My negative experience with super panda presents

I would like to share my negative feedback about Joseph Bartino (or Joseph Daniel Bartino) of superpandapresents / super panda presents (pre wedding, prewedding and also actual day wedding photographer).

Like his pictures? Yes so did we. We booked his time on 29 march for a shoot on 1 June. It was confirmed. A week before the shoot, I proactively sent him a text message to remind him on our shoot. I was so excited and have also coordinated with my makeup artiste Jennifer from the makeup room. As Jennifer is very busy, it was really not easy to coordinate and fix a date.

To my shock and horror, he said he was overseas and will only be back in Singapore on 3 June! He asked us to reschedule and told us that the airlines office is closed in the evening and we need to wait until the next day for the office to open before he can find out if he could reschedule his flight.

Worst, he even claimed I did not confirm the shoot with him! I had to send him a screenshot of our confirmation before he promptly apologise. By then I have lost half my faith in him as to how unprofessional he was. He gave me the impression that he was trying to wriggle his way out of the situation to make himself look good! He said his phone data was erased but it is not our fault especially when we have confirmed the shoot!

The next day, he told us he was unable to reschedule his flight so he offered us two options: he will buy a new ticket back OR we will do the shoot on a weekday and he will give us a significant discount.

If we went with option 1, Joseph Bartino would have to fork out extra money for his ticket and imagine how awkward it will be for us at the shoot! we want to be relaxed and enjoy our shoot and we were clearly not comfortable with this option. Anyways if he was sincere in making up for this, he would have bought the ticket without telling us instead of saying "... rather than buying a new ticket". My pre-wedding shoot would feel look a guilt trip!!!

If we went with option 2, it was out of the question as I have teaching commitments (my work hours are from 9am to 6pm) and my makeup artiste is not available as well!

In the end, we decided to let it slide and cancel it because we have no choice! We kept our unhappy experience to ourselves even when friends asked "hey how's ur shoot?". We just said "photographer cannot make it" and didn't even went around to bad mouth him, not even on our Facebook pages,

UNTIL ONE OF HIS PICTURES WAS POSTED ON THE WEDDING SCOOP'S INSTAGRAM PAGE!

I shared my experience and thought that was it but Joseph was completely unprofessional and even said we were misleading people! He said it was only a pre-wedding shoot and not wedding. Indeed! But just because it is a pre-wedding shoot doesn't mean it is not important to us!

He also said he offered to give us a discount, etc, but he was completely missing the point!


The screenshots are attached and I will let you be the judge. Think twice ladies: you want to be a happy and stress-free bride to-be. even if the pictures are nice, nothing is more valuable than having a peace of mind with a photographer you can trust.

He said he has never missed another shoot apart from ours, but it is what it is. I don't mind if he apologizes and end of story but what irks me most are people who are clearly at fault and try to pin the blame on another!

While I erased my Instagram handle here, my IG handle really isn't hard to find as it's public on The Wedding Scoop's Instagram but I am erasing it in the pictures so the pictures don't get circulated without people reading a true and actual account of my story :)
 

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Champagne_Pop

New Member
I shortlisted superpanda but the reply was pretty slow so i gave it a miss, and paid deposit to another videographer, Let's call him S.
S from a well known and established company is no where better than Joseph Batino you mentioned. When i first emailed S to enquire the rates, the reply was very professional with about 50 vid links attached. I was impressed, and of course I do like his works.

After i paid $1800 deposit on the day i went to the studio, he said he will draft and email me a contract to sign. Told me he will email me on X date, i didn't receive. Told me he is on MC and will be back to studio the next day to email me, I didn't receive again. It took him about 2 weeks to draft of the contract WITH ERROR. He rectified the mistake almost immediately after i whatsapp him. I shall give him some credit to this part. When i go through contract and I have some queries and doubts, I emailed + whatsapp him hoping to get answers, but I was being ignored. I have to chase for the answers almost every 3 days. I admit I am an anxious bride, but will you not be anxious if the videographer is suppose to film your pre-wed which is in 10 days time and the contract not sorted out?? I've already changed my outdoor wedding shoot from 22nd Aug to 8th Sep to accommodate S's schedule. Same situation like you, As my photographer is very busy, it will not be easy to coordinate and fix a date. I wanted to get the contract sorted out asap and everything to go well on 8th Sep.

