Wedding photographer lost images of wedding

<p>My wedding was on June 14th. My photographer passed out business cards to guests saying by July 25th the images would be ready for viewing (even though our contract said one month out of the wedding). So I waited patiently because she did an amazing job with our wedding (with her personalizism). July 25th came (two days ago) and I asked about the pictures through email and she had said we needed to talk. Gave her my number and she called...<br>

She politely informed me that a year's worth of work and planning is gone. She only had 100 pictures from the wedding left on her camera. She didn't back up the images and her hardrive crashed and she couldn't get them back. I lost my breath! At the moment, I tried to be very understanding and say "these things happen" but now I'm pissed.<br>

I don't think these things just happen when you do your job properly. The first thing she should have done was to back up the files. Our contract doesn't specifically say anything about what they would do in the event that something like that were to happen. But she offered a full refund and offered to pay for a photoshoot with her choice photographer here in Hawaii. Our wedding was a destination wedding in VA Beach because of family purposes. My husband is in the military and it would have been way to costly on our family for them to come to Hawaii.<br>

So.. aside from having 100 images from the tail-end of our reception (including pictures of objects, blurry images, funny faces, dancing) bigger problem is... none of my family is here. It is only my husband and I. So we will never get that day back. Everything we paid for is GONE - We will never see it again in still images. There are four pictures with my husband and I together and we can't use any of them: Blurry, funny faces, etc. <br>

We had a list of must haves for her to shoot and now, nothing. The only pictures I took with my mom was with the photographer because I knew I would have those images. We didn't pose for any guest cameras. The images I have from guests aren't good quality because they were having fun themselves (open bar :)! ) and I wouldn't expect any different. We paid (/still paying) A LOT of money to make this day happen and we feel like we were really let down. It wasnt just a wedding, it was a family reunion.<br>

Thank god I had the sense to get a videographer but I don't know what footage he got because we asked him to mainly shoot our first dance. Everything else would be a blessing and a bonus. We kicked the videographers out majority of the time to give the photographer the space to work as she wanted/ needed. The videographer was a (gem) Craigslist find that went above and beyond. The photographer that lost the images was a professional that our venue has a contract with.<br>

I am just so bummed as well as our families. Because my husband is in the military we rarely get to spend them with them. Some of our families we hadn't seen since we were kids. Has anyone ever heard of this happening before? What was the outcome?</p>

 

<p>This Photographer should have protected your images as any professional would do. My back up plan is this</p>

<p>1) I shoot with a camera that has two memory cards these are set up to record each image to both cards one backing up the other.</p>

<p>2) At the completion of the day one card is removed from the camera and placed in a card case that remains in my car as an off site backup.</p>

<p>3) As soon as I get home the other card is removed and downloaded to my external hard drive with a second backup copy saved to my internal drive.</p>

<p>4) Once I have edited all the images non-destructive (this means the original images are always left as shoot) and create the clients disks of images along with a back up set of these disks that are filled away. Only then is the backup memory card that was kept in my car is reformatted and put back in my camera back memory case to be reused. The second copy of images on my internal drive are deleted about a month after the client are giving their images. The original images on the external hard drive and the edited copies are kept indefinitely.</p>

<p>This workflow means that before delivery of images to my clients I have three copies - 1) External drive, 2) Internal Drive & 3) Memory card stored in my car as an off site backup. Following this procedure I hopefully totally eliminate the possibility of losing my clients images.</p>

<p>I would ask your photographer has she sent her hard drive away to an image recovery service. They should be able to recover data from the crashed drive. It would also be worthwhile asking all your guests if they took any photos.</p>

<p>I am very sorry that this happened to you. You are angry and you will stay angry for a long time. There will be many people here who will feed on your anger and advise you to sue her and so forth. But the cold fact of life is that you will not get the pictures no matter what you do if they are in fact gone. You might get money if she has insurance but will that really make you feel better? She was more careless and no doubt feels very bad about it. No doubt if she could go back and make that backup CD she would. </p>

<p>You said something interesting though. You said she had a contract with the venue. So this was someone they made you use? Did you pay them or did you pay the photographer directly? The contract will probably specify what remedies you may have. Or you could consult a lawyer. Maybe the photographer or the venue has insurance for this sort of thing. But that just gets you money. It does not get you "even". It does not punish bad behavior. It just gets you a check and solves nothing. </p>

