My 1-Star Wedding Photography Review
– This video is sponsored by Squarespace. So this is a story I
thought I would never tell, but you all asked me about it, and I figured I would share it with you. But if you can believe
it, at one point in time, I received a one-star review. (cheerful etheric music) Now as a wedding photographer, this is the worst thing
that can happen to you, especially when you are
early in your career like I was when I received
this one-star review. Like, weddings are already enough stress, but adding the fact that your couple could end up not being happy
and you have to deal with them after the wedding is just hands
down the worst experience. So I'm gonna share with you my
story of my one-star review, and also give you some tips of how you can avoid this
yourself in your business. 'Cause it's the last thing
I want to have happen to anybody else. I almost ended up quitting photography just because of this situation. So let's go ahead and tell the story.
So I was about maybe two years
deep into wedding photography when this happened. I was very green, I had
no idea what I was doing. If you know my background, I started wedding
photography by just doing it. I never second shot, I
didn't do anything like that. I bought the gear and jumped in. And a lot of my first weddings
actually were pretty good. I'll show some photos here. They turned out really well. They were smaller weddings,
everything was going well. I started booking a little bit more, and things were looking really good.
This is when I got my
biggest booking at the time. This couple came to me, they were recommended for someone else that I did an engagement session with, and they were paying my top rate. Now clearly this is red
flag number one for me because I jumped at their opportunity. Because I was like, "Oh my god, they're paying the highest rate." That's a big mistake, and
we'll talk about that later. So here I am excited. Met with a couple and
everything seemed fine. I didn't really have a
way to do my meetings yet, which I have a very strict way
I like to do my meetings now. And if you'd like to see
more about that, let me know. I'll probably add it to the
YouTube membership or Patreon. So again, you can sign up
for that right down below. But the meeting went
fine, aside from the fact that I wasn't doing all the
things that I should be doing, which I think I also have a video, slight video about meetings or something.
I'll link it, whatever it is. But so that was fine. It seemed cool, whatever. They booked my highest
package, it was great. Not a lot of communication after that. I met one more time with the
bride before the wedding, which is something I
normally do now as well. And some more red flags started coming up. She started talking a lot
about how she doesn't like her husband-to-be's smile, or
just little nitpicky things that were things outside of my control, but it sounded like she wanted it to be taken care of in photos. But you can't always do that, you know, like, I'm not a wizard,
and I know everyone, "Oh, just Photoshop." You can't, Photoshoping
stuff is not that easy.
That's why people have whole
jobs just to Photoshop stuff, and it takes them hours. So again, expectations weren't set there. So those red flags kind
of came up and I was like, "Okay, you know." (chuckles peevishly) Wedding day comes and it was great. The wedding went well. Everything went fairly smooth given the fact that I was extremely green. The photos turned out really great. They were actually the best
photos I had ever taken at the time, and I was very
happy with the wedding. The day was great, they
were great on the day of, everything was fine. Go back home, back up my photos. If you don't know about backing up, here's a video on that,
and edit the photos.
Everything's great. I'm feeling myself. I'm like, "Yeah, I did great.
These photos are awesome." I'm posting the photos everywhere. I'm like, "Oh, so awesome." Deliver it to the couple. Immediately get an email back that's like, "Hey, you know, what are these photos? Are they even edited? I don't like X, Y and Z. I can edit it better on my own iPhone," so on and so forth. So that's where we start. I'm immediately asking questions, again, doing my troubleshooting, 'cause I come from a
customer service background. I used to work at Squarespace,
I used to work at Apple. I know this, I have 10 years
of high-level customer service. So I'm in there doing my
customer service stuff, trying to figure out what's wrong. And a lot of the nitpicks are things that are like extremely extra. Like, "Oh, in this one candid shot, one of the bridesmaids is on her phone." It's a candid shot. "She was on her phone. Like,
it was a cute shot of you. I'm sorry that she was on her phone." She's like, "Oh, in the
pictures my eyes are closed." And I had to literally
zoom into the photo, and be like, "No, your eyes are open." You know, like, when people smile, our eyes tend to close
up just a little bit.
You know, that's what a smile looks like, but they were open. And it's just a lot of little things like, oh, like, after they do the first kiss and they were walking back, they're like, "Oh we're not looking at the camera." And I'm like, "Well." (chuckles) You know, like first off, I captured a great moment. So do you matter if you
are looking at the camera? And second off, you weren't
looking at the camera. I can't change what you were doing. And so it was a lot of stuff like that. It was like, "Oh, the compositions on some of the photos are weird." And so I had to come back
with the whole, you know, "This is my style of
photography, it's my style. I've always shot like that. The edits are the way I shoot, the compositions are the way I shoot. Did you look at my website? 'Cause it was there, it was
all there right there for you." After our back and forth for a while, we ended up deciding that I
would give them a small refund because I didn't feel like
dealing with them anymore and they still had a wedding
album that they needed.
