Here's the short story -- Neka shot our wedding, lost our wedding photos, ghosted us, and did not return any of our money.
Here's a longer version -- We decided to book Neka for our elopement, and things started out great, but I was disappointed in her starting with our wedding day. She showed up inappropriately attired and kept taking off her mask (despite these things specifically being addressed via e mail to everyone who would be present in advance of the wedding, and despite us repeatedly asking her to keep her mask on), and she shot for a VERY short amount of time. I told her that we needed her to shoot for longer, and she did, but not for that much longer. She did get us the teaser gallery the same day, which we appreciated. Unfortunately, we weren't satisfied with most of the photos, but didn't want to say anything, since the full gallery would be coming later and would surely have more substance to it, and more photos that we'd like. We waited and waited and waited. Finally, at the end of the time allotted by our contract, I reached out to her via e mail. I did not hear back. Then my husband reached out via e mail. Then I saw on instagram a post saying that she'd lost client photos. My stomach sank, knowing that this must be why she ghosted us. When I commented on that post, we finally got an e mail from her, saying that she was trying to recover our photos and that the 'good news' was that she would do a reshoot for us. Um, that was our WEDDING. There is no reshoot. That was IT. That was THE THING. Her story is that her house was broken into and her equipment stolen, but that absolutely does not excuse what happened here -- she should've already delivered our images by the time that the break in happened, she should've backed our photos up to the cloud, and she should've had insurance so she would be able to refund us in case of something unforeseen. She did not do any of those things. We e mailed her for weeks and her e mails back were few and far between, claiming that she was working with someone to try to recover the images from a memory card. She kept drawing this out, finally set a date at which it would be done, and then ghosted us after that day came and went.
It's bad enough that she lost the images from our wedding (which is extra sad, since because of Covid, we weren't able to have our families there. So not only did they not get to be there, there are very few images of the day to share with them), but the way she handled the situation was irresponsible, unprofessional, and disrespectful. We entrusted her to capture images of a once in a lifetime event, and she didn't even do us the courtesy to call us or e mail us when she knew she'd lost our photos and apologize. Throughout this, she's treated the loss of our photos like it's no big deal. But to us and our families, it's a huge deal.
I cannot recommend strongly enough that you find a different photographer. read more