That was my last straw and i post on their FB page regarding the unresponsiveness, and the post was deleted almost immediately. I was blocked to post further comments too. On the same day he replied my email, some questions answered and some not.
He explained that he was very ill and was on MC. Alright, explanation accepted. But he could reply my whatsapp that he will take 1-2 weeks to respond back and not leave me hanging. Since I came across the situation of him being sick, it is natural for me to check who will be his substitute if he is unable to turn up for my pre-wed and AD. Once again he chose to ignore my question. As posting on social media may to to be the only way to get response from him, I 'Shared' his FB page and told him (with abit of sarcasm) to reply me.

The next day, this is what he whatsapp me:

"Hi C, Good afternoon. We have discussed among ourselves and, to be honest, up to this juncture after our exchanges and conversations, we actually feel uncomfortable to film your wedding. We will refund the deposit to you. Please send us your account number and account type and we will have it transferred to you by this Tuesday. We apologize for any inconvenience caused."

Certainly I am glad he offered to refund my deposit as I am not uncomfortable engaging his service either. But this has really caused me inconvenience as I have to source for another videographer in such a short notice.
I am still contemplating if i should create a thread to share my bad experience with S,so that couples other there can at least know what to look out for, or to expect if they were to engage S's service.
I am sure most couples are considering S. Trust me, he seemed experienced and professional. But what I've gone through is a total disaster. Thumbs down for S!
 
Hi Champagne_pop, can u pm me the name of this studio? Thanks.. :)

I shortlisted superpanda but the reply was pretty slow so i gave it a miss, and paid deposit to another videographer, Let's call him S.
S from a well known and established company is no where better than Joseph Batino you mentioned. When i first emailed S to enquire the rates, the reply was very professional with about 50 vid links attached. I was impressed, and of course I do like his works.

After i paid $1800 deposit on the day i went to the studio, he said he will draft and email me a contract to sign. Told me he will email me on X date, i didn't receive. Told me he is on MC and will be back to studio the next day to email me, I didn't receive again. It took him about 2 weeks to draft of the contract WITH ERROR. He rectified the mistake almost immediately after i whatsapp him. I shall give him some credit to this part. When i go through contract and I have some queries and doubts, I emailed + whatsapp him hoping to get answers, but I was being ignored. I have to chase for the answers almost every 3 days. I admit I am an anxious bride, but will you not be anxious if the videographer is suppose to film your pre-wed which is in 10 days time and the contract not sorted out?? I've already changed my outdoor wedding shoot from 22nd Aug to 8th Sep to accommodate S's schedule. Same situation like you, As my photographer is very busy, it will not be easy to coordinate and fix a date. I wanted to get the contract sorted out asap and everything to go well on 8th Sep.

That was my last straw and i post on their FB page regarding the unresponsiveness, and the post was deleted almost immediately. I was blocked to post further comments too. On the same day he replied my email, some questions answered and some not.
He explained that he was very ill and was on MC. Alright, explanation accepted. But he could reply my whatsapp that he will take 1-2 weeks to respond back and not leave me hanging. Since I came across the situation of him being sick, it is natural for me to check who will be his substitute if he is unable to turn up for my pre-wed and AD. Once again he chose to ignore my question. As posting on social media may to to be the only way to get response from him, I 'Shared' his FB page and told him (with abit of sarcasm) to reply me.

The next day, this is what he whatsapp me:

"Hi C, Good afternoon. We have discussed among ourselves and, to be honest, up to this juncture after our exchanges and conversations, we actually feel uncomfortable to film your wedding. We will refund the deposit to you. Please send us your account number and account type and we will have it transferred to you by this Tuesday. We apologize for any inconvenience caused."

Certainly I am glad he offered to refund my deposit as I am not uncomfortable engaging his service either. But this has really caused me inconvenience as I have to source for another videographer in such a short notice.
I am still contemplating if i should create a thread to share my bad experience with S,so that couples other there can at least know what to look out for, or to expect if they were to engage S's service.
I am sure most couples are considering S. Trust me, he seemed experienced and professional. But what I've gone through is a total disaster. Thumbs down for S!
 