So I was just like,
"Here's some money back so you can go get your album." And they also ended up
wanting all of the JPEGs, which I was just like,
"Here, have the JPEGs." So they got all the JPEGs, like unedited, just the whole day, and
also a small refund. Cool. I figured at that point we're fine. Couple months down the line, and she hits me back up and is like, "Hey, I'm trying to print out my photos but they look like trash." And I'm like, "Okay, well,
you know, if you're printing your photos yourself,
there's a lot of reasons why the photo could look like trash." Are you downloading the full res version? Is it the web version? Like what are you doing with the thing? How can I help you out? And you know, without
that kinda information, I can't do anything cause I
don't know what's happening.
I guess that was the wrong answer, 'cause immediately I get the
chargebacks on the credit card. Also, one-star reviews. I'll leave a link to it
down in a description below. But this one-star review, she posted everywhere on the internet. Like, any place that I had an account, she posted the review. Like, accounts I didn't even
realize I had open at the time, she posted the review. Everywhere, like I was distraught. And it was like long, and
it basically was like, "He sucks at everything,"
it was the worst. So this is after I had
already given all the JPEGs and a refund and dealt with
them for all that time.
So they did the first chargeback, and the funny thing is
they were doing chargebacks on, like, holidays. So it'd be like Christmas Eve, chargeback. You know, like, Martin
Luther King Day, chargeback. It was always close to Easter. Anytime there was something coming up, they would do a chargeback. So they did two and they were
about to go for the third one. But I told them I would
take them to small claims if we continue down this route. I also was using Square at the time for my payment processing. And I went to Square and was like, "Hey, these people are doing chargebacks off of work that I've already done." I sent them contracts, I sent them emails of the back and forth and
how I tried to troubleshoot. I sent them photo examples.
And you know what happened
at the end of the day? Square sided with the customer because, at the end of the day, banks will always choose
the customer first. Even though I had all
the proof in the world that I did what I was supposed to do, I delivered what I was supposed to deliver and it was of quality and
it was the same quality of everything I've ever done. Honestly, it was the worst. So right now I'm just, like, distraught. Everything is against me. Everything I thought I knew of
photography's out the window. I suck at everything at this point. I don't know, I don't know
what's happening anymore. And I'm just totally,
like, "You know what? Maybe I shouldn't be a photographer." So after the chargeback stopped, everything kind of stopped at that point. I responded to the one-star review with this long thing about
how this is why couples and photographers need
to be on the same page. I did the same thing that I always do. I sent a blog link to the actual photos that I took so people could see it, and was pretty much just like, "You know, I did what I could.
I'm sorry you're not happy.
However, this is the quality
of work I normally do." Now at this point, the question
is how do you fail forward from something like this? Because a lot of people
will have a one-star review and let it just totally wreck
them and end the business. What I ended up doing was actually using that one-star review with my new couples. I learned so much from this experience that helped me going forward, and I wanna share some of
those tips with you all. So to start out, let's actually talk about this video sponsor, Squarespace. Now the reason I'm bringing this up now is your website is a huge
part of how you are aligning with your couples. If you're not aligning with them upfront with your web presence, you're
actually creating red flags before they even contact you. Squarespace is an online
platform that will help you easily build your website, make
a beautiful wedding website and help you align with your customers before they even come in the door.
You can do this with their templates. They even have some
that are already set up to be wedding websites
or for photographers. So it makes it quick and
easy for you to go ahead and grab what you need,
put in your information and start setting your expectations, because that starts with your
branding and your photos. On top of how easy it is to use as well, with their analytics,
commerce, customer service, email marketing and new features
being added all the time, Squarespace is hands down
one of the best platforms I've ever personally used, which I've been using
them for eight years. Make sure to check out the
link in the description below for 10% off of your
first website or domain. And set up your website
and start setting up your expectations with your couples. So that's the first thing I did wrong. I was not aligning with my
couple in setting expectations. I pretty much was blinded by the money and was happy at the fact
that someone was looking at me and waiting to book my top package because supposedly I was
such a great photographer.
When you're new, don't ever
let your largest package being booked get ahead
of your own standards. When you're aligning
and setting expectations with your couples, you
should be telling them what you do and do not do. And this is in best interest of everybody, yourself and the couple. The second thing I did
wrong is not addressing the red flags when they came up. This is part of the
reason why we're meeting with our couples. Red flags aren't necessarily like, "Oh my goodness, they're crazy." Red flags should be more so, these are things that are
outside of my expectations, these are things that I don't do.
