Crystal Jo Fotos

As the Bride's sister & the Maid of Honor, I was able to see Crystal in action for the entire wedding. My review of Crystal Jo Foto is that she's nice, her images aren't horrible, & some of them are adorable! We did think that she could have been more discreet during the ceremony & then after seeing the pictures we've also decided that she is inexperienced both for what she charges, & honestly, also for someone who advertises themselves as being a "professional" in the first place. She may have photographed plenty of weddings, maybe she's even photographed a hundred weddings, but that doesn't mean it shows in most of the pictures & it doesn't mean that she's developed her skills or learned as much as a professional should know either. My sister & I both took one semester of photography back in High School & it was obvious even to us that Crystal still hasn't mastered how to properly use her camera, or how to use lighting equipment including sometimes the flash on her own camera. She does take plenty of pictures though! I'm positive that she took well over a thousand! For the group pictures & especially during the ceremony we could clearly hear her shutter button & a lot of times it sounded like she was just holding it down continuously. My aunt made a joke about it & asked why Crystal wasn't taking the video instead of the pictures! Of course the end product wedding pictures didn't include a thousand+ pictures, but that's part of the point & it's a give-away of Crystal's inexperience. I wouldn't consider myself to be even a serious hobbyist in the world of photography, but I do know for sure that "professionals" don't have to take that excessive of an amount of pictures just to delete well over half of them so that they can filter out some decent ones! I'm sorry but almost anyone with a good enough camera & autofocus can do that! And we aren't sure if it was done on purpose in an attempt to be artsy, but entirely too many of the pictures were blurry too! Not a blurry background, I'm talking a decent number of the pictures where nothing at all is legitimately in focus. A positive of my sisters wedding pictures was that there were plenty of candid, sweet, & happy pictures that feel like special moments were frozen in time! Those are everyone's favorites for sure! The unfortunate thing is that in most of the pictures you can't make out any of the beautiful beading, or details on the wedding dress at all. And we know that issue was caused by Crystal simply not "exposing" the pictures correctly, (another give-away pointing to inexperience). I will say that my sister didn't hate her wedding pictures, but she was disappointed, & she definitely had expected better, especially considering what she had paid. So we took another look at the Crystal Jo Foto website, & sure enough most of the wedding dresses shown are stark bright white without any details at all. My advice, is that you take a closer look at Crystal Jo Foto's portolio's & you also search for other photographers before signing a contract with her because there really are plenty of much better options out there to choose from in the same price range! After taking another look at the website we came to the conclusion that many of Crystal's pictures do kind of seem like (unoriginal) copies of better pictures that had been taken by better photographers. I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just being honest & really, you don't want to "not hate" your wedding pictures, you want to LOVE them!

Even though it's Crystal Jo Foto, not 'fotos', I'm still going to figure it's the same girl. Crystal Jo takes such pride in her work. We worked with her for our engagement pictures and wedding pictures. We live in Minnesota but were getting married in Ohio, so our time was limited as far as when we could meet and do the engagement session and such. She was always so accommodating! Her pictures turn out so bright and happy, and isn't that what you want from the happiest day of your life? Never once did I think "is she taking enough pictures?" nor was I thinking she was bothering me or my guests. Plus, you can tell she loves what she does. For what we paid, we have SO much product. We got books from the engagement session and of course for the wedding, plus CDs with every picture taken. You just simply have to check her out. She's amazing! www.crystaljofoto.com

We LOVE Crystal Jo Foto!! She did an amazing job of capturing every amazing moment of our day. She is so much fun to spend the day with and really made us smile. Her photos are amazing, and the best thing we have to remember our special day.

Crystal Jo took the most beautiful, candid, and artistic photos of my wedding. There are very few words that can explain the amount of talent and passion that she has for the art of photography. She's brilliant and is definately blessed with an eye of perfection. My wedding photos depict a story and the art and angles that are used help to tell the story of my wedding almost better than I ever will.