From the stunning photos to the wonderful photographers, we are so happy that we chose Claudia…read moreDalton Photography for our wedding! Wedding planning is stressful enough, but finding a reasonably priced photographer with a nice portfolio proved to be a challenge. As with many things with our wedding, everything just fell into place. After seeing Claudia's photos of a mutual friend, I reviewed her blog and reached out to her with a few questions. A couple weeks later, Claudia and her husband Peter met with me and my fiance' to discuss our vision for engagement and wedding photos. They were very supportive of our ideas. Besides incorporating what we wanted, they went above and beyond to ensure that we had great pictures. Prior to our engagement session, I shared pictures of locations in Old Town Alexandria and talked with Claudia a few times by phone and email. They even recommended some places. The photos came out great, and we loved so many of the shots. A couple weeks before the wedding, Claudia and Peter were nice enough to meet with us to find good shooting locations in our venue and in the nearby area. The shots from the wedding were incredible! We get tons of compliments on our photos, and we often hear that Claudia has such a great eye! Plus, the presentation of our photos in their custom packaging was very beautiful. I highly recommend Claudia Dalton Photography! Claudia and Peter are just wonderful people. They truly captured all the love and joy during this special time in our lives. Thank you for everything!

Our family had a very negative experience with Claudia Dalton Photography (CDP), so I am using this…read moreforum as a means of expressing my feelings on the matter to share my feedback with other folks looking to acquire professional photography services. This is not meant to be a personal diatribe against Claudia as I feel that she really is a nice person, however this is the only means that we I have to voice our displeasure and share information that may aid another person or couple. We contracted CDP to provide two photography sessions, one for a pregnancy shoot, and another for after the baby was born. It seemed to be explained to me that we were receiving a bundled discount for services, and from my perspective, that other perks such as a hair dresser / makeup artist were included as part of the deal. Our family has hired photographers in the past, and the typical arrangement is that we pay the agreed upon fee for the photographer's time and a quantity of included digital picture files and / or prints. CDP does not operate in this fashion however as all of the digital files or prints resulting from your photo shoot are purchased separately on a strictly ala carte basis. The long story short of it is that we signed a contract with CDP for $300.00 for our two photo shoots, and then realized after the fact that we could not afford the ala carte pricing for any of their products. This was extremely distressing to us as we are a young family, and a luxury item such as this is something that we have to carefully budget and plan for. To invest $300.00 and come away with no real product is very upsetting. We expressed our concern to CDP, saying that we could not afford their products, and asked for half of our money back (we had just completed the first photography session and would not be seeking to schedule the second). CDP refused to meet us half way however, the tact taken from their party was more of a, "Well that's too bad, I am sorry that this didn't work out better for you." That response added insult to injury. From our perspective, CDP failed in the following respects: 1.       Clear Communication: CDP did not send their company policies, business practices, pricing list, etc. in one clear concise email. Some of these details (such as a pricing list) are not made available for reference on their website or are even in their contract. If I piece together the 5 or so emails that we exchanged with CDP, I can understand more fully how her business works... however the reality is that life (and my life) has many demands on it and if something isn't spelled out clearly and succinctly, I may interpret it or fail to comprehend it clearly. I should have looked into that string of emails that we exchanged more closely, and in retrospect asked more questions... but I also feel that CDP can do a better job of explaining their business practices to folks who have no familiarity with them.   2.       Value: CDP's prices are much higher than ANY other photographer that I have ever worked with. For example, the cheapest print offered was $75.00 and 20 digital files ... were $2,100.00. That is almost as much as I spent for the entirety of our wedding pictures. If CDP were a celebrity photographer, or had the portfolio to command such a high fee, I suppose that would be one thing, however there is nothing about CDP's work to suggest that her fee should be head and shoulders higher than other photographers in the area.   3.       Customer Service: As a client, I will own my share of the guilt in our negative experience, that I failed to properly understand CDP's business practices and prices before signing our contract. I should have read more carefully through our correspondence and asked more questions. However, when our family voiced our concerns, that we could not afford her work, and that we had backed ourselves into an unfortunate corner, we were met with absolutely no empathy. CDP was polite but refused to do anything for us that might improve our otherwise unfortunate position. The reality is if CDP had even tried to work with us a little... perhaps refund part of our $150? Offer some untouched digitals? A Print? Something? Had their response been anything other than "Well that's too bad", we could have walked away from this transaction feeling somewhat whole. Instead, we feel like we spent $300.00 and received next to nothing to show for it. Claudia is not a bad person, if anything, she is inexperienced with the business aspect of her part time photography venture. Maybe she'll take some of the lessons learned from our encounter and use them to better her practice. Either way, our family will not be using her services in the future and cannot recommend them to anyone else.