Champagne_Pop

New Member
Pinkieeshortcake, PMed you already. As this thread is on negative experience on superpanda presents, I shall not post my bad experience with another videographer here. S is very active in this forum, his company is always on the top few threads. Dont place deposit with the videographer if he did not go through the the contract with you. Being implusive and over trusting is my mistake. Good luck to all brides out there.
 

nudieposh

Member
Pinkieeshortcake, PMed you already. As this thread is on negative experience on superpanda presents, I shall not post my bad experience with another videographer here. S is very active in this forum, his company is always on the top few threads. Dont place deposit with the videographer if he did not go through the the contract with you. Being implusive and over trusting is my mistake. Good luck to all brides out there.

hi there. can pm me the name of this videographer? thanks!
 

mesy_liquid

New Member
Hi brides,

Just wanted to share my bad experience with Super Panda Presents. Photos are good but only get them if you can tolerate bad attitude. Super long story to tell but in a nutshell:

For Pre-wedding shoot:
1. Limited photography concepts and photographer is not good in communications during shoots.

2. Photographer was supposed to liaise with a shop owner for permission to do our short photoshoot in the shop but turned out he did not at all and the shop owner refused our shoot (didnt even allow the bride to step in) and we wasted 2 hours of our time there.

3. Photographer acts like an 'artist', waiting for his inspiration to come for good photos instead of having some ready concepts in mind.

4. Lied that he had no time to do up our pre-wedding photos and after a few postponements, finally revealed that his hard disk was corrupted and he is trying to repair his hard disk to retrieve our photos. Photos were only sent to us ONE WEEK before our actual day. Even so, some photo sets were missing but he insisted that they did not exist even though we had some hp pics to prove.


Actual Day Shoot:
1. Photographer did not arrive at groom's place in the morning (he was late and when he is on his way, the groom was already setting off to bride's place) and therefore, missed out capturing the groom's prep and groomsmen's photos.

2. Photographers were not familiar with chinese traditions to capture important shots i.e both photographers were in the car already and neglected bride dropping fan when driving off. Main photographer dozed off in the car all the time and did not bother to capture any in/out of -car shots at all.

3. Photographers poor at directing group pictures

4. Delayed the morning schedule and spent too much time on the morning outdoor shoot.

Post-wedding:
Again, found some photo sets missing and when we asked for them they said they are not obliged to give all the photos if they think it is not up to their standard. Missing photos include family group photos in the day, Father-in-law's photos with his friends and as well as Bride's evening preparation photos in the hotel room were all excluded from the photos he returned us. Basically photos from the 2nd photographer's camera were all missing. When we asked for them to be returned to us even if they are unedited (as i do not want to further impose on them and FIL was asking for the photos to be shared with his friends), Photographer turned aggressive and used personal attacks on couple and even said things like my FIL is not his client and he is not obliged to take photos of him and his friends.

With the delay of the pre-wedding shoot, the photographer offered a 50% discount back then to compensate. However, he kind of tried to cut his loss by miscalculating for the actual day's charges and even tried to charge me for overtime when we were actually well within the 13hrs.

One advise to all brides - hire them only if you can bear with bad attitude and not having the chance of selecting your own photos as the photographer would never return you the photos that you may like just because he do not like them.

All in all, we felt like he is just concerned about whether his photos would be featured on any wedding showcase forums or platforms than for the happiness of the couple.
 

MinHui87

New Member
I also engaged SuperPanda based on his photographs, and really regret it. His photos are really nice (you can see on his Instagram, and how he has endorsements from other popular wedding vendors like Cleo Chang and Pearlyn & Paper), but he is extremely unprofessional.

For my pre-wedding photo shoot, he lost all our close-up photos. We had gone through through the trouble of hiring a make up artist and buying a bouquet from Floral Magic for the shoot, and all that effort went to waste. He tried to make it sound like only "some" close-up photos were gone, but after we started asking questions, it ended up being ALL of them.

He suggested having a reshoot. But that would end up having to request for my bridal studio to rent me the dresses again, hire my MUA again, buy another bouquet of flowers, and for us to take leave, all at our expense, because SuperPanda lost our photos. After negotiating with him on this, he agreed to give us a discount to compensate for the lost photos. This was only after many excuses on his part.

When we finally received the photos, like what others have commented, SuperPanda does not provide you with ALL the photos. He told us that "professional" photographers do not provide all the photos they take to their client. We were not even given the option of picking which photographs we liked, we were only provided with photographs that he liked. And there were many repetitions of the same pose.

