Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Jaimelynnfoto/
Website: http://www.jaimelynnfoto.com/
THIS IS NOT A PHOTOGRAPHER WHO HAS STOLEN IMAGES
This started as one person posting their story of what they’ve endured after allegedly attempting to hire Jaime Lynn for a session and turned into a mess as more and more clients and fellow photographers chimed in with issues they’ve also had with Jaime but kept silent about because Jaime knows how to play her victim card well.
Since the reason for this blog is to protect photographers AND clients from hiring photographers who are not what they present themselves to be online, I decided to make an exception to the copyright infringement rule.
While Jaime Lynn is currently based in Flint, Michigan, she also has previously lived in and worked out of Omaha, Nebraska and Guadalajara, Mexico so I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more stories to be told and people who are owed money and/or photos which is another reason I decided to go ahead and blog this so that there’s a central location to collect these stories.
Also, it’s my blog and I do what I want. 😝
Click on the case # for the screenshots or links about each incident I summarized (not all have them). In short, there’s a lot of people that Jaime owes money to or has left high and dry on wedding days. If you have a similar story to tell let me know and I will add your story to this post. I know these aren’t the only stories to be told.
Client Issues:
Case #1: Jaime agrees to photograph a client and their extended family and is paid $350 in advance for the session. On 9/23 she reschedules due to her child having a concussion that day that needs to be kept a close watch on. On 10/28 she cancels again stating that she and her kids are vomiting and have fevers. On 10/30 she does finally photograph half the session (just the immediate family) and agrees to refund the other half for the extended family who couldn’t come on the new date and didn’t want to wait until spring for a rescheduled date ($175). As of today she still owes $140 of this refund.
Case #2: Jaime is hired to photograph a couple in Mexico in October. She is paid $600. On October 14th Jaime messages the client and tells them that her purse was stolen while photographing a wedding in LA and her passport was in the purse so she is now unable to travel to Mexico. Later on the client is informed that Jaime claimed that her boyfriend’s passport was expired and that was why she didn’t end up going to Mexico as planned in a message that came just before the excuse she sent her client. While she has promised to refund the $600, she has only refunded $150 at this point and still owes $450.
Case #3: Jaime is hired to photograph a family session on 10/23 and about an hour before cancels with chills and a fever, saying she thinks she has strep. While there were initial discussions to reschedule the clients were able to get a photographer to do them that evening as they were going out of town. In the end they requested that their $190 deposit be refunded since they had to hire a new photographer last minute but Jaime said she doesn’t refund deposits and would do a mini-session for them in the spring when she’s back in town.
Case #4: Jaime is hired to photograph a family session on 9/18 and is paid $375. On the day of the session she cancels stating her child got a concussion the night before and he’s feeling rough that day (see Case #1…note that the dates don’t quite line up) and asks if they can move the session to the next day. Client agrees and they reschedule for the next day. Jaime again cancels due to the concussion so they reschedule a third time for 10/9. Jaime forgot to write the date in her calendar and can’t do it. Due to neither being able to find a date in their schedules to make another date work Jaime agrees to refund the client. After about 3 months and a lot of messages from the client Jaime eventually does pay this client back in full but only after client threatens to go public.
Case #5: Jaime was hired by another photographer to shoot a wedding in Mexico who had another commitment. Jaime was paid the original booking fee by the original photographer and the clients paidJaime for an additional hour of coverage along with a tip. 3 weeks after returning home Jaime claimed her dog ate her memory card and there were no photos remaining. Clients were refunded what they paid to the original photographer by the photographer, unknown if Jaime ever refunded the money she was paid or not to the clients or original photographer.
Case #6: Jaime is hired to photograph a unique wedding in LA (yes, the same wedding where Jaime claimed to have had her purse stolen from). Bride is a photographer who had become FB friends with Jaime and when she was planning her wedding told Jaime that she wished she was in LA to photograph it. Jaime offered them a deal on the pricing for the wedding and after making sure that Jaime could handle the unique nature of the wedding they booked with her (the wedding was a wrestling theme complete with theatrics of fog machines and such, and the bride was dying her hair a unique color for the occasion – hence the questions).
She shows up for the wedding rehearsal with her boyfriend in tow and informed bride that he was along for the show, not to assist Jaime like the bride thought. The bride shrugged it off despite it being weird because their wedding was unique. However, she started to get a bad feeling from it all.
The day of the wedding Jaime shows up and acts put upon that she has to be there. She only shows up with one camera body, one 35mm lens and one flash. No backups of anything and no spare batteries so of course the flash dies right before the ceremony resulting in a scramble as the bride had to send someone out to get some for her.
Jaime takes the minimum amount of photos possible and refuses a lot of areas and setups the bride and groom request. She photographs the entire wedding with her 35mm lens and doesn’t get any good photos of the fog entrance or anything in detail from the ceremony due to the lack of a telephoto lens.
