We were referred to Chantz of Phose Photography from a coworker. When when met up with him he was professional and showed us everything we wanted to see in regards to his work and products we would be receiving from him. After our engagement session we received our images within a week and were satisfied with our images. It wasn't until a month before our wedding where we felt a little unease with his lack of response of our emails. He finally emailed us and we were able to meet up with him to go over our shot list. We figured because he was a professional, or so we thought, he knew what the important shots were and the only thing we really asked from him was to be sure to take lots of varying pictures of our guests. He required us to send an itinerary and a driving direction sheet with a list of all the locations of our day. On the day of the wedding, he showed up late and said that it was due to the fact that he forgot the itinerary along with his driving directions. STRIKE NUMBER 1. He mentioned that there would be a second shooter which we thought would be with him all day but she actually showed up late to the ceremony because of traffic. STRIKE 2. In looking back to the wedding day, we figured that Chantz might of been overwhelmed with the amount of guests because he directed us poorly. He was not aggressive in directing like he said he would be. STRIKE 3. At the reception we really didn't pay much attention to what he and his second shooter were doing since we assumed he would be walking around capturing moments of our guests interacting with one another like we asked him too.
Once the wedding was over Chantz mentioned it would take him 6 weeks to get our images. That would mean we would receive them around August. We received our images in October. Long story short, whenasked if our images were done he said he wasn't expecting so many images and hat it would take him a little longer to complete them. That was fine with us, so all we asked was that he let us know when he was done. Weeks go by and it's now September, we email him again and ask for an update. He tells us he will be done at the end of the week and can meet up with him that Saturday. We get a phone call Friday night before we are supposed to meet up and he gives us this lame ass excuse that his brother's dog jumped onto his desk and knocked over the hard drive containing all of our images and now he is unable to view them. We had no words. All we wanted was our images and we were willing to help him out in any way. We let him know that but he insisted of figuring out himself. That took him another couple of weeks when he finally told us the good news that the images were recovered. We demanded that because of what we had to go through we wanted ALL of our images. He was able to do just that for us. After going through this, it made us wonder what photographer doesn't back up their images to an online hard drive as well as any other hard drive they have on their computer. Apparently that would be Chantz!
In our wedding package that we already paid for back in May of 2011, we would also receive a wedding album. We remember specifically remembered that he gave the option of us creating the album or he could do it. He mentioned that previous clients that created their albums felt drained afterwards and wished that he did it for them. We went with that and told him we would like for him to create the album. He said it'd take him about 6 months after the wedding to complete it and he would keep us updated. It's now almost our 1 year anniversary and we have yet to hear from him in regards to our wedding album.
As for his images, we were satisfied with the results but we also noticed he clearly didn't follow our shot list. There were at least 12 portraits of one of our groomsmen and only a 2 of the groom. That goes to show that Chantz or the second shooter's attention was on the wrong person and they failed to diversify the images!
Not sure if his business is still around but hire him at your own risk.
