Montana Dennis Photography Reviews
Reviews
4.8 out of 5 rating
4.8 out of 5 rating
9 Reviews
95% recommend it
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Rw Sent on 01/31/2023I hired Montana as a photography coach and it was money well invested!
I met Montana at a photography conference and hired him as a coach to help take my own photography to another level. Let me just say this, there is No One on the planet like Montana Dennis! He is so authentic and present in everything he does, that it shows up in his photography and in his relationships. When you hire Montana, He just doesn't show up to take your photos and leave. HE SHOWS UP! Yet, with no ego, no fanfare, just someone who really wants to serve his clients well. He is an excellent teacher and coach, one of the best photographers I know, and is now a cherished friend. I have told people for years now that when it comes time to pick a photographer for my own daughter's wedding, there is no other choice but Montana! -
User2346946 Sent on 10/02/2015Montana is phenomenal. He is an extremely talented artist, and uses his creative skill to expertly capture your special day. He is easy to communicate with, prompt in his responses, on-time, basically the standard for professionalism.
My husband and I, and really everyone in the wedding party, loved how easy he was to work with, how he took the best shots without being distracting (stealthy, much?). He did an excellent job of getting us to laugh and loosen up and the result is beautiful, natural looking photos.
There is something so special about Montana, and I think a huge part of that is his ability to fuse his skills in interacting with people and his artistic craft. The photos are so stunning, I can't stand it, but the fact that he really shared our day with us made the whole interaction even better.
The site he uses to share the photos is top notch as well, and while that was something I hadn't really thought about ahead of time, I realize how awesome and important that is seeing the finished product.
In short, hire Montana! You will get a personalized experience, and epic photos to remember your day by.
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Alita M. Sent on 07/13/2022Disappointing and mixed experience
It's taken us over a year to write this review and it comes with a lot of mixed feelings and emotions. Montana is not your typical photographer and in some ways it is hard to write a review that gives half of his work the justice it deserves despite the poor experience we had working with him. Our sharing this review is to help others figure out whether or not this is the right photographer to do business with based on their needs - it is not a reflection of his art and skills as a photographer and artist. To be as fair as possible to both sides, we recognize and include in this review how the pandemic impacted his abilities to deliver services as normal. It's also very important to us for anyone reading this to know that despite all that happened, we think Montana is a wonderful, incredible and very unique photographer who is a real artist. Even though our experience didn't end on a great note, he may still very well be your perfect, dream photographer. We encourage you to talk with him and seek out his counsel if his portfolio and other reviews speak to you.
We were engaged in Nov 2020 and decided to have a small pandemic wedding. Our wedding planner introduced us to Montana in December 2020; May is usually impossible to book him but he had a pandemic cancellation. We knew full-well that there would be some trade-offs and compromises in working with any vendor but also made sure to vet each vendor carefully. We made sure to think carefully about what we wanted in a photographer - someone who was artistic, understood how to play with light/shadows and movement while also capturing emotion. We knew from reviews and our planner that being an artistic photographer, Montana would be prone to being drawn to artistic photo ops - especially sunset "golden hour" and chatting with people first to get the right mood. We knew to get more formal/family photos taken we needed to make a list with him and we made sure to discuss how important it was to get a photo of every single family/friend that day.
The good stuff: He spends the extra time up front getting to know you individually and as a couple. He includes a pre-shoot in the cost so that way everyone feels comfortable the day-of the wedding. When you work with Montana, you're not just getting a photographer. What you really get is a full-fledged relationship consultation service paired with photography. He encourages you with verbal cues to explore your emotions and feelings about each other during your photo shoots. It's basically marriage counseling and we swear by his approach that it will give you the most intimate engagement photos out there. The proof is in the photos, our engagement photos were stunning and gorgeous all-around. A bit of retro feel with tons of light and surface reflection shots that made our photos unique while still feeling very Californian. He nailed it. He is down-to-earth and very comfortable to work with while on a live shoot too. We had a blast reviewing photos with him and discussing different tactics for the day of the wedding.
