Terrible experience with wedding photos and advice needed

[nomore]

Hi

My wife an I were married in Malibu, California on the beach back in September.

We had a professional photographer, or that's what we paid for anyway. At first, the guy seemed great. He had a good attitude, and seemed to know what he was doing. We asked for candid style shots.

Everything just clicked. A few minutes before the ceremony, 5 US Army chinook helicopters flew past over the ocean. The photographer was quick to get us into position and fire off some shots.

During the ceremony, he was getting all sorts of angles, from what I gather anyway.

Later into the shoot, a flock of pelicans flew overhead... again a great opportunity for memorable photos.

We also got some photos in a Baywatch style lifeguard tower. It was our perfect beach wedding.


Anyway, it took five weeks to get our photos back. All he did was copy the images from the memory card to a web archive.

This is where things went from great to terrible. Almost all of the photos are either over or under exposed. My wife's dress is completely blown out in most photos.

Composition was, for the most part, terrible.

Every single shot uses narrow DOF. We were at a lovely beach with cliffs and crashing waves... we want to be able to see those.

I thought at the time is was odd that the photographer was using the flash all of the time. I understand the need for fill flash, but that's not going to work for the shots where he's 20-30 metres away.

Another thing that really bothers me, is that I think he was using a defective or damaged lens. In all of the landscape oriented photos, the bottom-left of the image is very soft, distorted, contains ghosting and has chromatic aberrations.

According the EXIF data, he used a Canon 5D and the lens is a Canon EF28-70 f/2.8L USM. Pretty good stuff I'm sure you'll agree.

To make matters worse, when I asked for the RAW originals (in order to see if I could save the over and underexposed images), the photographer informed me that he shot the photos in JPEG! What professional, or for that matter, amateur photographer would use a high-end DSLR to shoot an important event, and use JPEG?

I've also noticed a trend in the EXIF. All photos are ISO 250. Flash fired. f/4.5. It was a bright sunny day. I'm sure 1/8000 second isn't always required.

Obviously, there's nothing we can now do to get good photos of our wedding day.

Oh, and the photos with the chinooks - completely blown out and barely recognisable.

I've attached one of the few barely acceptable images, but it suffers from the distortion, so I cropped it.

And this is a 100% crop from the distorted area from the original:

Am I right that this lens is faulty?

 

[Schizophonic]

It sounds like you know more about photography than he does. Buying high end kit is what everyone can do, but knowing how to use it effectively is a completely different ball game.

Sorry that your photos turn out not what you wanted? How did you meet this cowboy, was there any recommendation from other people you knew who had used him?

And yes all of the tale, tale signs like shooting in jpeg, memory card to clients without any PP is something quite amateur.

Have you tried getting in contact with the photographer and kicking up a fuse how terrible some of these photos are?

 

[EGuitarStar]

It maybe worth naming and shaming the photographer as well so others don't have to face this amature rip off.

 

[AtticusFinch]

Sorry to see you were let down so badly. This si the problem today, anyone has access to the "right gear" and can call themselves a photographer. You might be able to rescue some of the shots in PS, but them being only available in JPG will defo limit what can be done.

It's much more about who is behind the cameraq and what they actually know unfortunately. You definitely don't need full-frame or L lenses to shoot amazing photos (wedding or otherwise). Unfortunately many people think you do, or at least they can tell you they use "professional" gear.

 

[mrk]

The 28-70 is supposed to be a super lens indeed but his may well have received a few bashes in its time by the looks of it! It needs re-calibrating and the CA is very bad especially for f/4.5 so lord knows how bad it would be at 2.8 :S

Sounds like the beach resort was such a nice place and it's a shame the camera dude wasn't as nice with the results

 

[Schizophonic]

Anyway unless stated, isn't the price of the photographer not just for his time on the day but also the processing part as well?

 

[nomore]

Thanks for the feedback. The wedding officiant, photographer, videographer etc. were all part of a package we paid for from a wedding chapel.

This is one of the two chinook photos (top-right). Both are exposed like this.

I know we can't get this day back, and that the main thing that's upsetting. Our photographs are ruined. Any compensation we could try to get won't fix the problem - but at the same time, I don't think the photographer should be able to get away with such poor quality workmanship.

So I guess what I'm asking is, is there a technical reason for the lens issues that I can use. He must have noticed the poor quality in previous photos - so I think he was using a known bad lens.

 

[nomore]

Anyway unless stated, isn't the price of the photographer not just for his time on the day but also the processing part as well?