Finally, it was always our understanding that Joseph would be present for our AD. That's what Joseph told us when we first met him and signed the contract. However, just before our AD, Joseph mentioned that it would be another photographer (not him) from his team that would be photographing our AD wedding festivities. This was the first time that we had heard this, and we found out later that he had booked himself another wedding for that same day. It is just extremely extremely frustrating and disappointing dealing with him. He definitely has a preference for weddings/couples/"ideas" that would be featured on wedding portals/instagram rather than the interests of his paying clients.
 
Hi guys,



This is Joseph and I’m the main photographer behind Super Panda Presents. My purpose of writing this is to address the 3 less-than-steller reviews the business has gotten.

My step into weddings with Super Panda Presents began 5 years ago. I’m humbled to say that generally we get positive feedback from the couples we work with, and I am gutted that not everyone gets the same happy experience with us.

I’ve always been aware of these negative reviews from our early years in 2015 and 2016 (but posted here at Singaporebrides in 2017) Now that we’ve hit our 5-year mark and as we once again review and reflect on our journey, I’d also like to take this opportunity to share my side of the story.

Firstly I’d like to say that while we strive to give our all for every pre-wedding and actual wedding we shoot, I have made some mistakes along the way too, especially in the early days of my business. Almost all of these instances are stated in the reviews in this thread, and we are sorry that they did not have a good experience with us.

What I pride my business on always doing, is providing customer service recovery whenever we fail to deliver on our part. We acknowledge our mistakes and have offered refunds and additional shooting sessions for our clients before. What I’d like to highlight here, is that we offer solutions to our clients and are flexible to accommodate them. There have been a lot of cases where there are less than ideal situations happening during an actual day wedding such as bad rainy weather where I offered an extra photoshoot session free of charge just so that they can have the nice portraits that they desire. Our end goal is always to deliver the best for our couples.

I am fully aware of each instance brought up in each of these reviews and I’d like to say that for each of these customers, we have acknowledged our mistakes and very openly discussed service recovery options with them. While we cannot control bad reviews, we would like to share our side of story and say that yes, for each of these instances, we have given it our best.

I am also proud of my team because we have had zero incidents since the beginning of 2017 and are constantly tightening our procedures. A well as using best available technology such as using cameras with double memory card slots and using the cloud as another extra layer of online data backup. We may not be perfect, but we are working on it every day. It is tough as a business owner to receive backlash, but I recognize that these cases also provide valuable lessons that we will take with us as we journey on.

5 years and counting; As 2018 comes to a close, we look towards an even better 2019 and more milestones for Super Panda Presents! Above everything else, we are grateful to have had the opportunity to work with over 200 couples here in Singapore and the world and am proud to call many of these couples my friends today. When it’s my turn to get married, I look forward to having these clients-turned-friends celebrate with me. ☺

Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you’d like to find out more about our business, our story, and our services, please feel free to email or WhatsApp me and I look forward to meeting with you. I would be more than happy to answer any questions and address any concerns you may have!


Sincerely,

Joseph, Super Panda Presents
 
Hi Guys,


After much thought , I've decided address the specific points raised here:


A. sunsetscouldlastforever


This happened in early 2014.

I made a mistake with my scheduling, as I didn't take a deposit because it was just a 1.5 hour shoot. It was the first time I accepted a short assignment as she had really nice words for me during our meeting. They already had done a prewedding shoot in Japan but wanted an extra session. I really apologized and I asked if we can reschedule and I'll give them a 50% discount but if it was not an option, I told them I would still book a flight make it to the agreed date. They decided to not do the shoot anymore. I apologized for what had happened and told them that I would be ready to fly in if they changed their mind. Months after ,Weddingscoop posted a nice photo of a bride I shot on instagram and she made a comment that she had a bad experience with me coz I missed/canceled our shoot. Weddingscoop messaged me and asked me to respond. So I just commented I was sorry for what happened but we could have still done the shoot at the set date but they decided not to do it anymore. She responded nicely saying she felt bad about me having to book new flights so she decided not go through with it. Trouble happened when her fiance suddenly responded aggressively commenting they canceled because the were put off with me and that "I missed their wedding" . I I responded and asked him to please not be misleading to say that I missed their wedding. It was just a 1.5hr extra pre-wedding. yes its also important but a wedding is a completely different level. I've never missed a shoot in my life. They got really mad after this and threatened to make bad reviews everywhere. I do admit it is my fault and I have learned a lot from this incident. These days even if I don't have a deposit yet, I just mark the client on my calendar to avoid any mistakes. This is also the reason why I’ve decided to ignore these reviews for so long. I feared it could make things a lot worse.


