Lost wedding photos

Do you have wedding insurance? If not I'm not sure what coverage you have. A solicitor is a wise call here, they'll know best what your rights are.

Very odd this one. How long ago was the wedding, he should still have the images on the cameras card. best practice is to have a good quality that wrights to 2 cards at once and then to transfer to a hard drive of some description - commonly a computer as soon as back in the office and then to also make a backup copy of that on a separate drive preferably off site before the cameras card is re written or formatted, so they are in 2 places at all times.

If any of these steps were taken I cannot see how a hacked computer would lead to loosing the images.

I have heard of a wedding shooter loosing all images from a wedding because they travel a lot and over book weddings. They got back home very late after travelling from a wedding and as they had another wedding to travel to the next day needed to get to bed so they set the camera up downloading to a computer and then in the morning deleted the image on the camera card and shot the next wedding but when they returned they realised that the photos did not download to the computer so lost them all.

There are ways of recovering images on a card but its not reliable and some can be completely lost. All of that best practice actually cost money and is one of those things that makes wedding photography more expensive than a birthday party so if someone is really cheap then not doing the best practice things can be a way of lowering costs.

View quoted message Hi


Wedding was November 2 2023. Claimed all photos have gone and wiped from hard drive. We are at present taking legal advice

How upsetting for you - I'm so sorry.

Your photographer sounds incredibly incompetent. What on earth was he not doing having backup?

Offering a refund is just not enough. He should also be offering some compensation.

As for the missing photos, I know it's not the same, but I would contact all your guests and ask them to email you any photos that they have from the day. Hopefully you will have at least one or two keen photographers who took some halfway decent pictures. You could also look into getting some professional photos taken of you in your wedding clothes - I know they won't be actually of the day itself, but better than nothing?

So sorry to hear this :/ just in the process of planning our wedding. I think for sure we will get wedding insurance to protect us from something like this. I hope your guests took some photos on their phone at least. Hope you win the case and get something back best of luck!

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"I think for sure we will get wedding insurance to protect us from something like this."

In reality any insurance will not cover for the shooter loosing the photos, but it may cover for the cost of paying someone else to do re shoot but read the small-print.

Another scenario where insurance may cover is if the photographer can no longer shoot it for you and you have to pay extra to find a replacement.

To try and protect your self do as much research as you can on the person shooting your wedding. How long have they been photographing weddings - how many - are these as a second shooter or main. Does their camera write to 2 cards at once, do they have back up camera and lenses and back up of back up. What procedures do they employ to protect the images before delivery, do they travel long distances for weddings (could they of come home at 2 am and then turn up to your wedding at 8am.)