone else to print his work. He gave us a price list for getting prints from him. We found it difficult to decide want ones to print and then got side track so it ended up being September ’14 before we actually went about getting photos printed.

I couldn't find the prices he gave me so I emailed him for a price list. The prices this time were way higher that the originals ones. I searched and eventually found the original prices. We got contacted him with the original prices he said they were no longer valid as they were a year old and he no longer printed the pictures himself. The new prices were from the website he had uploaded our photos to and we could order them direct from this. The first picture I wanted to get printed was a panoramic which the company didn't do so I had to go back to the photographer and get him to print it for us. Since then we have been selecting photos and saving them in our online cart to print (while saving money a 5x7 is €5). I tried to access our account two weeks ago and the link was broken. I contacted our photographer to tell him this and he said that the link had expired as it was up since Sept and we had not ordered anything. I know that is 6 months ago but he never told us that there would be a time limit on it. Just like he never told us he was going to stop printing pictures himself and would be using a website that would be more expensive. I had thought that we would be getting a disc to print photos ourselves whenever we wanted and when I realised that this wasn't going to happen I at least thought that we would still be able to print our pictures at our own leisure. He has said that when we know what pictures we want print and when we are going to print them he will reactivate the account.

So I know we can print our pictures but it has to be all at once and as we are still doing up our house I would like to have more flexibility than this. We have had other problems with our photographer along the way but I won’t go in to these now. Any advice on what I should do any would be appreciated. Thanks.

I'm a wedding videographer and work with many photographers but this guy is a Grade A prick. He sounds like a lazy, money grabbing, corner cutting A-hole. And he's a friend of the family???


If it were me I would speak to a solicitor. Apart from the copyright thing he has done a lot wrong (no contract, no written communication, not giving a deadline and increasing prices after the fact). If you put pressure on him he might just give you the full resolution disk and be done with it. Be the thorn in his side basically.

Also don't be afraid to name and shame him. If you let other people know what an ordeal you have gone through it might give him the kick up the arse he needs. Word of mouth works in both directions, and you are entitled to give him a bad review if you were given a bad service.

candytog

AoifeCork wrote: »

Unfortunately OP, if you pay peanuts you will undoubtedly get monkeys. I am in the wedding business myself and often feel if people I know ask me to provide a service for their wedding, I am expected to do it a knock down rate. A few times in the past, these particular weddings are the ones that require a whole new list of repertoire, early set ups, consultations up the country, recordings of particular songs, etc etc I could go on! In this case you got a very very low rate for your wedding photographer. So he was probably expecting to offer you a low value package including less time editing, liaising, etc. waiting a year for couples to pick photographs is not unheard of, but I can kind of sympathise with your supplier and his change in circumstances. Maybe he feels like he has provided everything within his brief and provided you with €550 worth of his time and work. And the bottom line unfortunately is... No contract, no dispute. The added awkwardness of him being a friend can't be helping the situation. I suggest you chat to him face to face or over the phone and try and go from there. Best of luck!

I have to say I totally disagree with you. The worst thing you can do is continue to deal verbally. That's how they got into this mess in the first place. How can you sympathise with him?? what change in circumstances? he's busier now and can't be bothered dealing with the early clients that gave him the means to be where he is now?

I may give friends a discount but I never discount the quality of service I provide.

Toots

OP I would strongly recommend that you not mention the photographer's name on the thread, particularly if there's a possibility that you'll be getting a solicitor involved.

RainyDay

Button_y wrote: »

As a photographer I would never give clients a copy of photos on CD with the intention of them being used for print. I would want to have control over the quality of the prints. I wouldn't want to spend time perfecting my work to have someone print on a home printer/tesco/boots instant prints
It sounds like you are looking to hang some photos? It would be essential to me that the photos are sized/adjusted etc correctly for the printer being used. I work with a couple of local printers and know the consistency of their prints what adjustments settings I need when preparing photos for their printers and the like. I'd rather a client contacted me and work with them to get prints that we are both happy with than having crap prints hanging on a wall.

Fair enough if that is your professional view, though you do have a duty to make this clear to clients up front, particularly clients who may have have engaged a professional photographer before (and never again after).

You seem to be missing the whole social media thing here - won't your clients want to share their photos electronically?

Sligo1 wrote: »

My photographer was an A class witch tbh. She is the only regret I have on my whole wedding. Having said that the album she provided me with was excellent. But I would have preferred a more average album than the stress she put my in on the day... And after the day. We paid her over 2k. And in my ignorance "thought" a disc would be avaliable for printing. I never even thought to ask as I had never hired a photographer before. Turns out she wanted €10 (6x4) each for a small photo and €50 for a slightly larger one. I never went back to her for those images. And my in laws just printed a few of the watermarked ones and framed them. I won't give her a penny more of my money. (Needless to say I'm quite bitter over the whole situation). My wedding was a dream apart from her (the elephant in the room).

And the lesson learnt is - make sure up-front that your photographer will provide hi-res copies on disc as part of the deal.

LOD

Problem solved. Thanks for all the posts.