B. Champagnepop -

She wanted to book me but I guess my reply was too slow for her so she booked another company and it seems they messed it up. I'm so sorry to hear that!

Her review was not about me. Please ignore. :)
 
C. Mesyliquid


This happened in 2015. Perhaps I should address her specific statements:

- "Limited photography concepts and photographer is not good in communications during shoots."
Not sure what she meant. I just shot our prewedding the same way I did for the others. She did originally want a night fashion shoot on a rooftop complete with artifical lights, which I never do . So i told them I could not do it because it was not my style and I would not even know how to pull it off. It's all about natural light for me. But they still proceeded with getting me and was ok to do it my style. We did have an 3 to 4 hr meeting trying to figure out where she was gonna shoot her glam shiny blue dress. So we ended up agreeing to rent a Land Rover so that she can have something structured and edgy to pose with in the woods.

- "Photographer was supposed to liaise with a shop owner for permission to do our short photoshoot in the shop but turned out he did not at all and the shop owner refused our shoot (didnt even allow the bride to step in) and we wasted 2 hours of our time there." The shop was a barbershop , Hounds of Bakersvilles. Very popular at that time . We did actually get to shoot there. The groom had his haircut and I took photos of him having his hair cut and face massage. They just did not allow her to get inside because the place was so packed to begin with. It was just a short set. Not sure why she said we wasted two hours. There was no way we can do a shoot there because a lot of people are having their haircuts in the place. I suggested ditching it and but they insisted on having the hair cut shots.

- "Lied that he had no time to do up our pre-wedding photos and after a few postponements, finally revealed that his hard disk was corrupted and he is trying to repair his hard disk to retrieve our photos. Photos were only sent to us ONE WEEK before our actual day. Even so, some photo sets were missing but he insisted that they did not exist even though we had some hp pics to prove. "
I did mess up here. The backup hard disk got corrupted. I did already have copies of the preselected photos but she wanted to see the hair up shots which was in the first 20 mins of the shoot. We decided that she should let the hair down because it looked better. So it was just by initial mistake that I could not remember that we took those photos. I ignored the photos in my initial filtering as well. I got reminded when she showed me an iphone photo. The data recovery service said it was only gonna be a few days, but it ended up a few weeks. It was really my fault and I gave them back around 500 dollars because of the severe delay. Thankfully the album maker was able to produce the album in time for the wedding. I did learn my lesson to just immediately tell client if something went wrong and to make sure I have double backup copies and place the hard disks in different locations.

- "Photographer did not arrive at groom's place in the morning (he was late and when he is on his way, the groom was already setting off to bride's place) and therefore, missed out capturing the groom's prep and groomsmen's photos" .
There is no excuse for this. My second photographer ended up being late for the groom side. He is never late but this was the first time he had to be at a wedding at 4:30am. However, we did have the opportunity to take photos of the groom putting on his clothes when we returned to the groom's house. So from a photo standpoint we did not miss much. But yes, being late was our mistake. When I found out that he was late, my knees went weak. Of all the weddings he would be late in for the very first time, it had to be this one! These days if a wedding Is too early (before 6am) I tell the client that only I will be arriving at her house early and we will not be covering the groom as he gets out of the house. It’s not a lot of shots anyway and it saves them from having to pay extra time. These days, even for normal times, the groom does not want us showing up at his house in the early morning.
 
-"Photographers were not familiar with chinese traditions to capture important shots i.e both photographers were in the car already and neglected bride dropping fan when driving off. Main photographer dozed off in the car all the time and did not bother to capture any in/out of -car shots at all." The majority of weddings we do are chinese. I do remember being told that this would be different than usual as the father of the bride is hardcore with traditions and theres a lot of stuff she doesn't know as well and that we all just have to follow along. And that's what we did. I think we did capture the important moments. For the fan throwing, I was in the bridal car with the bride. We were not told about the fan throwing in advance, not all chinese weddings have it. My second photog did take the shots. She does have shots throwing the fan away. So not sure why she is even stating this. They also had shots getting in the car. These moments , getting in and out of cars, we do attempt to take em, there are times, the couples wanna rush to get into the house and don't care about the photos not wanting to look unglam. If there was someone waiting outside the car to welcome them as they get out, for sure I would have delivered the shot. Or if its like a bride getting out of the car to get into the church or something. I do end up falling asleep in the car sometimes especially if the travel is far. Apologies if it bothers people, its usually tough if we have a wedding the previous day which means we only get to sleep at 1 or 2am and then have to be up again in a few hours.In this case it was just really early.

