Adam and Keli Photography AKA The Spaniers in Cincinnati, Ohio

Website: https://www.adamandkeli.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AdamandKeliPhotography/
Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/adam-and-keli-wedding-photography-newport-6

As you may know, stealing photos pisses me off but plagiarism really pisses me off. At least for me, writing doesn’t come naturally and writing out my blog posts, hell even THIS blog post, doesn’t just fly off the tips of my fingers with ease. I’ve had a lot of my own blog posts stolen and so I know how these photographers feel, especially since the majority of their original sources are local photographers.

Do your own work. Say your own words. Stop stealing shit that isn’t yours.

Onto this disaster. These idiots have taken a shitton of blogs so I may not get them all as they’ve started deleting since they’ve been called out. From my understanding this isn’t their first case of crappy behavior, probably won’t be the last either.

Typically I would highlight the text but you’ll see why I didn’t because of the massive undertaking that would be. Pretty much everything is lifted directly with a few words here and there swapped out for different pronouns/names/quirks.

Update 4/16/2019

There’s been a lot going down with this company but I haven’t updated for various reasons. Mostly because the court system is now involved and I was happy to let them take it from here. Then Keli started emailing me… so here we are!

What I didn’t add to the original post was that after shit hit the fan it was discovered that Adam & Keli also plagiarized their boudoir text from another local competitor along with stealing at least one of her images. When everything hit the fan they were quick to delete everything but some of it still was able to be pulled via web archives. More plagiarism came to light as well. Everything new has been added below with the sources linked.

Adam posted an apology to their Facebook Page which was a decent apology as far as those outed here go. No blaming someone else. No hackers. No interns. He owned the mistake. It was a lot of why I decided to let sleeping dogs lie and decided to not add the additional incidents that came to light to this post. The apology was deleted.

Adam & Keli have changed the name of their company a few times in the time since this post. I’m not sure at this point what name they are using but have gone from Spanier Photography to Making Memories Photography and I believe back to Adam & Keli Photography.

It died down for a while until last night when I received an email out of the blue.

“Hello,

I wanted to write you about your post about us, Adam & Keli Photography. Firstly we’ve apologized profusely to those we plagiarized. Secondly, we are facing a lot of consequences from doing what we did. I don’t want to defend what we did, because we realize our mistake, but I’d like to explain it from our point of view.

Many of the information that was plagiarized is readily available with a google search. The way we looked at it, was putting all of the information for our wedding couples in one place, so they didn’t have to search it all out. It was in no way meant to hurt anyone. It was just convenience, and we realize that this was a bad decision. Our business grew very quickly and we lost the time to make creative posts, and we know that we needed to make the time.

A lot of misinformation has been posted, as though we’ve stolen more than 2 equipment photos and blog text. We’ve verified every single one of our reviews, and updated our press info (we actually have been featured in even more now than what was posted.) We’ve gotten death threats that our wedding photos were all stolen. As a family of 4, death threats are pretty scary. I know you aren’t the one causing them, but because of the hugeness of the post, we are in fact getting a lot.

Many, many keywords with wedding photographers are the same: elegant, timeless, heirloom, etc. So it’s very hard to write things that don’t sound the same as others. No one books a wedding through us without meeting in person. Definitely not from a blog post.

Since we are getting sued, the legal system will indeed punish us, especially since we’ve publicly owned up to it. We’ve lost clients and business, and we’ve learned our lesson. We do have two daughters that are not far from college accounts, and this is our income. I’m sure that these photographers would not want you to remove the post, because they wouldn’t be happy unless we were run out of town and lost our home.

We’ve been completely transparent and feel terrible about doing this. We are positive that the right steps are being taken on both sides. We’ve taken everything down and edited all text, and we still have a pretty robust website. I hope that you’ll consider both sides to this.

