Zack McNally Photography

When you spend $ 1,400 on a photographer for your wedding, you expect a certain degree of professionalism in addition to a great deal of memorable photographs to frame and organize around your house. Isn’t that what these rates are for, a degree of skill and poise that elevates the photos above what any layperson with a halfway decent camera can take? That’s what we presumed when we hired this photographer (paying in advance, mistake!) to take pictures at our wedding: professionalism. But what we got… I’m not so sure.
I don’t like to assign blame without looking at all the facts. Maybe this unfortunate situation is our fault. Maybe it was our fault that he forgot the day of the wedding. Thankfully, we called him in enough time for him to leave whatever college football-​related activity he was attending and make it in time for the ceremony. But, still, let’s not be too quick to judge.
Maybe it was our fault that there were no pictures of the flower girls, the full wedding party standing during the ceremony, or myself (the groom) with my parents. I probably should have been directing him on whom to photograph instead of reading my vows.
Somehow maybe it was our fault that there were no photos of guests during dinner and that we had a surplus of photos of two of our friends dancing. That’s what we get for having attractive female friends. (Not a problem if you have 1,000 pictures or so to choose from, but we were given around 250.)
Maybe our fault lies in the quality of the photos – well, there’s no «maybe» about that. We were told that if the venue had been more photogenic, there would be no issue with the quality of photos. Our assumption was that a professional photographer could work with his environment, however imperfect.
Apparently, we were at fault for having too much to drink. I would have assumed that an experienced photographer would understand that imbibements would be plentiful at a wedding and that he’d know how to handle people engaged in such revelry. But, no, he said we were too drunk.
I guess we should blame ourselves for expecting photos back six to eight weeks after the wedding, as stipulated in our agreement, instead of the more than 11 weeks it took to get them.
Maybe we expected too much to think that our wedding photographer would be proactive and genial in his communications after the wedding instead of unresponsive, curt, and, as mentioned, quick to place blame – on us, on his equipment, on the venue.
Maybe we assumed too much in thinking that after making our concerns known he would make things right, that he would exceed our expectations and give us what we paid a great deal of money for. What we got was a half-​assed effort from, pardon the oxymoron, a professional amateur.
We had a disastrous experience. I would hate to have someone else have a similar experience.