-"Photographers poor at directing group pictures."
I think the entourage shots I took were ok. But this all subjective.

-"Delayed the morning schedule and spent too much time on the morning outdoor shoot."
Not sure why we were being blamed here. We were shooting with another video company who also took his sweet time in directing shots for the whole morning. Including the morning photoshoot. They probably spent more time than us. Couple seemed happy with the amount of time we were taking. And we did get really nice shots. You did say I took nice photos. If we sped it up, I'll probably be accused of rushing things and not taking enough portraits. I usually just keep on shooting and when my clients tell me they need to go, I wrap it up in 5 to 10mins.

- "With the delay of the pre-wedding shoot, the photographer offered a 50% discount back then to compensate. However, he kind of tried to cut his loss by miscalculating for the actual day's charges and even tried to charge me for overtime when we were actually well within the 13hrs.
We really went overtime during actual day. That was even a discussion we had before the wedding. We got the schedule a few days before and when I saw timings, we were even discussing how to keep it within time and I was told that if we exceeded , I should just charge coz it is what it its. We started 4:30am and ended close to or past midnight. I remember one of the banquet guys kept bugging me to end it. I told him was just taking photos and it was not my call. She insisted on not paying the extra charges of 2 hours and I let it go as well .

-"Again, found some photo sets missing and when we asked for them they said they are not obliged to give all the photos if they think it is not up to their standard.
When we asked for them to be returned to us even if they are unedited (as i do not want to further impose on them and FIL was asking for the photos to be shared with his friends), Photographer turned aggressive and used personal attacks on couple and even said things like my FIL is not his client and he is not obliged to take photos of him and his friends.


-One advise to all brides - hire them only if you can bear with bad attitude and not having the chance of selecting your own photos as the photographer would never return you the photos that you may like just because he do not like them. "
I did not hear anything after I delivered the photos. Months after , the bride was demanding all the raw photos I took which we don't give. I gave her 1,200 plus photos. Way more than the 400-800 i promise to clients. I believe it is a good reflection of the whole wedding. A wedding album probably needs 200 to 250 photos. We did not lose any photos. She was specifically demanding for photos of the father-in-law hanging out with his friends. Our main focus is on the bride and groom. Yes we do take photos of family members , their reactions their candid moments, and yes we did deliver photos of them. But we can’t be on top of every single thing that they do. It was a super packed wedding with continuous performances on stage and even a talk show were the bride was like a host. I cant worry about the father and his buddies hanging out if something more important is happening on stage. There were 800 tables if i remember. We probably did not even finish taking the table shots because the programs wrapped up too late. I do give a lot of shots and clients are usually happy with the 400 to 800 I give em. It usually what other decent photographers give as well. None of my peers of give all the shots they take. We need to have freedom to experiment , try out various compositions and take as many photos as we like without concern of anyone seeing the bad photos we take.

-All in all, we felt like he is just concerned about whether his photos would be featured on any wedding showcase forums or platforms than for the happiness of the couple.
Sorry if they felt this way. We worked extremely hard during every wedding day. Most of our clients can attest to that. I don't go into shoots thinking it could be featured in any any blogs or magazines. The clients are the ones who submit to the blogs. I just get informed when they want permission to post.
 
D. MinHui87

This happened in 2016. I was actually surprised to see this a year after as I thought we settled and parted ways cleanly. They even said they would not pursue the matter as long as I refunded them their deposit for the actual day wedding and allowed them to cancel.