The package stated that it would be a professional photographer, and that we would receive 150 professional photographs on a CD. Well, we didn't get 150 professional photographs. We got 450 bad photographs... and they didn't come on a CD.

The other thing is, I am wary of wedding photographers. The wedding company had some nice photographs on their website, so I asked if that's the work of our photograph, and they told me it is.

They either sent a different photographer, or lied to us.

 

[Raymond Lin]

You didn't use Bella did you?

 

[nomore]

You didn't use Bella did you?

No we didn't. I guess the mistake is that we didn't see the photographer's previous work, except for those that we were told were by the same person on the wedding website.

It was a photography company called Blissful Images if I remember correctly.

 

[Tooks]

nomore, this is terrible and I'm gutted for you that you've ended up with your wedding photographs ruined.

I don't know about in the US, but over here you'd have a good case for taking them to court and getting some kind of compensation. As you've already said, no amount of money will help get the day back, and even if it was restaged you'd never have the same 'feel' for the day.

The beach/chinook shot is just terrible.

Looking at your Flickr gallery link, you obviously know your way around a camera, so hopefully you'll be able to salvage something from the set he has linked you to?

I've had a play with it, and you can get something acceptable, but no more.

I agree with you that this guy shouldn't be allowed to work doing such stuff, it really is not acceptable.

 

[alexisonfire]

Sorry to hear about your misfortune, i think it would definitely be worth trying to get in touch with another photographer and paying them purely to edit the photos. Especially if you have the raw files you will be surprised how much detail you can pull back.

A quick edit of above...

 

[Phate]

So sorry to hear this mate....this is so annoying, and unfortunately, when you get a decent wedding photographer, they sometimes get tarred with the same brush

Theres not much else to say that hasn't already been said, one guy I was speaking to the other day after I said "Problem is, so many people buy the gear and call themsevles a photographer these days" and he laughed and said to me "Sounds like my cousin!"

Bah

 

[ElDude]

That's awful

This is the reason why I had to repeatedly turn down a mate who kept asking me to shoot his wedding. I know for a fact that I could easily **** up under pressure and do this with the odd photo! Even one or two moments lost on a day like this would be unacceptable in my opinion, which is why I won't do it.

Although, it seems that this person was sadly completely incompetent regarding any level of photography

 

[AtticusFinch]

These photos are less to with the lens and more to with someone who appears not to know the first thing about taking photos other than pointing a camera in the general direction of the subject. I wouldn't blame the lens here, I'd blame the photographer.

 

[mrk]

Tbh it's a bit of both, the ca is abnormal for f4.5

 

[nomore]

I thought the same at first, but the CA and distortion only appears in the lower-left corner. I've been looking at reviews for the 28-70 L f/2.8 and they are all excellent:

"At 28mm, wide open already give professional results (edge to edge defination). On addition, color re-production are slightly better than primes. Distortion are not visible in all focal length.

The EF28-70 L will give you professional quality, edge to edge defination, perfect distortion control starting from f2.8! All focal length and all aperture used will give you first class quality images.

With all the excellent results, it is so hard to believe that I am actually shooting with ZOOM lens."

So I don't know for sure, but if he shot with a broken lens, then there's at least some come back.

 

[Tooks]

It shouldn't really matter if the lens was perfect or not, a bit of CA and distortion in the lower corner would not make a properly exposed and composed shot automatically a bad one.

The pictures are just not of professional quality, at least the ones you've posted aren't.

They look to me the pictures of somebody who didn't know what they were doing, or worse, didn't care what they were doing.

You should have 'come back' whatever.

The only thing I would say, and this is not in defence of the 'photographer', but if you wanted to see shots of the cliffs and waves as part of your set, then I presume you communicated that to him?

When I've shot weddings, I've always made 110% sure that I've got the shots that the bride and groom wanted, as well as the shots that I thought would be good. Satisfy the customer, or expect trouble, was always in the back of my mind!

 

[Namistai]

I agree with Tooks, a lens which may have some problems doesn't forgive poor exposure/focus etc.

If you have a contract saying that you'll receive 150 professional photos, I think you've got room to ask for your money back as a minimum, on the basis that they are not professional quality - this shouldn't be hard to argue based on what you've posted here! You could also push for some sort of compensation (might not get anywhere, but strengthens the initial argument imo). It won't make up for not having proper wedding photos, but at least you'll get some morale satisfaction.

 

[log1K]

This terrible - so sad to hear this story. I'm new to the photography scene but would never shoot (even for a favour) someone's wedding knowing what I know now. I am shocked.