But first I have to share my frustration.
As some of you know, we got married in Las Vegas. We were extremely pleased with the chapel in the hotel that we selected. What we weren't pleased with was the photography requirements. You are required to use their photographer for any and all photos in the chapel. No cameras from any guests or outside photographers.
They wanted an extra $1000 for one additional hour of photography. Ummm... no thanks.
I have several friends who are professional photographers, and after a bit of debate and consideration of other factors (children, jobs, etc), we selected my friend Cameron. I will (probably) share his blog once he finishes our photos. For around the same cost, we flew Cameron out for the weekend, had him photograph the rehearsal dinner, and basically the entire day of the wedding, plus a few snaps the morning after. And what I've seen so far is phenomenal!
Anyway...
So we met with the photo company the morning after the wedding and looked through their 180 images with them. After what felt like a very pressured meeting where we weren't ever given the option to discuss privately what we wanted to do, we purchased the dvd of photos, and a package that included the rights to print the photos, several enlargements and some frames.
Tonight I looked through the "professional" photos from the chapel.
The original off the CD photo of me and my grandmother:
Now don't get me wrong, my posture is not stellar, and Grandma doesn't stand as tall as she used to. But I'm pretty sure we don't lean quite like that.
My quick edit in iPhoto, 9 degrees of straightening, according to their leveling tool. It also crops the photo as you level it, which in this case didn't matter too much.
Are you joking? We paid a ridiculous sum of money for these photos that we were NOT given another option to have taken. And every single one. EVERY SINGLE ONE is slanted. And in many, there's 3 feet of empty space above our heads, giving us waist-up shots with tons of negative space.
To say I'm angry is putting it mildly. I'm taking the disc to the store tomorrow to test print a few photos, because on my screen, even the "high resolution" photos are grainy.
I don't completely blame the photographer, because she openly admitted to us that we were her first wedding. And she took a ton of photos, giving us a lot to choose from. But I do blame the company for putting us in a high pressure situation, instead of offering us an opportunity to look through the photos and make a decision at our leisure.
P admits he doesn't know much about photography, and while I'm no professional, I can tell when photos are decent quality and when they aren't. I plan to call the company on Monday to demand at least a partial refund.
What would you do in my position?
4 comments:
*sigh* a similar thing happened to us. I went with some photographers friends of mine had used for weddings, engagements, newborns...anyway, a large portfolio. Included in our package was a DVD and all printing rights. We get the images back and they are way lower quality than any of my friends' pictures, wedding, engagement, reception, everything. I can describe in technical terms what was wrong with them (ISO, white balance, etc) but let's just say they're all newbie mistakes and we obviously got plain raw images, which is not what we were told we would get.
So what did we do? Well, we tried getting a few images altered but it took so long and communication was so poor, I finally just gave up. I've got my wedding scrapbook all done, but I don't really look at it. It's not great, to say the least.
I would contact customer service at the hotel or chapel that made you buy a package since they wouldn't allow guests to take them. I also would tell them that you felt very pressured by their system and that the photos that you paid A LOT of money for were horrible and not even straight and ready for printing.
I hope you did call them, I can't believe they required you to use their photographer, but were unable to provide you with an experienced photographer.
Wow. I say start a heavy social media campaign and see if they change their "requirements". As a blogger, you DO have power!
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