Positively Photo & Video

for our wedding. He said his other shooters work was well represented on his website and the final edits would be done by him personally. Fast forward to the end of May, I contacted Arief to put me in touch with our shooter so I could work on assembling the timeline. Arief responded that he didn't have a shooter assigned yet. Mid-June, still no shooter assigned. Finally, when I reached back out in mid-July, he responded that he had a shooter assigned who would be contacting me. The shooter did contact me and she provided the name and pricing of her own business. She isn't a shooter for Arief's business, she is an independent photographer who he hired for our wedding. Additionally, the quality of the shooter's work was not to the same level as the photographs on the Positively Photo website. I voiced this concern to Arief on 7/24 and asked what our options were. He didn't reply for over a week, and only replied when I said I wanted to cancel my contact. He also said that he doesn't normally book his shooters until a month before the event. I couldn't wait to work with someone on my timeline until a month before our wedding as other vendors needed the timeline for their schedules. Arief made it seem like I was being unreasonable to assume that he had assigned a shooter in advance, but why did we need to send him a $650 deposit in January if he wasn't planning to assign our shooter until September? We wanted to secure a good photographer in advance and not just end up with whatever photographer wasn't already booked a month out from our event. I asked to have our deposit refunded, as I didn't feel the services we had discussed with Arief were being provided, and he has refused. Be aware that while Arief's photos are stunning, there is no guarantee he will be there for your event. If he isn't photographing the wedding himself, he'll farm it out to any photographer who is available and you're stuck with them, even if you don't like their work. There is even a clause in his contract saying he can assign a photographer he chooses in the event he's unable to attend, so you might end up with another photographer even if you have booked Arief directly. Stressing about whether I was going to have a good photographer (after I booked one!) was not on my to-do list and I would recommend not booking this photographer if it isn't on yours.

ext. Sometimes even within 10 minutes. We were able to schedule our engagement pictures, do the shoot, and receive the pictures very next day. The day of the wedding (January 26th) he showed up on time with the additional photographer and everything went smoothly. He gave us 50 preview photos the very next day and we were excited and happy. But then the waiting began. We did not get a time on when we would receive the pictures. And it wasn’t in our contract either, which we now realized was a mistake. We contacted Arief in April, about 3 months after our wedding, for an update on the pictures and he replied with “soon”. Okay great! He even did us a favor and special edit one picture that we wanted. Two months later, we didn’t receive any updates. So we contacted again and he replied shortly after that it might be as early as the upcoming week. Again, no problem, we understand it takes time. After another few weeks of not hearing from him, we messaged again in July. Only for him not to respond back. This started making us nervous. So we messaged again and he responded that he got a new job and that his editing has been delayed because of this. When we messaged back asking for a timeframe that we can expect our pictures, he again did not respond. We gave him another 2 weeks before we emailed him around the beginning of August, expressing our concern and disappointment over his lack of communication, and when he did respond, it was to give us a false promise. Again, no reply. So we waited about a week, and then we messaged him. Now telling him that we were expecting our pictures in 2 weeks, either edited or unedited, or we would be pursuing further action. As at this point it felt like he was not planning on giving us our pictures. And, yet again, he did not respond. So we messaged him again a few days later, how we don’t want to keep hounding him over our pictures, but now he is ignoring us. He finally responded, but he wasn’t apologetic that he had been non-responsive, just that he thought he replied to the last message, and that he would have our pictures done that night or the next day. Unfortunately, he again did not deliver. Five days later, and still no word from him. We messaged him, and he responded that he would have them that night. He finally sent us the edited, pictures that night. On a side note, he has a Facebook page where he posts a lot of his work. Throughout this time, we noticed through his page that some weddings that took place AFTER ours already received their pictures months before us. Also, he’d upload all of his “mini sessions” or senior pictures that clearly were taken after our wedding, not working on our pictures it seems. Overall, we are happy with the pictures. But we will not recommend him for any photography in the future. The lack of communication and false promises took away the whole experience. We had to wait 7 months for our wedding pictures and had to threaten to sue him in order to get them. That is not how you should do business. And looking at other reviews, we are sadly not the only ones. It seems like if you know him as a friend, he’d do your pictures over any stranger. Giving him 2 stars for the quality, and 1 star for service, because he really was great the entire time before and during our wedding.