We booked Derick in late-January 2014 for our wedding that was in mid-March 2015 after winning a photo shoot with him through a Facebook promotion through a friend of his. We selected the 2nd tier wedding package, which includes some important items for us: high resolution digital copy of our photos, wedding album, e-sesh, bridal sesh and 2 photographers.
He is very passionate about his work and his work is quite lovely but his professionalism is lacking.
We booked him in January 2014 and didn't get our engagement in the books until October 2014 in the Sierra Nevada, a location that he goes to every Autumn due to the changing of the leaves. We wanted the shoot earlier due to we needed a photo to send out as a save the date since our wedding, although local to us, was an out of town wedding for our friends and family. We couldn't agree on a date until he suggested the Sierra Nevada one. It turned out that he moved to Jacksonville, FL and although it wasn't any business to us, he ensured us that his move will not affect our contract as we hired him for San Diego as he was still living here. We received the engagement photos mid-January but opted not to buy it ($1499 to get some canvases, guest book and most importantly high resolution of 1200px x 1800px digital copies) since we were not totally in love with it and only selected a few to display at the wedding.
On our wedding day, he was not only late but brought a friend, who dressed in a white lace dress, to show her the "behind the scenes" of a wedding DURING our wedding. He was not my main shooter. His partner was my main shooter and from what my husband says, Derick was not shooting much during the Groom's getting ready, etc. During the wedding, when I was running up to the Bridal suite, I saw Derick taking photos of the friend. My family and friends came up to me during the wedding and asked about this girl. Furious, I waited until after the wedding was over to talk to him about it. A friend that recommended Derick talked to him and immediately cleared it up, ensuring me that she was not a model and that he was wrong to bring someone to a wedding to show them the ropes. He apologized but things spiraled from here. We received the wedding photos in July and finally received the layout for the album in September. We didn't submit the layout until December and received the hard copy in March 2016.
After the confrontation, Derick became less responsive as we attempted to schedule our bridal shoot. We reached out in March, June, September, December, January and finally at the last week of February 2016, Derick told us that a San Diego couple booked him last minute so he'll be in San Diego and has time for us on a Saturday. The bridal shoot took place 2 days before our 1st wedding anniversary. Our photos turned out so well that he submitted it to Sandiegoweddings.com a little 2 weeks after the shoot took place but we didn't receive it until May 10th. When we asked for the pricing, it went from $1499 to $3900 for the same package. My husband and I were shocked! Granted pricing is based on current demands, we waited and entire year for our photos due to the inability to get him to commit--a shoot in California, where we initially booked him over 2 years ago in 2014.
My husband wrote him a letter to get clarification. No response. We waited another week to follow-up. No response. We followed up again--1 month after the initial email and the only response we got was that he thought he wrote back and here are the copies of the engagement photos we purchased back in February 2015.
We only wanted a copy (facebook quality is fine!) of our photos and to pay $5000 package total and to be charged 2.5x for having to wait almost a year to get our bridal photos (total of 2 years) was not worth it.
Like I said, he is passionate about his work and it is absolutely gorgeous. But as a customer, I always felt secondary--like a friend you can easily blow off if you weren't up for it--as his portfolio is takes precedent. read more
