I've debated writing this review for almost a year. Andrey Grin and his company AG Studio provided photography and videography services for our wedding on 8/23/14. Prior to the wedding, Andrey's service has been impeccable - he shot our "love story" video, which we really liked. It's the subsequent lack of customer service that was really the dealbreaker...
On the day of the wedding, Andrey showed up with his crew and stayed at our wedding the entire day. He and another guy did the photography, while another 2 people handled the video. I must say, I really liked the quality of Andrey's photos, although the photos themselves were not particularly imaginative. The posing did not vary much, and a lot of the pictures were rather cliche. That's partially our fault, too, since we didn't provide him with a shot list. I was disappointed that there were only a couple of pictures of the rings, and none of them were close-ups. Also, the 2nd photographer who worked with Andrey did not seem like a professional - the photos he took were much poorer quality compared to Andrey's photos, and in some of them, you had to wonder "what was this guy thinking??" - for example, we have a photo of our family where about 40% of the shot is taken up by a closeup of the other photographer's back. Lovely.
Oh, and the photo album we received from him (supposedly $100 worth) was NOTHING like the sample album he showed us initially. It was a standard Shutterfly photo book that costs $25 on the Shutterfly website. I could understand the markup if there was actually any design work going into the album, but it was literally just pictures posted on blank pages, which probably took all of 10 minutes. Compared to the high-quality, thoughtfully designed sample album, this was a complete bait-and-switch.
Now, what I wrote above was minor, the real issue came when it was time to get the video back. It's worth mentioning that Andrey promised we'd have the video in December, which came and went, and Andrey was stalling repeatedly. We finally got the video almost 2 months after the promised date, after prodding multiple times. We had to reach out to Andrey, not the other way around, which I thought was not ok. If you pride yourself on your service, you should be the one to reach out to your client to tell them you can't make a deadline that you yourself set.
The video itself was ok - I didn't expect a Hollywood film for the price, but I thought it would be better. One thing I noticed was that pretty much all of the speeches were shot from the same spot on the floor. Since there were 2 videographers, one had to wonder what the 2nd guy was doing, and how come his shots didn't make the cut (yeah, Andrey refuses to show you the raw footage). The biggest problem, however, was that a section of the ceremony processional was cut - the part with my grandparents walking in the processional, which is a pretty big deal. I was devastated. I reached out to Andrey, advising him about the problem, and that's when the crappy service really started. First he said he checked the video and found no issues and he saw my grandparents at the ceremony. I literally had to explain to him several times what exactly is wrong. Then his story changed, and he then said that my grandparents never actually walked in the processional. When I told him he was wrong, he insinuated that I apparently had no idea what actually took place, and "how could you know if they walked or not when you were still waiting to enter in another room?" I was appalled by the rudeness, and the insinuation that I didn't know what happened at my own wedding. Finally, he changed his story again, and said that the reason he didn't put it in the video was because another person blocked the videographer's shot, and the 2nd videographer was filming the crowd the whole time. It seemed like another crappy excuse, but by this point I was too upset to fight, especially because I couldn't really get the footage...honestly, the most likely scenario is that the videographer just didn't record the footage on time. But no matter what happened, I would have at least expected an apology from Andrey for the missed footage, but I never received it. He still continued to insist that it wasn't his fault. Well, I suppose it was my fault for thinking that a business owner would stand by the quality of his product and at least admit that something went wrong.
So bottom line, he's inexpensive, and the quality of his work is ok, but if anything goes wrong, don't expect him to offer any kind of decent customer service. read more