<p>There is one thing that is puzzling though. There are data recovery services that can recover data from a "crashed" hard drive. It is expensive but it can be done. She may not know that. Ask her what she means by "crashed". There may still be hope for your images. Ask her specifically if she has sent the hard drive to a PROFESSIONAL data recovery company. One with clean rooms, real techs and so forth. You might just turn into the hero here. </p>

<p>She said she sent it off to a professional company and they have zero recovery for the drive. She had been trying to recover it for weeks. That day was really important to our family for deep reasons I wont get into on an open forum. But like I said, my husband is in the service and it is very hard to sync up with our family and friends. That day was probably it for a very long time. No one has the money to follow us.<br>

We paid her directly. The venue had their choice people to work with and we couldn't go outside of that. <br>

I know it's hard for photographers who own businesses to consult on something like this but I would like to know if it has ever happened. I'm just really sad about this whole thing because it had been YEARS since we have seen our family. We can't get that day back but I would like new happy memories that is difficult to capture because of our distance. <br>

When I think about all that we went through to pull that day off it seriously saddens us. My husband was very involved with helping with the wedding. This guy hot glued flower petals to 2 30ft isle runners. We don't even have images of it. </p>

<p>Honestly Rick, I would feel better if suing her meant I would get to make more memories with my family. Even with the new shoot she offered our day was about our families, not us. We can ALWAYS dress back up and take wedding pictures but having pictures with our families can't happen again because of costs. If her insurance exists for her negligence, why shouldn't I be rewarded? <br>

The amount of money we put into this wedding was over the top and we wanted it that way. We wanted to remember every detail and gave her a list of the most important shots. We have none of those. </p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>"If her insurance exists for her negligence, why shouldn't I be rewarded?"</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Jeni, because "she offered a full refund and offered to pay for a photoshoot with her choice photographer here in Hawaii."</p>

<p>I think that's about the most you can expect to get out of this as remedy for her breach of contract, and she did offer it in good faith after coming clean to you. </p>

<p>Very few hard drives are totally unrecoverable... I would demand that the hard drive be taken to a recovery place. If nothing is recovered there is no fee but what ever is recovered your are billed. She can also recover formatted images from her camera cards with stored bought software. I just don't understand how this photographer did not back up the jobs. There has got to be more to this story. </p>

<p>Michael Chang, after I contacted her, she came clean. It's not just the images that is lost, it is a year of hard work and getting our families together. We don't have that again. Years from now when the details fade, that's money wasted. We paid for those details. <br>

Her choice photographer is her cousin. I'm not comfortable keeping it in the family.<br>

Michael Mowery, what she told me, I'm telling you. She told me she sent the drive off for recovery and they said it was impossible to recover. The 100 images came from the camera's memory. That's it, that's all. I will talk to her again on Monday. When she sprang this on me, I literally lost my breath. It was very hard to speak, I could only chirp and nod. She told me about the full refund and a photoshoot here with her cousin but financially for me that isn't feasible. We would have to come out of pocket for hair, makeup, tux, etc. And we won't have our families here. They were the most important part of our day. </p>

Well this really stings. I question how professional she was because of the blurred images. A pro doesn't make these kinds of mistakes. NEVER. I'm not saying I've never shot a blurred image. I have and I reshot it, so real pro's don't miss. I'm being nice here, she's probably lying and she's probably photographed less than 2 weddings. I guess the new standard of professional photography is if you have a camera you are a profession. A 5 yr, old can be a pro.No books to read, no classes to take, you buy a kit camera from Costso for $300 and as soon as you walk out of Costco you are now a pro. You haven't even opened up the camera box! Well I'm repeating myself here, I think she's lying and perhaps set her camera to fire without a card being in the camera. Cameras can fire all day long without a CF or a SD card. There is a setting in cameras to prevent this careless accident.

 

There is a place called drivesavers.com. It's not cheap. Charge the photographer. You can use my name and "drivesavers," will give you a 10 percent discount. They are well known for recovering lost information. A lot of government contracts. They are rated the best recovery company in the US. When you send the hard drive also ask the photographer for the CF or SD cards. Send those in as well. Drivesavers is so good that they will call you right away, within a day or 2.

