The experience of working with George E. Smith Photography was the worst part of our wedding. The day of the wedding he was pleasnant, however afterwards he turned into a complete nightmare. I want to give some advice to anyone who wishes to work with George E. Smith.
First, if you really want the DVD with all of the images on it you will probably be better to avoid the Storybook Album package and choose one of the other options. You will have a set amount of time for photographs and you won't receive an album, but an additional $250 per hour if you go over your time is a lot less than you will be charged when he puts together your album.
If you still want to work with the Storybook Album package be very specific with your contract. On our contract George handwrote something to the effect of 'Storybook album with a MINIMUM of 50 images' and also 'with acceptance of the album design you will receive the proofs and DVD of all the images'. When you read this, it seems harmless enough but you need to specify the maximum amount of images you will allow in your album or you will end up paying an additional $25 a piece for every extra picture that he adds into the album. This means you need to handwrite somewhere on the contract a statement that the album shall not exceed ## images without your consent. Even though his website advertises the album with 50 images and you get to choose those images, it didn't actually work that way for us. Our album was full of duplicate poses and irrelevant photos that he said captured "the complete story of the day". The album with all of the images (220 total) came with a bill for thousands of dollars for us to pay in order to get the DVD. He was *kind* enough to offer up to a three year payment plan if we couldn't afford to pay thousands of dollars right after our wedding and honeymoon.
Also, one word on the album design layout he provides. We received several 8-1/2 x 11 sheets of white paper with dozens of boxes to designate the album pages. Within each box there were handwritten numbers to indicate which images were to appear on the page. We had to flip though our proof album to match up all 220 image codes to the corresponding pictures in order to get a basic idea of the design. We told George Smith that his initial album design (containing an additional 170 images at $25 each) went well over our budget and we needed to work with him to create an acceptable album design containing closer to the contracted 50 images. He communicated that we were confused about the wording in our contract: if we did not accept HIS first design we were not entitled to receive the DVD or the proofs; subsequent designs, including editing the quantity of images, did not qualify.
This has been a very difficult situation, definitely not how I expected to start married life. I want to make sure that no one else is lured into a seemingly competitively priced contract only to discover that George Smith will exploit the situation to take more of your money in the long run. I cannot have the photographs retaken, and now I truly regret not hiring Chrissy Lambert Photography.
In the end, we wound up paying an additional $600 (ransom) for the DVD of our images, we forfitted the album and the large portrait. The images on the DVD were filmy and pale and he refuesed to color correct or clean any of the images.
