Contracted services for Ilene Squires Photography were exceptionally unprofessional and disappointing for the following reasons:
1. Ilene Squires contacted us a day before the proposed photo shoot to tell us that she would not be flying in on the agreed upon date, by way of email. Her notice to us was cold and aloof. She expected that we would cancel the shoot and reschedule it for another weekend though the shoot had been planned for several weeks.
2. Due to the unexpected cancellation on the part of the photographer, I had to forfeit my deposit to the make-up artist hired for myself and children.
3. The nature of my family's busy schedule wouldn't allow for any other weekend, so we had no choice but to reschedule it for the next day, Father's Day. The photo shoot impacted plans made for that day.
4. After the photos were taken, the photographer failed to give us any information regarding a web review of the images she had taken of us. We had a reasonable expectation of reviewing the images taken of us so that we could determine our favorites and have those placed on CD or posted to her public web site.
5. Ilene Squires put together an array of photos without allowing us to view any of them first and then proceeded to post them to her blog site. My teenager was so upset to see images that she found to be unflattering of herself posted to a public blog site. She wanted to share the web site address with her friends, but was too embarassed, so she did not.
Ms. Squires failed to understand that teenagers go through phases and are often not as confident about what they see in the mirror. The thought of Ilene posting unflattering images of her to a public web site was a horrifying one for my child. I am personally astonished and disgusted that she would not remove those images and replace them with images of my teenage daughter that were more flattering.
Furthermore, she displayed photos of my husband that were overly photo shopped and as a result created an image that appeared to be distorted.instead of making an attempt to address our concerns by simply removing and replacing the images we found to be unflattering, she refused, citing creative license and then pointed out the clause in her contract that stated that she could use the images taken in any way she would like.
The arrogance and lack of sensitivity of Ms. Squires is what brought me to launch a very public complaint. We selected this woman based upon other images we had seen and my husband trusted that I selected wisely. We flew this woman out to our home state and even paid a deposit to have her take additional photos of us on our wedding anniversary trip to Puerto Rico.
Needless to say, we cancelled the anniversary photo shoot. This experience has taught us that you must not judge a book by its cover and to never commit to future work until you have seen and experienced their work/attitude for yourself. Unfortunately, we will never be able to recommend this woman and would advise anyone who asked, to select another photographer as Ilene Squires Photography is just not worth the hassle.
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