Wedding Photo Hell

spongecake123

Need some advise on my rights regarding wedding photo's.
I purchased the services of a Wedding photographer for my daughters wedding at a cost of £450.00.
The arrangement was for him to take photo's at the church and at the reception venue which he did,the price also included the albums photo's printed and the cost of the album.
8 weeks after the wedding we contacted the photographer to ask if we could pick the album up and were told he would have to send the photographs to Scotland for processing.
Rang him again 2 weeks later,this time he said "My Dad is Dying I will have to get back to you "
By this time my daughter is upset and worried that she won't get any photo's,he had also become very hard to contact by phone and his answering machine not in operation,also the same day I noticed his website had disappeared all that remained of it was a domain that said subscription expired.
This sent out alarm bells,it sounded to us like he had gone bust,so we decided to go to his house and speak to him,we did and we decided the best thing would be to obtain the discs that had the wedding photo's on. Anyway after more phone calls where he said things like "How would you like it if your Dad was dying" and "10 weeks isn't that long to wait for wedding photo's" to cut a long story slightly shorter we now have the discs but this is not what we paid for and feel that we are entitled to a 50% refund,especially as he did a cheaper alternative that consisted of having wedding photos on a low resolution disc for a price of £225.00.
Do I have any chance of getting any money back ?

Blackpool_Saver

I would be thankful you have the discs to be honest, I'll bet you would have paid another thousand to get that disc.

Edited to add, make several copies of it

earthstorm

I noticed his website had disappeared all that remained of it was a domain that said subscription expired

this just means his domain has expired and/or he has not paid his hosting fees, so his host has suspended his site

Fosterdog

I have to agree that 10 weeks isn't that long for wedding photos, especially if the photographer is well sought after and has lots of other photos to process at the same time, but that should have been agreed on before the photos were even taken.

WTFH

£450 for a proper professional wedding photographer is practically nothing! Where did you find them? Did they show you a portfolio?

With digital cameras being so cheap, joe bloggs can spend £1000 and set himself up as a pro with little to no experience and even less skill. Cutting corners by getting a cheap photographer is a very risky game.

forgotmyname

I went to a wedding a little while back and they said the photo's sent to them after the wedding from family and friends were just as good as the professional ones.

Camera's have got so much better even the ones on phones. Google HDR or rich tone.

My phone has that mode, I think it takes 3 pictures at different exposures and merges them to create the best possible image.

One image i saw was a field hedgerow/tree line scene.

Picture 1, Overexposed the sky to get decent brightness on the hedgerow. Sky washed out

Picture 2 had a good picture of the sky and clouds but the hedgerow was almost black with little details.

The HDR shot had a brilliant detail on the hedge and a perfect sky in the same image.

Not bad from a phone camera.

mro85

I got married earlier this year and the photographer was over 3 times as much. £450 sounds warning bells especially if it includes albums etc.

Personally if you have the original high resolution pictures I would create an album online and have them printed. You can get high quality albums printed cheaply and you can always add other wedding pictures people took from Facebook etc.

munchpot

Just a warning about printing the pictures. Many shops will not print 'professional' images without a copyright release from the photographer.
Whilst he may have given you the discs the copyright remains with him and without his written permission to print you may find it hard to get hard copies.
Hope you get it sorted

WTFH

You say the photos are "on a low resolution disc" - what do you mean by that?
A disc is a disc, but the images may have been saved as low resolution, that's a different matter.

Also, as munchpot pointed out, you may struggle to find a company that will legally print the images for you. They belong to the photographer, he owns the copyright on them.

I don't do wedding photos, but I do my own post processing - every photographer should be doing that. It's time consuming but it has to be done. If he took 500 photos at a wedding, then probably 200 would be worth processing to crop, touch up, enhance, etc.
Printing is a different issue - he might produce a contact sheet for you on his own printer, but then he'll send of individual shots to be printed properly.
That's for individual shots. Producing a book is a different matter. To do it properly will cost over £100 if it's 40-50 pages, but I've worked with photographers that charge over £2000 per book.

As I say, I don't do wedding photos for a variety of reasons, but I have a local gallery who approached me to sell some of my images, so I must be doing something right. The last time I did a book it took me 3 months (of evenings after work etc) to get the photos organised & edited, a further month to get the book printed and then I took one of the images and had it printed at 21"x14" and framed.
Total cost (yes, cost, no profit) was in excess of £1000. That's from the invoices I have from the book maker and the printer.

You either need to pay for a proper professional photographer to take the photos, or you do as others have suggested - get copies of the photos the guests take.
At my own wedding we only had 10 guests and because of the size of the venue and the number of people, it was impractical to have a photographer as well. In the end I asked everyone to take photos, and at the end of the day I asked each one to give me their cameras. I downloaded all the images onto a computer then edited them afterwards. We had a couple of hundred photos in total, I picked and edited the best 40 and then burned them on to a CD which we then copied and posted out to relatives who weren't there and to our parents.

earthstorm

I did a couple of weddings a few years back while i was active in a camera club ( pre digital) and a decent wedding album (blank) from spicer hallfield without any overleafs etc cost approx. £200, then you have to take photos, develop them, get the mounts and overleafs and then maybe a sample album/parents album and then arrange the photos, so not much change from £1000

harrys_dad

The price you were quoted for the service offered was ridiculously cheap. Are the photos on the discs "worked on" or just straight off the camera? What resolution are they?

Sorry, but you seem to have taken a gamble on a cheapo quote and got cheapo service. As stated elsewhere there are plenty of people who own a camera who think they can produce a professional wedding package. I regret to say that you are lucky to have the discs so at least have some record.

As an aside, the "get all the guests to take photos and send them to the bride/groom" is an increasingly popular option. You may not get all the "standard shots" like "bride having her hair done in the morning" etc but you will have a lovely record of a lovely day.