Reviews for Northern Elk Films
Reviews
4.6 out of 5 rating
4.6 out of 5 rating
9 reviews
92% recommend it
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![Samantha]()
Samantha P. Sent on 29/08/2022Do not recommend.
We went with Northern Elk for photography and videography for our September wedding. Things started well, we chatted with Slav over the phone before signing a contract and paying a “non-refundable” $700 deposit. I didn’t think much of this dollar amount since we were getting a good deal on both services. As we got closer to the wedding though, communication completely dropped off. I asked him to confirm how many employees he would be bringing and he responded that “if all went to plan” it would be 3, but the response inspired little confidence. He later said he’d come to the wedding ceremony space sometime in August to familiarize himself with the location but never actually committed to a time to come see. I messaged him on July 26th to see if we could narrow down a date and he said he’d “get back to me next week.” But he never did. I followed up two weeks after we spoke last and got no response. Then another week went by, and still nothing. I tried calling him, the call went straight to voicemail. Tried messaging him on both his personal and business instagram accounts, sent him emails, and absolutely nothing, not even an out of office. So finally, with only 32 days until the wedding and a photographer that we assumed at this point had taken our deposit and ran, we had to book another photographer to ensure we had photos of the big day if this guy never turned up. The new photographers I spoke to asked for the name of the photographer that ghosted us (Slav) but I said I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and hoped he’d get back to us, be reasonable, and provide us with a refund so I didn’t want to speak badly on his name. On august 21st, after almost a FULL MONTH of silence, he got back to us and said that he’d just been busy and that it was normal for photographers to not respond for months at a time. He even has the audacity to say that since I had sometimes taken a couple days to respond to him, a month of silence is justified. I told him that the radio silence made us question if he was going to be reliable for our wedding and he told us we “should just trust him”. I don’t know this guy, we have had other flaky vendors, I don’t implicitly trust him especially after not hearing from him. I asked if we could please have our deposit back and he said no. I told him I’d be willing to let him keep $200 of the $700 we paid him as an administrative fee. He said no. Instead, he told me that he was “sorry I felt” the way I did and that he was still willing to shoot our wedding. However, our faith in his professionalism had completely corroded at this point, and I didn’t trust that we could rely on him to get the job done and not disappear on us again, especially since we already had to book another photographer. He tried to justify his unwillingness to refund our deposit by saying “it has already been spent making arrangements for your event” but since he couldn’t find it in himself to respond to a simple email, I find that very difficult to believe. To his credit, he did encourage me to leave an honest review since “it wouldn’t kill him” to have others know our experience. And that if I had taken the time to listen to his life story, I wouldn’t have cancelled. Technically and objectively speaking, he did not break the conditions of the contract that I naively signed. So there is little legal recourse. But he did absolutely break any kind of trust that we had in his abilities and any faith we had in him getting the job done. So, lesson learned the hard way. Please learn from our mistake and take your business elsewhere. -
![PATRICIA]()
Patricia M. Sent on 08/12/2019Absolutely brilliant!
Slav is absolutely lovely. He's professional, creative and gets things done without making your day feel like a movie/photo shoot. Now we have this amazing video to watch with friends and family! Highly recommend.
Our video: https://youtu.be/PGecxQOsjxU -
![Ellen]()
Ellen Sent on 23/08/2019Amazing videographer!
Slav is so wonderful to work with. His turnaround for our wedding video is very quick. I was in awe of all the shots he had. Highly recommended!
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