This is an image from the wedding album of Thomas and Anneka Geary. No, it was not taken by a drunken wedding guest. It was taken by professionals.
The Gearys engaged the photographic team of Ian McCloskey and Nikki Carter to photograph their wedding at a price of seven hundred fifty pounds sterling.
Lest you think that first photo is a complete fluke, here’s another example of McCloskey and Carter’s Work:
The entire album is brimful of blurry, poorly composed, amateurish shots just like these. In fact, in the picture of the Gearys signing their wedding register, there’s a disembodied hand holding a toy motorcycle where McCloskey and Carter attempted to edit out the bride’s small nephew… and failed.
When the Gearys saw their photos, they thought at first it was a joke and the real pictures would come soon. They soon discovered this was no joke. They demanded their money back.
It was not to be. McCloskey and Carter had already disbanded the business in the face of a string of disgruntled customers demanding their money back.
Gee, I wonder why.
But the really sad thing is that this entire situation could have been avoided. How? The Gearys could have taken a little time and trouble to check out McCloskey and Carter’s credentials.
When picking a vendor to handle any aspect of your wedding, always be certain to ask to see recent examples of their work and get references… then call the references and ask them about both the quality of the work and how it was working with that vendor. Do a quick Google search and see if you find complaints filed about them – and for what.
Finding a good photographer on a really tight budget isn’t easy. If you’ve got less than the average to spend, you may find yourself choosing between mediocre pictures of the entire event or a smaller number of pictures that are done better. Only you can decide which better suits your needs. But I can guarantee you one thing: pictures this bad shouldn’t ever happen for pay.
In fact, I got better pictures of my wedding from guests who barely knew which end of a camera was which!
But we also have a beautiful album of professional shots that make me smile every time I look at them.
Wow, that’s just ugly. Photos are very important in weddings so make sure to hire the experts on the field to really capture the best moments of your big day. Photos like these (above) will be very disappointing to the couple. Just sad.
Years ago I was maid of honor for a friend who found a photographer through her florist – he was trying to get into the business and gave her a deal. We should have been warned when we went to his place to take the bridal portrait and after he shot the pics, when I was helping her get out of her dress, he sheepishly knocked on the door of the changing room and admitted to having forgotten to take the dark slide out of his camera so we had to get her buttoned up again to retake the pics.
At the wedding itself, it turns out he forgot to fully charge his flash/lighting kit so none of the pics turned out. Luckily the bride had asked a friend of ours who was great at photography to take candid shots at the reception, because those are the only photos she ended up with.