A little over 8 months ago, we hired Kimberly Toney Needles of Kimberly Needles Photography to photograph our wedding. Long story short, 8 months later, and we still don't have our wedding pictures. The trail of excuses and outright unprofessional behavior has been a long and distinguished one from Ms Needles. A couple of weeks after the wedding, she posted "Preview" pictures of the wedding on her Facebook page. Afterwards, we heard nothing for a few more weeks. When we finally called, she said her hard drive had crashed and that she was working to get it fixed. According to my text log, on 9/11 she said she had an appointment with the computer company and would find out what was going on. She also offered a refund at the time, which I said I would accept, and said she had "many more pictures" to give us, inferring she had at least a few pictures from the wedding. We have never seen them nor have we been given the ones she posted on the preview on Facebook. On 10/3, I asked for any pictures she had. No reply. On 10/21 I texted again, and she said, "The entire drive came back to me completely disorganized. I am currently going thru everything now. Not sure why this happened but cleaning it up now" Funny thing is, we skip ahead a few more weeks and she has sent this drive to a company in NC. I called the company to confirm this and the guy said he had had the drive since the 20th. I wonder how Ms Needles was "cleaning it (The hard drive) up now" on the 21st when it had been in NC since the 20th? In the middle of November, I called Ms Needles and insisted on a refund check. It came, in the form of a check written on another family members account. IT BOUNCED. I called her and told her it had bonced and she said she would pay any bank fees and would bring a good check to us the day before the Thanksgiving break started. Never saw her. We texted Ms Needles about the pictures on JAN 5th, and the reply came on JAN 8th as follows; "Since Monday I have left Marlon 3 messages and 1 email. I haven't heard anything back as of yet. He could be on vacation or sick bc he usually contacts me back. THE LAST THING I HEARD FROM HIM IS THAT HE WAS GOING TO TRY ONE MORE THING BEFORE SENDING IT BACK TO ME. AS SOON AS I HEAR ANYTHING I PROMISE I WILL CONTACT YOU". Then, later that day (after I had spoken to the computer guy, unbeknownst to Ms Needles) we got this; "I JUST GOT A PHONE CALL FROM HIM AND HE SAID THE DRIVE IS UNRECOVERABLE. I DO HAVE ONE OTHER DRIVE FOR HIM TO TEST AND IT HAS ALREADY BEEN SHIPPED TO HIM. HE WAS OUT A COUPLE OF DAYS". However, I was in touch with the man at the computer company that was trying to recover the hard drive. This was the timeline of events he emailed me on 10 Jan. Jay, We do not have an additional hard drive from Kim. We only had the one that was unrecoverable. It was received originally in our office on: 10-20-15 We emailed her that is was unrecoverable on: 12-18-15 We are mailing the original defective drive back to her. Thanks. Note that he contacted her on DECEMBER 18th and told her the drive was unrecoverable, and yet she messaged us on JAN 8th and acted like she had never heard this before. So here we are in Jan and I'm done. I've been more than fair and patient. We have come to the conclusion that we will never see our pictures unless legal action can force Ms Needles to give them up. To that end, I have had her served by the Frederick County Sheriffs Office with papers from Small Claims Court to get our $500 back, plus interest and any pictures she has in her possession. It is also obvious that we have been scammed. After some research, we found out we are not the only ones. As a friend of mine said, "If she's doing this with you, she's doing it with others" Of that I'm sure. I know of at least one other organization that is experiencing the same thing. BTW, in Virginia, the amount of the bounce check is a felony amount. A professional would have obviously handled this much differently. I hope this keeps our friends or anyone else from having to experience the frustration, disappointment and heartache we have dealt with over the last 7 months. Please feel free to share this far and wide. read more

Kim did an unbelievable job photographing my family. We purchased a package and gave it to my Mom for Mother's Day. Kim's laid back nature made for an easy 2 hours of photo taking. She's very responsive to questions and comments and her pictures come out amazing. We highly recommend Kim to anyone in need of and excellent, professional photographer. read more