Captured By Cottingham Photography

We are so happy with our pictures. They are gorgeous! We will be using Captured by Cottingham in the future.
Dec 12th, 2019

My daughter’sSenior pictures turned out awesome. We had several compliments on how good they were.
Nov 22nd, 2019

We booked Captured by Cottingham for our newborns first pictures based solely on portfolio. Her work looked amazing! She replied back pretty quick when I messaged and emailed her, answering all my questions about props and colors. She even recommended I bring some of our own from home. She was extremely friendly during the shoot and was fantastic with my newborn (she even got her to smile for a few shots!). It did take a while to get the photos back, but editing does take forever and she actually touched up more than what we had previously agreed on. The photos were phenomenal and I couldn’t be happier. She sent them via Dropbox and even recommended a good printing service to use! We will DEFINITELY use Emily again for any photography needs we have!!!!
Mar 2nd, 2019

We have trusted Captured by Cottingham for the past few years for our family photos. She has always exceeded my expectations, especially for getting great images of a family of six with little kids acting wild! Very professional but makes photo shoots fun. We will continue to choose Emily for our photos.
Dec 2nd, 2017

My wedding was photographed by Emily over a year ago. I have waited this long to post a review because I wanted to give myself enough time to cool down so that I could type a level headed review of my experience with Captured by Cottingham. From the moment my wife agreed to hire her there were issues with responsiveness and timeliness. It would often take over a week to get a response back from her on most things. She never missed any scheduled appointments, however she would often not respond to my phone calls or my texts. She also kept terrible records as she never would sign a contract (she did give me one, just wouldn’t sign it) and she didn’t keep records of what I paid her. I had to pull my bank records to figure out what I paid her as she couldn’t tell me what my final balance was. (I paid her in full with checks prior to any work on her part) On the day of the wedding she was nice, easy to be around and generally pleasant. She posed everyone and took charge like we expected a photographer to do. However, once the wedding was over the professionalism stopped. It took over 2 months to get our photos when I was told it would take 6 weeks max. And even still, it required constant badgering after the 6 weeks had past. I was frequently given delivery dates and were missed with no heads up. Just nothing. For example I was told on 7/11/17 “hey i should have the rest of your images finished by this weekend.” I didn’t get my photos till 7/31/17 and only because I was moving out of state and was promised I would have them before I did that. What was the most alarming is that after all that wait and the decent amount of money I paid ($300 an hour) I was given very bad photos. As a former professional real estate photographer I am well versed in photography and the mechanics of it. I knew we had a dark church and that flash was prohibited during the ceremony and so I was expecting grainy photos for that portion. What I was not expecting was grainy and really out of focus photos for most of my photos. Most of the “money shots” were out of focus and far beyond the capabilities of photoshop to fix. Prior to hiring her I reviewed her portfolio. I was shown sharp, low noise, and colorful images. I told her that this is what I am looking for and was assured that it what I would get. What I got was soft out of focus, noisy, and colorless photos. In our agreement I requested to have all RAW images given to me. (took many more months to get those images) and when I did get them I was able to see that most images were in fact, bad to begin with. Since I had the RAW images I could review the metadata of the images. The camera settings were amateurish at best and most of our mantel piece images were out of focus and extremely grainy. A lot can be fixed in post but out of focus images can not be. To wrap up this long review. I would not under any circumstances recommend Emily to shoot a wedding. She was uncommunicative, missed deadlines, gave me poor quality photos that look rushed in their editing, and charged me a lot of money. My wife and I are so extremely disappointed with our photos that even after 1 year later we have refused to give them out to our families and have not made a single print. Its easy to look like you know what you're doing when you tote around $10k worth of gear around. Doesn't mean you know how to use it. P.s. If you're thinking of hiring her, contact me through here and I will gladly send samples of what I was given.
Dec 13th, 2017