The quality of Luke's photographs was acceptable, but he failed to take a single picture of my wedding's cocktail hour. 50 minutes elapsed when he took no pictures at all. When confronted with this, he became defensive, angry, and insulting. Luke repeatedly accused me of lying about the 50 minute gap. However, he was unable to produce a picture from that time. It is important to note this was not during dinner when we was, of course, welcome to stop shooting while he ate and rested. Some other notes from the exchange:
- He resorted to personal insults by calling me a “cheesy” “micromanager.”
- He said he called his wife on the drive home to say shooting my wedding was “not worth it.” It doesn’t feel great to hear that from a vendor you chose.
- He continually defended himself by saying he “worked hard.” To me, if you don’t take a picture for nearly an hour when you’re being paid $500 per hour to take pictures, something is very wrong.
We still don’t know what he was doing for those 50 minutes while he wasn’t taking pictures. All he said was he spoke with our DJ and the hotel’s coordinator.
A few other notes:
- He's a good photographer, but arguably relies on warm, sunset lighting too heavily.
- In person, he is very pleasant and was charming to our guests at the wedding.
-He seems most comfortable shooting posed portraits. That's not a critique, but is something you should be aware of if you would like more of an organic, "documentary" feeling.
It's unfortunate Luke didn't respond professionally when confronted with his not photographing our cocktail hour. He's a talented photographer and a nice guy when he's not questioned, but clearly doesn't respond appropriately to valid concerns. I cannot recommend a vendor who treats his customers disrespectfully. I would also invite you to read my other reviews. I'm not a person who nit-picks vendors to find fault; in fact, this is the only negative review I gave.
Clark+Walker Studio responded with the following comments:
Where to start with this one... I took it up with WeddingWire rigorously but they've been either unresponsive or didn't seem to care all that much. It started with me shooting their engagement shoot, and absolutely knocking it out of the park. When I arrived at the wedding even the groom commented on me being almost as big a celebrity at their wedding as him because everyone loved the photos so much. The wedding was of course the same, with me receiving emails from family members indicating how much they loved the entire experience. Juston did decide to book my bottom package though, which at the time only had 1 shooter. I explained the differences and encouraged 2 shooters saying it allows us to be in more than one place at a time. That way if he wanted both cocktail hour shots of people and also room shots in a tight timeline it would allow for that. He elected not to do it, yet inquired after the wedding why there wasn't a lot of people shots at cocktail hour. Then he proceeded to download special software that would look up the time each photo was taken to try and get me to account for every bathroom break or card change or time I changed my batteries throughout the day. At first I was as extremely polite about it as you all would expect from me and my studio - but there's a certain point of... "really?" After the ceremony I did bride+groom shots, grabbed a couple shots of their friends at cocktail hour, went in and started room shots, got pulled over to the DJ to go over reception timeline, then the wedding coordinator came over to review the day... and I don't know I probably did something like go to the bathroom before I started shooting again. I mean these things all happen at weddings. This was all accounted for, like any other wedding... and if someone wants constant rapid fire shooting of all moments of the day then get 2 shooters and the pictures will never stop all night. No matter how talented and hard working someone is we're all still human beings who need to eat a snack bar for 3-4 minutes and go to the bathroom for a couple minutes at some point. So yes I wasn't as pleasant as I normally am after several of these email accusations, as many of you might expect, but most of what he wrote is just an angry over the top review that's not true and shouldn't even be posted. If he wanted to give me a 4 star review that mentioned he wished he had more photos of cocktail hour I'd live with that, even though I strongly recommended it, but at least it would be fair. This though? Shame on WW for even posting it.
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