I’d also like to ask that you don’t share this note, as anything we’ve posted has just escalated the situation, causing more threats and more mocking of our response. That is why we have just been trying to do work as usual.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Keli Spanier”

As always, if you are indeed getting death threats, GO TO THE POLICE. I can’t protect you. I’m not the one sending them and this website isn’t the only place posting about the incident so the removal of this post won’t stop it. GO TO THE POLICE.

I have a lot of thoughts about this email but the bottom line is this: you fucked up. Full stop. I don’t care if it’s on Google or if everything sounds the same – you stole. They didn’t just sound the same, they were word-for-word copy and paste jobs. If your site is so robust that you don’t need the plagiarized blogs, blurbs and reviews then why steal them? But steal them you did and not just one but dozens and dozens. There is no excuse.

Also there’s still plagiarized content on your website.

Keli, you and/or Adam chose to plagiarize and steal images. That was your decision NOT mine. Those actions have consequences. IF you would lose your home and/or college funds it is not my fault and frankly trying to blame me for that pisses me off.

Originally I did NOT share this email, but I did send a message to one of the victims laughing about the “it’s readily available on Google” and the keywords are the same excuse. BECAUSE THAT SHIT IS FUNNY! Again, I didn’t share the email, just that quip, because the excuses people come up with amuse me.

Apparently that tidbit I shared made it back to Keli so this morning I received another email from Keli:

“Since you’re sharing —
Why have contracts if people can just get out of them? Our lawyer advised us not to give the deposits back. We’re going on the advice of our lawyer.

WE took the Knot & Wedding Wire reviews down, so that we could investigate further if we had reviews that weren’t ours. We’ve also been on the phone with both of them trying to make sure that nothing is fraudulent. None of them “looked fake” – they were all from our brides. We still don’t think any of them WERE fake. We think one of our brides may have copied a review out of laziness.

Thanks for considering both sides, and starting up the death threats again. Is it really necessary? What will make everyone happy – we kill ourselves?”

I am in the process of trying to get their local police to do a wellness check because I don’t play with suicide threats. My brother committed suicide and I’ve done this in the past with other thieves.

Regarding the whole contract thing – I hear that they have some clients trying to get out of their contracts in light of all the recent events. That is beyond the scope of this blog and it is between Adam & Keli and their clients. Personally I would refund any clients that were wanting out of a contract due to something like this because wedding days are very intimate and I can’t imagine spending the day with a client who at the very least didn’t trust me but that’s just a personal opinion on what I would do in this situation. This is a matter for the courts.

The reviews I sourced were testimonials from their own website. NOT Google, The Knot or Wedding Wire. There were three, not one. So I’m supposed to believe that THREE different clients were lazy and sourced their reviews from THE SAME PHOTOGRAPHERS? Who they ALSO plagiarized their investment blurb from? Come the fuck on.

Finally this is the last email I just received from Keli:

“If you have any suggestions on what we should do about this situation, please give me a call [redacted]. I know that talking to me will humanize us and everyone wants us dead, but I’m open to suggestions. We really don’t know what to do. None of these people will just have a conversation with us. We’re not going out of business. We still have plenty of clients who stand by us and have told us they didn’t book us for the blogs. If you want to Q&A me, you sure can.”

NO ONE WANTS YOU DEAD.

If you have plenty of clients then what was with the “woe is me our children may not have a home or a college fund” bullshit from the first email? Pick a lane.

So here’s my suggestion: don’t piss me off. I dig deeper. Found at least one more blog that’s plagiarized that’s still live on your website from TWO different sources and a blurb from the investment page that is stolen from the same photographers the reviews came from.

Also don’t send harassing texts and Facebook messages to people talking about this incident and to the photographers who your clients have now booked after this mess. It doesn’t help your case at all and makes you look worse.

If you were really sorry you would be doing everything you can to make things right. Instead you stirred things back up with the email to me and have been sending messages to people talking about this case on Facebook and photographers who booked the clients who decided to leave your service. You are not doing yourself any favors.

Original source