We had a terrible experience using John which seems to contradict many of the other reviews on here. I had looked for a few weeks to find a reputable, trustworthy photographer to take our family pictures while on vacation in Maui and John seemed great. I spoke with him over the phone, we made arrangements, etc. I had to reach out to him a few times to remind him to send me the contract and session confirmations but hey, I thought that being kinda spacey was just part of 'island life'. An hour before our scheduled photo time on Maui I get an email from John saying that this guy, Austin, was coming to meet us at our hotel. That was it- no detail, explanation or anything. Who the heck is Austin? It was too late to panic and Austin showed up on time and seemed nice so we went along with it- I actually thought that maybe John was going to meet us on location. NOPE! This guy Austin spent 30 minutes with us (per our Turtle package time), took some casual pictures, tried to stage us for a portrait but with 3 little kids that just wasn't working out. He didn't really seem to know what to do with us- he kinda followed us around and didn't provide much guidance. I have 3 little kids so you can imagine the chaos that ensued. We walked down to the beach, he took some candids of us, we got wet- and that was it. It was very fast, very informal and Austin said he was going to edit and send out the pictures in 2 weeks. I did not receive any follow up communication from John as to why Austin (Who is Austin, anyway?) showed up and not him.
I get home from Maui and a couple days later I get the invoice for the remainder of the payment fee. I am feeling really frustrated that I had hired John to take our pictures and he sends this other random guy and there was no explanation or anything, so I immediately called John to talk about it.
Turns out, John said, he had a family emergency and had to fly to Virginia so he asked Austin to take our pictures. He didn't want to 'worry us' which is why he didn't let me know what was going on. Don't worry, he said, he has used Austin many times, he is a fantastic photographer, don't worry, the pictures came out great, don't worry, he saw them, etc. etc. etc. He said he would knock off $50 from my package fee since he knew I was frustrated. John said he would personally edit all of the pictures and not Austin and I would be happy with them.
Okay, great. I am just crossing my fingers I get one family picture from all of this. John sends me a revised invoice (after I had to remind him) and I pay immediately.
A few days later I get an email notification that my entire deposit was refunded by John.
No follow up email, no communication, nothing. Just a full refund. At this point I start thinking I am not getting any pictures. I give John a few days to reach out to me, assuming that he would follow up a full refund with SOMETHING. But he doesn't. So I send him an email saying" I saw that you refunded my entire package cost and did not provide an explanation. Can you please let me know what is going on?"
John responds: "Yes I'll be calling today. I found out some information from Austin he had not Informed me on."
Turns out Austin, his trusted photographer friend that he "had used hundreds of times over many years" relapsed on meth and took some awful, awful pictures and john said he couldn't reasonably charge me for them. I was first confused since when I had spoke with him a couple weeks back he said he saw the pictures and they were great, and there were some "really good shots". But then I was pissed because these were my once a year family pictures while on vacation and after all the research I did on hiring a photographer, this was happening. So John sent me the link to what I can only assume were the salvageable pictures and he was right, they were all horrible. The lighting was terrible, the shots were out of focus, the framing was terrible- there was not one picture in there that I truly liked. This was a complete waste of my time and effort to arrange for family pictures on vacation and its not like I can just jump on a flight a fly back to Maui to have them redone. I found John to be very panicky, anxious and hard to believe.There were times on the phone I asked him to please stop talking because he would not stop long enough for me to express my dissatisfaction for how things went down. I was so tired of hearing one excuse after another and all I wanted to was to be done with this whole mess. Totally do not recommend this photographer or company. read more