One of the first things we did when we started planning for our wedding was look for a photographer. Like most people the photographs that we would have to remember that day were more important than almost anything. We began by looking on Craigslist for someone that was very good but also very affordable. We came across Mr. Darrin Jessie Smalls of Imagery and Stories and we were impressed with the look of his photos as well as his extremely affordable price.
From our first meeting with Mr. Smalls things did not go just as planned. We chose a time and place for our meeting, we showed up early and ended up waiting almost an hour after our chosen time before we were finally able to get a hold of Mr. Smalls, he had gotten the time and place mixed up. While agitated we still went and me with Mr. Smalls and really like him, his work and the products and price that he offered so we decided to go ahead and sign a contract with him. In the contract it stated that we would pay ½ up front then part of the reminder on the wedding day and the other part once we received our picture disk, our photo album, our prints and our DVD.
We should have taken that first meeting as a sign and ran for the hills but we didn’t and things only got worse.
Our next meeting with him came when we went for our engagement pictures. I had communicated with him SEVERAL times between the time of our first meeting and this one about exactly what we were looking for and when we got to the shoot, which was a little over an hour late, he did not seem to remember any of the things that we had talked about. Again, while agitated at this we had already signed a contract and paid more than half of our balance up front so we proceeded. We felt as though we were rushed through our shoot and while the pictures came out nice we weren’t particularly impressed with them. Jessie let us know that he would send our pictures on a cd in the mail as soon as he could so that we could use the photos for wedding things. THREE different times Jessie told us that he mailed out this cd to our address but it never came so he finally said that he would bring it to my boudoir shoot.
The next scheduled meeting with him was for my boudoir pictures which were to be a gift to my fiancé but a few days before that I received an email from him asking if we could go ahead and pay off the rest of our balance due to some equipment issues that he was having with his equipment. We could not and were not comfortable doing this as we were afraid of encountering more problems. A few days later on the day of my boudoir shoot, which I took off of work for, I still had not been able to get the address of where we were going to be shooting from Jessie so I sent him an agitated email. The response I received from him said that he did not think that he would be able to do the shoot that day because he had not secured a location, Now please keep in mind this date had been set for at least 2 months before hand. I was so upset because I did not have another time available for this so I called my fiancé who spoke to Jessie and had to FORCE him into keeping our appointment. Once my maid of honor and I arrived at the appointment it was very uncomfortable and yet again the pictures were not what I expressed to him that I wanted at all, and he also forgot to bring our engagement picture cd as he had promised.
Now by this time it was very close to our wedding day and we still had not gotten our engagement pictures or my boudoir pictures. Finally my fiancé got so mad that he was able to get Mr. Smalls to email all of the pictures to us.
Next was our wedding….A WEEK BEFORE OUR wedding we received an email from Jessie to let us know that he had been in a car accident a few weeks before and he was still to sore to work. Before we completely freaked out he let us know that he was going to have a friend of his shoot our wedding for him. FINE, WHATEVER, one week before our wedding what were we going to do? From this time to our wedding day I was a nervous wreck that no photographer at all would show up.
On our wedding day Mr. Smalls friend did come and we really liked him, but once we got our pictures back we were so disappointed. We did get some nice pictures but there were so many shots that we just didn’t get….there weren’t even that many of us at the reception together.
After the wedding we received several emails and phone calls from Mr. Smalls asking if we could meet him to give him the remainder of the balance before our products were ready because he was having “a heavy payroll week” and he seemed very upset when we refused to pay him without everything being ready. Once a few weeks had passed we sent several emails to Mr. Smalls to see if everything was ready so that we could just be done with everything but he will not respond. Now his website is down, he has our money and we have none of our wedding pictures or products that we have ordered.
When we look back at everything we are very angry and sad at the whole situation. This kind of business practice is just not acceptable and we would strongly not recommend him to anyone. Please do not use him, find someone else….ANYONE ELSE.
If ANYONE has any new information on this guy PLEASE contact us, we are desperate to get our wedding pics! (email- (((REDACTED)))@yahoo.com)
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