 

The cost will be free if they can't find the images. If they find the images it's around $2500 for the hard drive and $600 for the cards.

 

I have a strong feeling that she photographed another wedding and deleted the files off of her CF or SD cards. However DEMAND that she gives you the hard drive and the cards. If she doesn't I don't know what to tell you.

 

I'm begging you to do this. I did this work for 3 years and I was able to save alot of weddings for photographers on this site. If there are really images on the HD or theCF and SD cards you will get a lot of images back, even if the cards were written over from other weddings. One time I found files on a CF card that was 4 years old!

 

Email me if you need more info.

 

For the record I use a professional camera that writes to 2 cards. A CF card and a SD card. As soon as I get home from a wedding I can't sleep until the images are saved to 2 hard drives and to DVD's. This is just sucks.

 

I'm so sorry and thank you and your husband for protecting us. I was in the Air Force and you pretty much live at poverty pay. I wasn't a private. I have a degree so I went in at a much higher rank, still suffered making the monthly payments.

By the way report her to places like YELP and the BBB. Also tell your local newspaper and TV news what happened. We don't ever want her to photograph a wedding again. Oh, don't forget to bad mouth her on craigslist and your local Chamber. I wouldn't trust her working at Burger King. You order a burger and she leaves out the burger!

<p>Jeni, you might want to consult an attorney about your legal position regarding potential litigation. This is probably a small claims case, and it seems to me unlikely a judge will throw the book at her given that she offered a full refund and suggested (or offered) an alternative. </p>

<p>An important consideration is, the photographer messed up her commitment. She did not mess up your wedding, so it seems to me her contractual liability will be limited to her failure to deliver her promised photography. </p>

<p>Well... I am sorry to hear about the situation. And there isn't anything that anyone can say or do that will offer any sort of satisfaction. Legally, you would need to consult a lawyer to investigate those options. I don't know if that is going to be "worth more" than what the photographer is offering. The simple truth is that there isn't anything that can make up for the loss.<br>

I might agree that there is more to the story, but then I might also agree that it is possible that there isn't anything to recover. I think the question was whether something similar had happened to anyone here. Yes. Several years ago, in our digital infancy, we had an event taking pictures of dancers in their costumes in front of a backdrop. We had something over 1200 images and as it turned out, 866 (that number is forever etched in my mind!) were corrupt. <em>How</em> the images were corrupted I never solved but certainly had plenty of speculation. The images were imported (and I suspect that is where the problem occurred), looked at, and then backed up to another hard drive. In those days there wasn't any Lightroom or Aperture, we simply looked at them in Adobe Bridge. At that point I was comfortable reusing the cards (in those days 1GB were expensive!!). As it turns out, the images we saw in Bridge were simply the previews. The actual Raw file itself was corrupt. Going to the back up drive, we discovered those too were corrupt (hence my belief something in the importing of the images went wrong). I had thought I had done what I should be doing: shoot Raw, download, look at the images, back-up, and good to go. But no! I did take the drive in to be recovered, but there wasn't anything to recover, the data was there, it was just corrupted. Fortunately, this was the type of even where we could do a re-shoot. But for those involved it was quite the problem, perhaps not the end-of-the-world type of problem a wedding would be but some parents were over-the-top upset. I can say that I completely re-worked my workflow after that! And it wasn't maybe a year later that Aperture (Apple's image management program which was followed by Lightroom a few months later) finally come to the rescue of photographers everywhere! Interestingly enough, one of the things I put in my contract is that I can't guarantee anything. I will be happy to discuss the lengths I go to to ensure I capture an event, but the nature of any event is that I can't guarantee anything. If I fail to capture the event for any reason, the client gets a full refund of monies paid (ok, it's wordier than that but that's the bottom line). I personally know of several photographers and their workflows with the point being that ask 10 photographers their workflow, you will get 11 different answers. Everyone knows that hard drives fail. It's just that no one believes <em>their</em> hard drive will fail! And using optical media for back up isn't any sort of guarantee either. <br>

