Yeah, I’ll use clickbait titles. So, sue me.

But with the express permission of the person who made this post, let me introduce you to a tale of melancholy.

I hate to make this post.

But, I would advise you against using [Fraudulent Photographer].

I had been speaking to her for quite a while about our wedding day photography.

The day of, she told me she was there at the location. When I could not locate her, neither could the officiant, she claimed she was there. Then when I asked her to give me a call so I could find out exactly where she was, she blocked me on all [forums] including her personal page.

Luckily, there was another photographer that had just finished up a session near by and swooped in to save the day.

I can highly recommend [Hero Photographer].

OUCH.

Another photographer decided to look more closely at the photographer who was missing in action. and found this:

Investigating Photographer: Her pictures on her site are stock images pulled from google image search.

(Shows examples)

OP: Wait. What??

I found the website of the Photographer Who Never Showed and noticed a few questionable things. First, her gallery of images consisted of one photo shoot with a young family. The pictures were not professional quality.

The picture above is a sample photo from photographer’s website. I have added the box to preserve the privacy of the subjects but you can see it is poorly exposed and composed.

But compare and contrast with the photos she displayed under the page marked “Booking.”

I looked up these images using Google Image Search. They are all stock photos taken by other photographers. Oh, and the verbiage about “[t]here is something so incredibly special about growing bellies …” from her maternity example? Lifted from another photographer’s Facebook page.

And the senior/graduation session picture! It shows a young woman striding toward a building on campus . . . for the University of Alabama. If you are selling photography in Big Orange Country, at least steal an image from the University of Tennessee.

So, What Are Those Most Important Tips?

TIP NUMBER ONE

Always ask to see a full gallery of wedding images, from soup to nuts. Every photographer - hopefully - will put their best work on the website. Couples are romantically posed. Lighting is on point. But your wedding day is not just pictures of you and your beloved. You want pictures of your cake. Your family. Your ceremony. Your guests tearing it up on the dance floor. No doubt a skilled photographer making gorgeous portraits will also deliver great pictures of the rest of the day but they should be more than willing to show you how they handle the entire day.

If I can, I like to show couples a wedding from the venue they have chosen, since it allows us to talk about things like locations in the venue and how to maximize the light for pictures.

TIP NUMBER TWO

Always, always have a contract … and read it before signing it. Even if you “have a cousin” who is going to be photographing your wedding as a gift to you, get certain things down in writing, such as:

• How long they will be at the wedding. Understand that your photographer may not be clicking the shutter every single moment, but you should be able to know when they will be there and when they will be leaving.

• What the photographer will be delivering to you. Not all JPGs are alike. How big will your JPGs be? Do you get a print release? Just for some quick information, a JPG for online use is 72 pixels per inch, but a JPG for printing should have a higher, finer resolution, ideally one of 300 pixels per inch (and know that if you post your 300 pixel per inch image on Facebook, Facebook squishes it down to 72 pixels per inch).

• When will you get your pictures. I have heard stories of couples still without pictures some six, eight months after their wedding. That’s absurd.

For the woman who posted the original warning in a forum, I am glad to see that she had a happy ending when a photographer who happened to be nearby stepped in and got the job done. But not every story has a happy ending.

Let me give you this tidbit: NO professional is insulted if you ask questions or want something put in writing. If you are told, “Sure, I’ll get that to you” and things never come - that’s a red flag. If you hear, “I do business with a handshake because I trust my clients” - that’s a red flag. If you look at every picture on their website and see extremes, that is, amateur-looking pictures mixed in with professional-looking ones - that’s a red flag.

And more so than a red flag - if someone is trying to sell you a service using the work of someone else, that’s fraud.

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