The day of: We had an incredible First Look session on the front lawn area, also our wedding party, ceremony, night-time group dancing shoots after the ceremony went exceptionally well. But those were the few bright spots in a day of very confusing of photography snafus and communication issues. Montana showed up about 20 minutes late to start and we kept having to hunt him down around the house for this first 2 hours for photo ops. We still got to our site on time, but you can say it put us both on edge the entire rest of the day feeling like we were chasing him. We kept asking him to make sure we took certain photos or asking where else we should take photos, but it was colder and windier out than expected and the light was changing fast because of cloud conditions so we figured it was best to follow his lead. What we didn't know then was that it was a sign of repeat issues to come later.
The first issue was the timing of delivering our wedding photos. He communicated both in writing (through automated email reminders, personalized email exchanges, texts, calls) that it would be "15-20 business days, right around 2-3 weeks" to receive our photos. Our wedding was 5/16 and we did not receive our photos until 7/21 - more than 2 months after our wedding day. It took us reaching out several times asking why it was taking so long to set up our reveal appointment. He gave NO EXPLANATION for why there were delays, only mentioned he had his birthday coming up but could meet us afterward. When we finally met again to do the reveal, he quickly referenced that rescheduled weddings had caused him to fall behind a bit and apologized, but that was about it.
Second issue was the wedding photos. For someone who is obsessed with capturing great light and reflection angles, he took little care when it came to our family photos. Our family photos were a complete mess; EVERY single family had an overexposed background. My niece and sister-in-law's blond hair showed up as 1/4 of their heads missing and even my red-brown hair was whited-out in several places. Our golden hour photos were also poorly executed, while lighting was great behind us, he didn't pay attention to the grass section we were standing on and how it impacted our posture and bodies. Most had my husband standing behind me holding my belly, making us look like we were pregnant or slouched over exhausted as if we were sleeping. Almost every photo of us dancing had one of our faces hidden. We had only 25 guests total, but at least 3 friends were not in any photos and and the rest were caught in unflattering, drunk dancing moments at the end of the night.
Third issue was getting him to do anything to fix the overexposed photos. He admitted during our first reveal session to rushing through our family photos in favor of getting us more time for "golden hour photos." He offered to review them to see what he could do and then ghosted us. From the end of July 2021 until February 2022 (in total 7 months!!), we chased him asking him for editing updates. He edited 2 photos at some point in October and then went completely dark again. Our family was asking us constantly if wedding photo prints were ready and we missed several family event/holiday timelines for using our wedding photos. Flat out, I left voicemails in tears asking him to please get back to us...it wasn't until we begged our wedding planning to intervene that he wrote us in Feb 2022 a long email. He shared that he had chased after a lot of new business, including a big commercial gig, in order to make up for the year of revenue lost during the pandemic. He thought he could manage it all by himself, but he was struggling to deliver on his commitments and that was why he hadn't gotten back to us. We followed up saying that we understood how tough the pandemic had been for the wedding industry, so to make things easier for him we asked if could he send us instead the RAW image files for about 35 photos. Another week went by and we had to follow up again. He finally, indirectly, said that RAW photos were not an option and the only way he would edit photos is if we purchased a photo book package that came with advanced editing baked in - minimum $2500 in extra cost to us.
We were absolutely floored by this response. Pandemic impacts aside, these were issues that were in his control. He could have been on time for our wedding day. He knew the lighting was off when he took our family photos. For such a small wedding, he should have met our request that we had a photo of every single guest. He should have changed his delivery commitments if his operations changed. He should have set aside time to edit photo errors he caused. He should have communicated with us sooner about his business recovery needs. There was no way we were giving him more money after being treated so poorly. I purchased Luminar AI/NEO in order to edit the JPG photos he sent us and I personally spent 2 weeks (over 24 hours) personally editing background layers and reconstructing our heads to fix our photos.
Words cannot express our frustration and sadness over how things unfolded after the wedding. We never thought when hiring a wedding photographer that we'd need to worry or even vet someone's ability to handle managing a schedule or deliverables, we expected they would have an assistant helping them run operations if it wasn't a strength of theirs. While wedding photographers will likely never say this to a customer, certain photography styles can be impacted by how many hours you book them. The more creative, the more time they need. Montana is the ideal wedding photographer for customers who want their photographer to have imagination and to play with lighting and movement like we did, but we think he does best working longer weddings with more flexible before/after schedules. If we weren't limited to only 5 hours at our venue because of county/location noise ordinances things would have been very different.
If this review causes any disappointment and heartbreak for you, Montana, just know we feel it too every time we look at our wedding photo wall and don't see the photos we discussed were important to us.
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