Weddingbee boards

Here is a little background for you: Our photographer is sort of a friendor. He is one of my mom’s former high school students, and he is now a college student with a full scholarship to a school with a very reputable photography program. He is truly a prodigy. Seriously, only very exclusive, expensive photographers have moved me as much as his pictures do. We knew that when we hired him, we would be dealing with a new photographer, who has only done a handful of weddings before, and that there might be some bumps along the way.

However, I am an artist who just started my career, and I really related to him. I had a long talk with him about how important and fulfilling it is to finally live your dream, and ever since then I have felt very strongly about supporting a new artist.

In addition to adoring his photography, he also offered us a steep discount, a free engagement shoot and free post-wedding shoot with just us in our wedding attire so that we can get shots in multiple locations and not have to worry about it on our wedding day. We just couldn’t turn this down.

Well, here is when the first “bump” that I was talking about happened. This weekend we had our engagement shoot with him. It went so well, and we were so excited to see the previews. Well.. on Monday, we get a call. Our photographer explained to us that his computer got a virus, and that our engagement photos were deleted because of the virus. My FI ,however, is a computer engineer and says that this is near impossible, and that it is more likely that his SD card got corrupted. So it was probably the SD card...anyway, it doesn’t matter, our photos are gone.

I really, really don’t want to hire a new photographer. I am head-over-heels for his photography, and would never be able to afford anything near his style and quality of photography. He has offered to reshoot our engagement session and give us anything else we want. We are even amending our contract so that he will be backing the photos up onto a laptop after each part of the wedding (ceremony, formal portraits, candids, reception, etc). He is also going to be bringing in an assistant to help take additional photos and help with the backing up. He really is taking every precaution to make sure this doesn’t happen with our wedding photos.

I am pretty comfortable with this. But then again, maybe I am biased because I love his work and I’m also a new artist so I can relate. My FI, however, has some reservations. He doesn’t think that he is going to lose our wedding photos, but he is worried that if something so huge went wrong with our engagement shoot, that something horrible could happen with our wedding photos. I asked him if he wanted to look for a new photographer (which would be near impossibly 2.5 months out, with a holiday weekend wedding), but he said he doesn’t, and he knows how much I love his photography. He said he is just worried about what could happen. I told him that I think that we have covered every base that we possibly can in order to assure our wedding photography will be ok. Do you think my FI is right, and that we should be worried? I really don’t want to be thinking about this on my wedding day, but I also really don’t want to have any other photographer. I told FI that this is the risk we are taking by hiring a new photographer, and that we did expect bumps. It’s just that while I am really comfortable dealing with a new photographer who might not be as smooth as a professional photographer, I can tell that my FI isn’t 100% on board, and I am now worrying that my FI will be nervous about this at the wedding!

I just needed to check with the bees to make sure I am doing the right thing. Do I have my head in the clouds? Should we be looking for a last minute photographer? If I am doing the right thing, is there anything I can say to help my FI feel more comfortable with a new photographer?

good point, Mandyrosy! I think FI will be more comfortable after the engagement re-shoot. Plus, once he sees how handsome he looks and how beautiful I look, he will be as smitten as I am... lol...

This is the sort of thing that happens as a newbie photographer...I can guarantee you he's learned his lesson! As shangchen said, it's more than likely possible to perform hard drive and/or card recovery. I bet he'd appreciate you giving him that suggestion instead of the engagement reshoot-I'm sure he lost more than just your photos!

Thanks for the suggestion sangchenphoto and JessicaSnaptacular, I will talk to our photographer and see if there is any way to recover the photos off the SD card. That would be nice if we didn't have to re-shoot the entire engagement session!

Thanks everyone for making me realize that this is probably nothing to worry about! I definitely think that his professionalism in taking care of the situation and being very honest about everything makes a huge difference... Hopefully I will be sharing some awesome engagement photos with you all soon.