-For my pre-wedding photo shoot, he lost all our close-up photos. We had gone through through the trouble of hiring a make up artist and buying a bouquet from Floral Magic for the shoot, and all that effort went to waste. He tried to make it sound like only "some" close-up photos were gone, but after we started asking questions, it ended up being ALL of them.
I really messed up here . We always shoot with to cameras, and one camera i would usually put a close up ("zoomed" in lens) while the other camera has standard lens (wide and medium range shots) . I realised the memory card of the close up camera was corrupted. So we were left with the shots with the standard lens. All the details were still there, flowers and even some close shots. When I found out about it, I immediately informed the bride and told her about the situation. These days, we shoot with cameras that have two memory cards so there are always duplicates. No data will ever get lost. It has become standard for cameras to have two memory slots.


-He suggested having a reshoot. But that would end up having to request for my bridal studio to rent me the dresses again, hire my MUA again, buy another bouquet of flowers, and for us to take leave, all at our expense, because SuperPanda lost our photos. After negotiating with him on this, he agreed to give us a discount to compensate for the lost photos. This was only after many excuses on his part.
I don't think I played hardball on this . I really wanted it resolved quickly and smoothly based on the other experience I had. We just discussed to reshoot or refund and i gave back half of the cost of the prewedding shoot. While we missed the the closeup shots, the standard shots were still complete. Also, what does not get mentioned is that I did give an extra free shoot the following day with the Holi powder fight. We had all the shots from those and I did not charge for them. I felt we needed to do some more shots so I offered to shoot them for free the following day. That said ,I was really gutted about losing the closeup shots so I gave back the 50% refund wholeheartedly. But as it is, the shoot results were still nice. I also told them that I would understand if they did not want me to shoot the actual day but they were still ok to proceed.
 
-When we finally received the photos, like what others have commented, SuperPanda does not provide you with ALL the photos. He told us that "professional" photographers do not provide all the photos they take to their client. We were not even given the option of picking which photographs we liked, we were only provided with photographs that he liked. And there were many repetitions of the same pose.
Yes, again, I never promise to give out ALL photos. But i gave her 300 photos which was double the 80-150 that I promise to give. Usually couples, only need 40 photos for a an album or slideshow.
Yes there would be repetitive ones because thats because I gave 300. It's just slight variations to give couples choices for their photos they would wish to show everyone.
If I gave more, i would be even getting more complaints that they are too repetitive. Again, its a creative process for us when we take photos, we experiment and take risks and try out different angles during the shoot. But if we were told that the world will see every single shot we take, we will probably end up just taking less and do more safe shots and not take chances.


-However, just before our AD, Joseph mentioned that it would be another photographer (not him) from his team that would be photographing our AD wedding festivities. This was the first time that we had heard this, and we found out later that he had booked himself another wedding for that same day.
This is quite misleading. I told them that was gonna be there for the day from preparations , gatecrash, tea ceremony and the photoshoots but the other members team will cover the banquet. I would not be missing for their whole wedding day. I would head off and be with my other team another banquet This is something that we did sometimes as a we were a growing business in 2016. My team has never let me down. The couple not want this arrangement and wanted to cancel and asked for their deposit. I gave them back their full deposit as I did understand their situation after the unfortunate issue with the prewedding. After this incident, I let the clients know right from beginning before a contract is signed which parts of the wedding I will be involved in to avoid any misunderstanding. Although since last year we rarely do this as we have scaled down.


-He definitely has a preference for weddings/couples/"ideas" that would be featured on wedding portals/instagram rather than the interests of his paying clients.
I have routinely passed up on supposedly amazing weddings in exotic locations (Mexico, Miami, San Francisco, Dubai, Bali, Turkey, India etc) because I was already booked in weddings here.
I do know where this statement is coming from because the other wedding banquet was featured in Wedding scoop a year after. To be honest, I never even expected it to be a nice wedding. I did not even get to meet the clients beforehand as just inquired via whatsapp and confirmed via sms. Their wedding got rained on and we could not do any outdoor and I offered to do an extra free session on a different day . She loved the photos and she had it featured in the blog. It is the same thing I did for the reviewer when we did their prewedding shoot, i felt we needed more shots so I gave a free extra session.That Holi Powder fight extra session we did was really nice. Its the same thing I do with all my clients. If the weather is bad or if I feel there was something lacking I always offer a makeup session .


I always strive to give the best output possible for my clients. But on these rare isolated occasions , i have let them down These incidents have given me sleepless nights and I am still gutted to this day that it did not go smoothly.But like I said in my previous post , we've always strive to be better. Since mid 2016, we have not had any incidents and we intend to keep it that way. It's been a very lengthy response and thank you again for hearing my side.
 

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