A Photo Reflection

After many hours of research and an interview with the owner, Mike Swardson, my husband and I selected A Photo Reflection for coverage of our wedding day. We were highly impressed by the high ratings on both the website and WeddingWire (4.9 Stars out of 37 Reviews). We were also impressed by the owner’s portfolio. We chose a package that included 8 hours of photography with two photographers and 6 hours of videography. We were willing to pay higher than average prices for high-quality, professional photography and videography. Unfortunately, we were both underwhelmed and disappointed. The first issue that we encountered was lack of professionalism on our wedding day. All three professionals were late, which caused undue stress to both bride and groom and negatively affected our timeline. Each photographer was present only 7 hours, which included an hour-long dinner with no photos. We did provide dinner for all three professionals, but were disappointed that they didn’t stagger their meals to capture photos of our guests mingling at our dinner stations. The second photographer, which I presume was a sub-contractor, lacked attention to detail. Before the ceremony, she took photos of our wedding rings, all of which have my husband’s wedding ring noticeably backwards. Additionally, there were detail pictures missing, such as a photo of our ring box custom made by my deceased grandfather. She also failed to get a picture of the back of my dress pre-bustled. I, the bride, ended up unexpectedly directing the formal church photos, which resulted in us not getting some important photos. Our contract stated that we would receive all edited photos and video within 30-60 days. Near the 30-day mark, I asked for one or two sneak peeks. I was nervous that I hadn’t seen any photos. At that point, Mike Swardson sent us around 600 photos, which he deemed edited. I honestly thought that he had sent us raw photos, because there were so many photos with red eye. Upon request, he was willing to make edits to the photos that had red eye. It took two attempts before all the red eye was removed. He also edited a few other photos that we requested special edits. After all the edits were made, we requested the raw photos: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Some of the “unedited” photos were better quality than the “edited” photos, which made me seriously question how much editing was done prior to sending us the first file. We also had some issues with rough audio transition in our photo slideshow. Upon request, Mike Swardson attempted to fix the transitions, but they were worse on our final DVD. Mike Swardson sub-contracted a novice videographer but did the video editing himself. We received our Blu-Ray DVD after the 60-day mark and it was missing 9 video segments, including dancing segments and the segment of our sparkler sendoff. Upon request, Mike Swardson re-edited the video and sent us three copies as an apology. The re-edited video was much better. Overall, we were underwhelmed by A Photo Reflection’s work. We feel as though what we were presented with when we did our research and made our investment was very different than the experience that followed. We decided not to rate below 3-stars, because Mike Swardson was willing to work with us to do additional edits. After many tears, lost sleep, conversations, and excuses, we finally have some nice wedding photos and a wedding video.