Which is all to say that we don't know the whole story behind why there aren't any images. But yes, unfortunate occurrences do happen. Would I ever lose images because of a single hard drive failure. No (I could lose them if multiple hard drives failed at the same time which is why I can't guarantee anything!). But the truth of it is, if there is a way that I have thought of to lose the images, then I have a plan in place for that! It's the stuff I don't know about that I can't plan for.</p>

<p>Bob, <br>

Thank you for your kind response. She was definitely a professional, more than one wedding under her belt. This is just a freak incident that is so unfortunate. I don't want her ruined. She does great work, we just didn't get it. <br>

I will ask her for the hard drive. I will give anything to get those images back and as you know with my husband's military pay - that isn't much. lol I'm currently not working. It's hard to get work in Hawaii. Their unemployment is very high. I don't want to get into any bad reviews because it's all bad all around but she was not a bad person or photographer. I was a fan of her work and her professionalism at the wedding at the wedding was amazing! My family is hard to reel in and she did it! This is such a shock. If she offered to pay for the recovery, I would rather have that than any court scuffles. I can't even say what we have been through but it was a lot to make that day happen.</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>"I will ask her for the hard drive."</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>I doubt that will happen, Jeni. She is not under any obligation to hand over her hard drive. The best you can hope for is that she's being truthful about her attempts at recovery, or you can challenge her alleged efforts in court. </p>

<p>John D.,<br /> Thanks for the story. The problem here is that she didn't even back the images up. I looked on her Facebook and there was another couple asking about the status of their pictures... it looks to be around the same time as mine.<br /><br /> My wedding was June 14th. Our contract says one month out we would receive the pictures which is July 14th the latest. We waited patiently. She like her so much and wanted to allot her the time she needed to get the pictures back to us. She passed out cards stating July 25th to guests. July 25th came and no pictures. I emailed her at night. She sent an email back saying that she needed to speak with us about the pictures. <br /><br />These are the emails:<br /> Hi [photographer], Just wanted to check in with you and inquire about a timeline for our pictures? You also mentioned a thumb drive? I just realized that you probably do not have our Hawaii address which is: [omitted] Let me know if you need any other info from us.<br>

Thanks!<br />Jeni <br /><br />Sent from my iPhone<br />----------------------<br /><br /> Hey Jeni,<br />Thanks for your address :)<br /><br /><br />I do need to chat with you about your photos. Are you available today? I know the time change is 6 hours difference, so let me know what time you're available and I will give you a call. Also, please send me your phone number.<br /><br /><br />Thank you.<br /><br /><br />[Photographer]<br /><br /> --------------------------------<br /><br /> From her language I never expected that news. I was so blind sighted.</p>

<p>Michael Chang, <br /> All I can do is ask. If its possible, I just want the pictures. Of the 100 she gave, there are just a lot of objects, duplicate poses, guest dancing, and funny faces. <br /> See images below of an example of what I mean by objects and dupes: <br /> http://tinypic.com/r/2ls6wb6/5.jpg<br /> http://i42.tinypic.com/bhbt6q.jpg<br /> http://i42.tinypic.com/3135fm1.jpg<br /> http://i39.tinypic.com/15p06x2.jpg<br /> There are about 3 more images like this. Didn't want to upload because it shows my guests faces.</p>

<br></br><p><strong> MODERATOR NOTE - Images were removed as per Photo.net terms of use. Please do not post images that were not made by yourself.</strong></p>

Years ago, some friends of mine got married. Their wedding coverage was by a videographer. He gave them the tape at the end of the

reception, and they took it home and then went out to dinner. While they were out, their house got burglarized, and, you guessed it, the

tape was stolen. Nonetheless, they were happily married for over 20 years, until she died. I'm sure the loss of the video hurt, but they

really did have their memories of the event, just not the images. I know this hurts terribly now, and you should, as you have been, explore

all the possible ways of recovering the images, but if that doesn't work, you should be prepared to move on with your new life. Believe it

or not, the details of your wedding, so crucial to you now, will become less important over time as you spend more and more time being

actually married. I'm sure my friends would have liked to have their video, but in the end it didn't matter much.

