Shelly Voss Carlson Photography

Shelly is a gem! She did my engagement pictures and I could not be happier with the whole experience. Not only is she a great photographer, your session with her is a blast! She's so personable and you can tell that she truly cares about capturing your story. She got my pictures to me so quickly.. and they were stunning! She has a wonderful way of making you look fabulous, yet natural. Her wedding collections are beautiful as well! When I get married, I definitely want her to be my photographer.

We hired Shelly for our engagement photos, our wedding day, and my bridal photos. I will start out by saying she is an excellent portrait photographer and those photos come out great. However, she is not experienced as a wedding photographer, so keep that in mind if you are thinking of hiring her for that purpose. The only thing we disliked about our wedding day and the entire experience was the photographer and wedding photos. Although we signed the contract well in advance of all portraits and the wedding day, she waited to schedule my bridals until after she could book up her weekends with weddings, so I had to take off work in order to take them at a very inconvenient time, which is all she had left when she would finally agree to schedule the bridal portraits. The package we chose and paid for said it included 12 hours of wedding day photography with approximately 100 photos per hour, and that we would receive our digital images and a flash drive with the photos within 6-8 weeks of the wedding. We only received ~850 photos, and the flash drive came in the mail 16 weeks after the wedding. We have no photos of any family or guests once the reception began; there are only pictures of those guests dancing on the dance floor. We had a pretty long reception (6 hours), and for the last 4.5 hours we have no photos other than from the dance floor. There were two photographers included in the package, but with the number of photos we received back and the content of the photos received, we'd have never guessed that the second photographer was even there. The only family pictures we received were the staged ones at the front of church after the ceremony - which I was having to orchestrate - not something I had expected and definitely heartbreaking as there were family members there who we don't see often and are older and we would have cherished having photos with them from our wedding. Attention to detail was not included, either, and many of the things we worked so hard on for the wedding were not captured in photos. Finally, there was a specific flash setting used at the reception where only 60-70% of the photo is visible because of a dark "ring" outside the photo. This is a personal preference problem and not something I should fault the photographer for, but we wish it had been communicated to us beforehand as it is so different from anything we've seen and we aren't happy with any of those photos. I know this was a lengthy review - just a reminder to all brides to please research your photographer thoroughly before choosing, and it is worth paying a little more for someone who has past wedding experience.