Leticia Alarcon - PV Photographer

[amyh]

You know- I've tried contacting 3 other photogs in PV and none replied either! WTH!

[tracysf]

I just spoke to Leticia and really liked her! She is so personable --I am wondering if anyone has hired her in the past? Would love to get your feedback!

[ariesgrl]

Hi there, I have heard a lot about L&A.  I think they do a lot of weddings at the Marriot in PV..I did contact them but they were a little over my budget.  I found a lot of info about them on this website..Good luck   There are a few in pv that you I would check out as well if you want to do a comparison.  Ivan Luckie & Michelle Turner.  Ivan has amazing prices and has amazing talent.  Michelle is very helpful and talented and very well known around the PV area.  She does a lot of weddings at Playa Fiesta

[clpl]

Do NOT hire Leticia Alarcon!

I had a terrible experiencie with her!

The day of our wedding they arrived almost half an hour late, this was not a big issue… the main issues started right after the wedding.

After the fact they were late by uploading our pictures in their system in order for us to do the selection in their website (this took them three months just to upload the pictures when in the contract it says it should take only four weeks):

… We received their request of doing the selection of our wedding pictures in end April and we did the selection within one week and a half (the agreed date for the photos selection in the contract was supposed to be no longer than 60 days).

…Then, once the selection was done by us on May 10^th 2010 and confirmed with them, it was stipulated in the contract that the printed pictures would be sent to us after 12-16 weeks after our pictures selection.

After all these delays, the edition of the pictures took from beginning of June until October… until… we received notification that the previous selection of pictures we had previously made, got “lost†in their system. This was informed to us on October 6^th 2010: our previous photo-selection was lost because of some upgrade in their system. The previous selection of photos I did for one week and a half was lost!!!

Then October, November and December passed… until we received the pictures printed one week right after Christmas until January 2011. 10 Months after our wedding.

In between it was a long traffic of e-mails and phone calls between us and them (we always had to call them, they never returned us one single phone call).

 

The DVD Videos we got also extremely late: Per contract, these DVDs should have been sent 12-16 Weeks after our photo-selection. The 18^th of August our pictures and DVDs should have been delivered by them. We got the DVDs (one of them with a lot of fails and errors on the editing as it stops whenever we try to play it) until October 2010. The second DVD was not correctly edited: it stops whenever we play it not even before the wedding party starts.

It is until now, March 2011 that we still have not received our wedding second DVD (with the Party Video) in a right way. They tried of course to make it up to us by sending us some extra printed pictures… but which newlyweds want to have these kind of experiences with a wedding photographer???

I received the feedback by Leticia’s main assistant that there is a lot of workers-fluctuation in Leticia’s team… if we think “why†I would not be amazed to know this is because  the way she is handling her personal and I have to say, when we met her assistant two different times in Mexico she gave us the impression not to be happy with her job as she was  not so nice to us the two times she picked us up in our hotel in Puerto Vallarta.

Please don’t spread these experiences to other newlyweds… it is not fair to go through these after paying 5,000 USD for a photography-video wedding service.

[clpl]

Do not hire her!! I payed her 5,000 USD and after one year of my wedding I havent received a correct DVD from my video! I also received my wedding pictures with 8 months of delay!!!

[clpl]

Do not hire Leticia!

I payed her 5,000 USD for a photo and video package: I received my wedding pictures with 8 months of delay and one of the DVDs they edited completely wrong (the DVD stops and it wasnt correctly edited and recorded). After so many trials to contact her she never replies my e-mails or answer my phone calls.

[GirlfromSF]

Under no circumstances would I recommend to ever hire Leticia Alarcon to be your wedding photographer.  When I first found Leticia online, I loved her photos. They were beautiful and captured Puerto Vallarta and the couple in a magical way.  They were creative and I thought my photos would look the same, but I was wrong! 

 

In short, she over promised and under delivered. 

 

1. She breached her contractual obligations.  She did not send us our 36 retouched photos (they are called Rembrandt Touch Photos).  

2. We received a flash drive of our unedited photos 1 year after our wedding!  

3. The photos were not creative. They were very stoic and boring.

4. I did not get to photograph in the locations she promised to photograph us at.

5. She did not photograph everyone on the VIP list I sent her and she did not photograph the various locations and positions I had asked her about.

 

In long, this is the story:

 

Before hiring her, I went online to do some research and came across a few blog posts talking about her work. A big red flag that the posts talked about was that she didn't send the photos on time. At the time, I didn't think much of it and didn't think it would happen to me! Big mistake! 

 

Here are all the reasons why I would not work with Leticia in detail:

 

1. Accounting to our contract, we were supposed to receive all our photos including 36 Rembrandt touch photos within few weeks after we sent her the selection of photos we wanted.  She originally set us up with an online portal that harvested all the photos (raw images, none that you can download or anything).  For one, she was late in setting this online portal up. When she finally did, we were went through all the photos and picked out the 36 we wanted retouched. We spent hours and hours deciding on these photos and writing comments regarding what to edit. We had those submitted and she was supposed to have them edited within a few weeks.  Much time had passed, and after countless emails, follow-ups, phone calls, crying and pleading, 1 year later, we finally received the flash drive with our untouched (unedited) photos.  Now it has been 1 year and 3 months and we still have NOT received our Rembrandt touch photos.  I don't think we will ever receive our retouched photos. 

 

2. Not all of my family is captured in our photos. Prior to the wedding, Leticia had asked us to provide a list of most important people to photograph during the wedding.  We did so. Our list included parents, grandparents, and bridal party. Not everyone was photographed. I remember my grandparents standing waiting to be photographed but it never happened. We had also sent her a list of poses we wanted for the bridesmaids and groomsman and us, but those were never captured.

 

3. Per our original conversation, we were supposed to take photos in downtown Puerto Vallarta for our trash the dress session.  Leticia had asked us to send her sample photos of poses we like and background images. Again we did our homework and sent her a list of snapshots. When we arrived in PV, for our trash the dress session, we did not take photos in downtown as we had originally planned. Nor did not take photos at the beach. We ended up having the photo shoot in the lobby of some hotel far from where we were staying because Leticia was insistent we take them there and didn't want to negotiate any other location. In fact if you look at the photos, you will see the emergency sign in our photos and the bathroom door. How's that for a beautiful trash the dress? 

 

4. During our wedding, I had about 1000 photos, which sounds like a lot, but if you look at the photos, they look exactly the same. It's the same pose shot from many different angles. And it was like that for all photos. There was no imagination, no creativity in the photos. She put all the bridesmaids in a line and photographed us like that. Again, the original reason I wanted to work with Leticia was because her photos were very creative on her website. But my photos did not turn out like that.

 

5. Yes, her photos are good quality and she uses great equipment, but if you want creativity and variety and someone easy to work with (someone who doesn't over promise and under deliver), and most importantly sends you your photos, then don't hire her. 

 

And if you absolutely feel like that's still not enough, at the very least, do not pay in advance!  Do not pay in cash!  Pay with a credit card, a transaction you can cancel if you do not receive what you were promised. 

Here is another review someone posted: http://www.bestdestinationwedding.com/topic/852-leticia-alarcon-pv-photographer/page-2