Wedding Photographer brought daughter along

Did she show you any examples of her work before you took her on?

I dont know if you've said upthread, but is she a professional or like 'mate of a mate' does it as a hobby?

Really unprofessional to bring her daughter. I understand if it was either that or cancel to bring her, but surely she shouldn't be letting her on the photos - it's bizarre actually that she would think you would want a random kid in your wedding photos?!?

This

First of all - you look absolutely beautiful and regardless of photos, I hope you had a lovely wedding day. Congratulations! And honestly, you'll always have fab memories of your wedding, with or without photos.

As a couple of previous posters have said, cutting off heads like this can be a style choice - presumably she has a website with examples of her work? My guess is that she takes a lot of photos like this. But she clearly shouldn't have forgotten to take pics of you with your parents etc and there should be some shots of you as a family where everyone's faces are clear etc!

If she had no other option but to bring her child with her (ie, if it was a choice between bringing the kid and cancelling on the eve of your wedding leaving you in the lurch) then she should have done everything she could to ensure her child wasn't intrusive, especially with a small, intimate wedding like yours. You say she was only there for 45 minutes - a bloody nine-year-old could stay in the car with an iPad or sit somewhere and amuse themselves for 45 minutes. She shouldn't have been acting like a guest - again, especially at such a small family wedding.

Those photos are really poor. I’m a hobby photographer and would not consider those worthy to share those in my group. And I would in no way consider myself good enough to charge for my services.

Tell her to re-send the photos with the kid edited away and to forward all of the photos.
Tell her to correct the photos where she has edited them to crop heads off.
If she replies that she didn't crop them, and is just crap at her job, leave a review.

£200 is cheap.

As a professional photographer, I can only say that you hired a crap photographer.

Ask her if she managed to actually catch the full heads in the original images and hopefully maybe it's just her weird editing style that she's cut the heads off in

you do look beautiful @Anonymous2029 congratulations and that dress is 😍

Cutting people's heads off may indeed be a stylistic choice which is why it is worth the OP asking the photographer if she has any uncropped versions of those photos.

I also think it would be reasonable to say, "We aren't super happy with the pictures you took. My dad did take some nice ones but unfortunately your daughter is in them. You put me on the spot asking if you could bring her along because I was afraid that if I said no you might cancel at the last minute. But you should have made sure she stayed out of the way. Since the pictures you took are disappointing and your daughter shouldn't have been in the pictures my dad took, I was wondering if you could edit her out of some of my dad's pictures as a goodwill gesture?"

I realise this would involve an awful lot of work for a £200 job but in my opinion you shouldn't accept a wedding photography assignment if you don't think you can do it properly.

I used to be a wedding photographer. The time you spend at the wedding itself is nothing, the majority of the work is after (selecting images, editing). It was not a 45minutes job because you only saw her for 45 minutes. If she did her job properly, she would have probanly gone and research the venue beforehand, plan the photos.. That's why wedding photography is expensive, but in this case you paid very little.

Did you have a contract? If you didn't, she was not a professional photographer. Nobody in their right mind would do a wedding without a contract.

The cutting of the heads is debatable. There are plenty of nice photos with heads cut, I guess it depends where it is cut and if it makes sense, but a photo is not automatically bad just because a bit of head is missing, that's normal when you are capturing close ups or more intimate moments

I would complain about the photos but there’s not much you can say about the daughter since you agreed to her being there.

it sounds like she’s set herself up as a photographer without much training or professional consideration. It’s piss poor and I’d be very disappointed if I were you. I’d actually write to her and express what you’ve done here - you’re upset at the quality of the photos and you think bringing her daughter along and not keeping her out of your way was unprofessional and affected the dynamic of the day. I’d be advising her that maybe this isn’t the job for her and you certainly won’t be recommending her services. And you’d like a refund even though I’ll bet you won’t get it (I expect she doesn’t make much from photography!). Then ask AI to create some better photos. Or if you’re not confident with AI, take/send them to a graphics company to do a better job on them.

You can change it. Go on Facebook and search for editing groups. There are people who are really good at editing people out of photos for you.

I think this is a case of pay peanuts get monkeys. I booked a family photo shoot with a friend and it was £400 for an hour shoot. Because then you add all the editing time etc. The photos are amazing though!!

What the hell? That's so bad.

I would ask her if she has uncropped versions of these photos because you don't like the fact that the tops of people's heads have been cut off. See what she says. Hope you haven't paid her yet.

Dear God. These look like photos my dad would have taken. He was well known in the family for cutting heads off, cutting whole people off. Yours were taken by a professional. Awful.

Had you seen their work before? How long have they been doing professional photography? Every now and again I see people starting up a photography business, offering low prices or free shoots to lure people in. They aren't always that great and you soon see they stop advertising.

For a professional, I would have expected to be paying a lot more than £200 as it sounds like that included photos as well. I have paid a local professional over £100 for back to school photos (I think we got around 14 photos and the shoot for this price). This photographer also has children and they are always at her mum's when she works or her husband takes them out.
I would again question how professional your photographer is that she takes a child along. I get the feeling she is someone just starting out, maybe been told she takes a good photo, but not actually a professional.

I would definitely complain. That is so unprofessional and the photographer didn't do the job they were meant to do. I'd be furious.

The photographer quoted the price got the job, and had a very focused brief with a small number of people and shots to capture. Her charging more would not change the fact that the photos the OP shared are dreadful.

£200 barely covers the time though

I would say
‘I wanted a nice one of the four of us but you didn’t manage, I was wondering if you could please use your skills to photoshop daughter out of this one?

She sent the pic to test you out ….. incase you said No on the day and it would inconvenience her to have to take her DC home and miss the wedding - you should have rung the Mum and said ‘No’ - she already knew this tho but was pushing boundaries. Are you still friends?

as she knew it was an intimate wedding with emotion behind it all too

Does any wedding have no emotion behind it.

Get her to edit your dads photos to remove her daughter digitally from them. Id ask for your money back too

As this is an anonymous forum I can finally get it off my chest: our wedding photos are shit. Not up to the photographer’s usual standard at all. (hH’s a friend who we paid for the job.) But I think the issue was that he had a flight to catch that evening, and his mind just wasn’t on the job that day.
Perhaps this was the same thing? I can’t do my job to a high standard whilst looking after DC, the photographer should not have tried to.