It has taken me almost a year to write this review and my friends finally urged me to do so. I discovered Gene Ho photography at a bridal show and their work looked gorgeous so I worked with them to create a package and booked. We had our engag...ement and weddings pictures done by Gene Ho, with an additional photographer at the wedding. When we received our engagement pictures back, there were about 4 really good ones and I was a little nervous but brushed it off. We had taken so many that day but never saw most of them and the couple shots I was really excited to see never surfaced or the coloring/editing was off.
Fast forward to the wedding-we had two photographers to make sure nothing was missed as photos were #1 to me. We met at the church and did some photos before of the bridal party then family, then there was the wedding ceremony, then we took a trolley to the reception with one photog on the trolley to take pics of the fun and one went ahead to shoot the reception/cocktail hour. Our venues were both gorgeous-the reception a historic house with a winding staircase in the front room right in the middle of midtown Atlanta. Everything seemed like a pretty good night, they were shooting photos it seemed, although there were more than a few times we had to look for them or had to lead them to a place we wanted photos-if you're a photographer-you should know the venue and have the creative eye to bring us to where photos should be. We had to convince them to do a few photos outside in the city-and one of the main reasons we chose the venue-the antique staircase-there wasn't a single picture taken on which would have been stunning for us and their portfolio.
It took two months to see any pictures after the wedding-where most photogs these days put up 'sneak peeks' or blogs. When we did, there were some great shots-but so many shots missing that tears were literally running down my face. The biggest day of my life and I had a list of almost 30 moments missing...no pictures from the front of the church-so none of me coming down the aisle or my flower girls or the ring bearer or the ceremony-he did finally find a couple shots from the ceremony but I had to plead for them and then was told that the church would only allow them both to shoot from the balcony so they were blurry? What? That wasn't in my contract with the church and as a photographer, wouldn't you come and say something to me? Those pictures will be missing the rest of our lives. The shoot I asked to do with my bridal party pre-ceremony outside-only 1 group shoot and one of the girls was looking down. The lighting inside the church was dim as most churches are-and every single picture from inside had horrible shadows across faces that I had to ask them to photoshop out. I know they make lenses for low-light? The trolley ride to the reception-the photographer didn't take a single picture while we were en route? Thank goodness my friends had iPhones. And the cocktail hour? Not a single picture of that either. One photo of the dinner/inside set up pre-party and it was almost completely dark/discolored and almost every picture inside was dark and discolored.
It sounds like my experience was one of the few. In the end, it's not about the money, it's about the fact that you'll never get that day back and you're so busy that you depend on photos to capture all those moments. It hurts my heart so much to know that we depended on someone and those moments are lost.