And if they're expecting
it, you need to look at that and say, "Hey, this is not what I do," and let them know that, and either give them another solution or another photographer. There's no other options. Don't just sit back, see the red flags, and then like straight
up forget about them. And the third thing I did
wrong, I already mentioned, but I was booking just for the money. Now look, y'all, no booking
ever is worth the stress and headache of a couple
that you do not align with. None, at all. Like, really. Tell them that you're not the
photographer for them upfront. I don't care if they're
trying to pay you $10,000. It will not be worth it, trust me, because that situation
made me almost quit, and I only got paid maybe
like 2,500 at the time.
Like, that just wasn't worth it. So after sitting back and
figuring out all the things I did wrong, one of the ways
that I was able to fail forward with this is using the one-star
review with my new couples. Now a lot of people might
think this is absolutely crazy, but when I would have
meetings with new couples, I would literally show
them the one-star review. Just straight up like, "Hey, you know, I got a one-star review
recently, this is what happened." And you know, no name calling. I wasn't calling the couple
crazy or anything like that.
You know, a situation is what it is. But what I did was I
used that one-star review to let my couple know, "Hey,
if we are not all the way on the same page, then you might want to
go find someone else." I think what happened
with this one-star review is that we weren't totally aligned, and because of that, now nobody's happy. The biggest thing I want
for your wedding day is for you to be fully happy
with what you're getting. And that's how I used the one-star review. So the question is how did
this work going forward. It actually went amazing. I booked a lot of couples off of it who were much more aligned
with what it is I provide.
And, I never said it,
but every time I showed the one-star review,
every couple was like, "They're crazy, I don't know about that." So (chuckles) they side it with me, even though, you know, I'm not
trying to name call anybody. They always side with me,
which was really cool. So that's the biggest thing I learned. Align with your couples. If you're on the same page
and they like your work and they've actually looked at it and they see the way you compose of and they see the fact
that my black and whites are super grainy, they
like it, they want it. It helped me align with them much better. The second thing I learned is not to shoot just for the money. Again, it's never worth it, ever, ever. I've turned down a lot
of possible big bookings because I could tell we
were not aligning correctly.
And that actually leads
into the third thing that I ended up learning
which is to tell couples no. It is okay to turn down a couple. I know a lot of people are like, "What, how can you turn a couple down? But that's what I do. Basically in my meetings,
if I start seeing red flags, which, again, red flags are
not because they're crazy, red flags or they don't
align with what I do as a photographer. If they want their photos
edited super magazine, like perfect skin, I
normally don't do that. I clean the skin up some, but I'm not gonna sit there
and make you look perfect. That's not me, and I'll tell
my couples that straight up. And if they're like,
"Well, I wanna look perfect and I want you to take 20 pounds
off of me with Photoshop," I'll tell them, "You know,
I'm not that photographer. That's normally not what I do. Most of my couples are okay with that, so if that is what you're looking for, here's a list of other
photographers that I know who will probably do that and
they'll be able to help you," and send them on the way.
'Cause there's two things
you're getting from that. You're building yourself a
network of photographers. Y'all can trust each other
'cause too many people wanna sit around, "Oh,
stealing the market. There's not enough couples." (babbles) There's enough work to go around. And also referring to other photographers is the best way to get other
photographers to refer to you. So when I know I'm not the guy for them, I'll send them to someone
else, and everybody's happy.
Also, when other photographers
know that a couple wants something that's more on my style, they'll send them to me. Also, it'll let your couple know that you actually care about them, not just getting the booking,
you know what I'm saying? And in my meeting I tell them that. I'm like, "Hey, this first
meeting is mainly gonna be for us to get to know each other, see if I'm a good fit for you and teach you a little bit
about the wedding industry from the photo side." Again, they probably haven't
gotten, this their first time.
Like, think about that. Have you ever sat down
and thought about it? When have you hired a
photographer, really? Like, I know I hadn't in most of my life. So here are these people
who may have never hired a photographer in their whole life, they're gonna get married now, and here you come out the
gate trying to sell 'em on all this stuff, trying to
get their booking just because. No, teach them. I teach them the normals that, like, most photographers will do, how they handle delivering their.
I tell them, like, some
photographers do it like this, some do it like, and I let them know. I lay it all out for
them and I'll tell them, "This is how it is, this is what I do. Here's what some other people
do. And do you like what I do? If so, cool, we'll work together. And if not, you can go to other people." (chuckles) It's fine. You know, you will be okay. And if you start saying
no to your couples, you'll end up bringing in more
couples that align with you. I've had absolutely amazing couples after that one-star review, just the best couples I've
ever had in my whole life. And it's basically happened
because of the one-star review and my mentor helping me learn the process of wedding photography. If it wasn't for those two things, honestly, I would've quit photography and just been working at
Squarespace.
(chuckles) These things are seriously
important to learn, and you need to make sure that
everything that ever happens in your business is a
learning opportunity. Definitely check out this playlist here to learn more about wedding photography and how you can run your business better and not have to deal with a
one-star review like I did, because I don't want anyone
to ever deal with that..