<p>This really is a 'worst nightmare' situation for both photographer and client. If fact, I'm so paranoid about losing wedding and event images that I use a camera with twin memory cards of different brands (one backing up the other, and to mitigate against a bad batch from one manufacturer) and do not reformat them until the images have been uploaded to my computer and three separate external hard drives. I also number my memory cards to help keep track of what I've used when.</p>

<p>Data should be recoverable from memory cards and hard drives unless the hard drive has had a total head crash. If a memory card has been reused after the event, there may be still something left, as Bob has said. I don't know US law, but certainly the data recovery option at her expense seems the best way forward.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Simon, your workflow habits should be read by everyone doing professional work. </p>

<p>Hard disc data recovery is actually very complicated business and failures can range from dislodged preamp off the actuator arm, damaged UBA blocks, to failed controller board and everything in between. Common fixes involve multi-platter discs swap, head swap, controller board swap and sophisticated external hardware and software to pull data off the platters, if recoverable, and can take days or weeks. </p>

<p>I don't know what data recovery facilities are available in Hawaii, and certainly there are gradations of recovery expertise to consider as not every outfit can recover what might be recoverable. It's a crapshoot at best, and can cost a bundle in time, effort, and expense with no guarantees of recovering the photos which is only a small fraction of the drive's content. </p>

<p>Thanks for the kind words Michael! 30 years in IT (10 as practitioner and 20 as university lecturer) taught me the importance of backups. Of course, what I should also do is to take one of the copies off site too (a friend's house was recently hit by lightning which knocked out the electrics (possible surge hit for devices here) and his neighbour's roof was blown off with another strike, so you never know what might happen).</p>

<p>I would suggest you get the name of the company that she sent the hard drive to. </p>

<p>If it's not Kroll Ontrack - then I would strongly suggest she send it to them - at her expense. They charge double what everyone else does, but there's a reason. They get the data back. </p>

<p>They are the company that the CIA, FBI, NSA, BCA and other 3 letter acronym gov't agencies go to when they need computers / phones / hard drives / etc recovered. </p>

<p>And no - I don't work for them or get a cut, but even as messed up as our gov't is, they do know who to go to get data recovered in criminal cases. </p>

<p>I'm not going into the speculation game on what happened - if she didn't copy the cards over, if she didn't back them up, or if she simply had a bad night and realized afterwards that the photos are all similar to the ones you posted. (my initial reaction to the three that you posted was "DELETE IN CAMERA" by the way. </p>

<p>I do have a slight problem with the word you used Jeni - "rewarded" - no, this isn't something you get rewarded for - it's something you get compensated for from the photographer or their insurance company if she is truly unable to produce the images. </p>

<p>There are 2 types of awards from courts - Compensatory and Punitive. Compensatory is designed to compensate the harmed party for actual loss. In this case the argument could be made that you've lost not only the value of the photos, but also the family, travel costs, etc... Punitive damages are designed to punish the party doing the damage, so severely that they correct their bad behavior and don't do it again.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Never DELETE IN CAMERA.</p>

<p>I don't recall seeing whether she went back to the original cards. And where in the process she 'lost' the pictures. I typically pull pictures off the card and then back them up to a second drive immediately. I don't reformat those cards until I have a backup copy. But even if I have reformated card and even used them, typically you can get a significant number of pictures off the cards using one of the card rescue programs.<br>

The comment that she had lost a years worth of work tells me that she was not diligent in making backups and archive copies and hence falls short of the term 'professional'<br>

So unless the cards were seriously corrupted to begin with, I am really confused as to how she actually lost the pictures.<br>

There has been more than one occasion where the second card slot in the camera has saved me in the recent past.<br>

Lesson Learned: When you hire a photographer for important events, ask them about how they process the pictures to provide for the maximum likelihood they are not lost. Bad things really do happen, but the risk can be significantly reduced.</p>

 

<p>Lindsay - whether you "delete in camera" or not - certainly the 3 images presented, in my business, would not make it the client - one way or another. </p>

<p>Deleting in camera or not is a personal preference. To me - If an image looks like garbage on a 3 inch lcd - putting it on a 24 inch LED isn't going to fix it. </p>

<p>Dave</p>

 

<p>David, you misunderstood me - I was referring to the possibility of corrupting the card - the irony. </p>