For the reception Jaime and her boyfriend spent most of the evening sitting and chatting with the friends of the couple, so much so that many didn’t realize they were the photographers and not guests. The bride confronted her but was blown off. In the end, there is only a handful of images from the reception focusing on the group of people she was networking with that evening. She tried to leave early to go to a show but wasn’t allowed.
After the 10 week mark passed which was Jaime’s promised turn around time the bride reached out asking for the images. Jaime made excuses about not being able to color correct the bride’s hair which was one of the first issues the bride brought up when booking her for the wedding and Jaime insisted photographing it would not be an issue.
Eventually, the images are delivered and they are not good. Besides the obvious gaps in coverage and issues with shooting with a 35mm prime lens all day there are many fundamental mistakes: missed shots, blurry images, blinks, soft and out of focus shots and upside down images. The bride requested any undelivered images in hopes of being able to do some head swaps to end up with at least a few photos that were salvageable and Jaime never responded.
A few weeks later the bride sent another message to Jaime requesting a refund and Jaime refused the refund stating that the images were to her standard and to hire a lawyer and blocked the bride.
Photographer Issues:
Case #7: Jaime agrees to second shoot for a photographer who discovers she is pregnant and is due in November. She has two weddings in October and hires Jaime as a second photographer just in case she goes into labor early or just needs the support during her last month of pregnancy. She pays Jaime $200 in advance as a deposit on her fees for the weddings. Jaime ends up moving to Mexico and ghosts the photographer when she asks for a refund on the retainer paid to her for second shooting. She gets in contact once and swears it was a bad time in her life and promises to refund but never did.
Case #8: Jaime moves to Michigan and decides she doesn’t want to go back to Omaha to photograph 3 remaining boudoir clients she has on the books. She contacts a fellow photographer and asks if they are willing to photograph the remaining clients and states she’d allow the photographer to keep the balances due in payment for photographing and editing the session. Photographer declines because the remainder isn’t worth the time involved to photograph, edit and deliver the files. Jaime ends up posting an ISO for a “lower budget” boudoir photographer for the weekend she has booked. She found another photographer that was under the impression she was doing Jaime a favor and Jaime’s clients were told that the deposit they gave Jaime would be going to the new photographer along with the balance owed. Jaime kept telling the new photographer they weren’t getting the deposit because they were non-transferable and non-refundable. The new photographers does end up photographing 2 of the clients but never gets paid anything close to what she should have been for these sessions.
Case #9: This is a series of issues with one photographer. Jaime is hired to second shoot a wedding for $300, she photographs the wedding and was easy to get along with but instead of taking alternate angles all day she shot over the main’s shoulder. It annoys the main but the work was good so she let it go until Jaime blogs the wedding without crediting her as the photographer and blogging like she was the main photographer. Since they were petty issues the main photographer let it go.
Jaime messages her again asking if she can second for her in January when she is back in town (at this time Jaime was living in Mexico) and the photographer hires her to second shoot. A few weeks before Jaime backs out stating she’s unable to get back into town like she’d hope and the main photographer was able to find someone new to fill in.
A year or so goes by and Jaime keeps asking to second shoot but the main photographer was nervous about hiring Jaime again. Eventually, she does for a weekend where she originally had two weddings that needed second shooters. Jaime is hired for both but in the end, one bride ended up deciding against needing a second photographer. Jaime made the main photographer feel bad since she had already paid for a bus ticket to come from Mexico to photograph the weddings so she agreed to still pay her the agreed-upon $600 but instead of shooting a wedding for $300 of that she was to do a session of the main’s family or headshots instead. Jaime agreed.
She comes into town and while they are not able to make schedules work to get the $300 session done Jaime does second shoot the wedding and again, shoots over the main photographer’s shoulder for much of the time. Unlike the last time, however, the images that Jaime delivers are barely usable.
Jaime again asks to be able to use the images and the main photographer points out how the last time Jaime didn’t credit her and brings up how bad the images are. Jaime claims that the images aren’t atypical of her work and it’s just different shooting styles. She then goes back to asking for the images and seems miffed when the main tells her she got rid of most of the things Jaime shot and kept just a few images.
Tax season rolls around and the main photographer requests Jaime’s info so she can get a W9 from her in order to 1099 her for earning more than $600 in a year. After a lot of back and forth the main photographer realized she sent it over in two payments and since the second was payment for a shoot that never happened she was OK not filing the 1099. She was never refunded the $300 for the session that never took place.
Case #10: Jaime is hired to second shoot for a photographer for a couple of weddings. For the first wedding, it was agreed when originally securing Jaime that she would start at 10AM but as the date got closer Jaime kept asking that her start time get moved back until she eventually agreed to 12:00PM as the start time. The day of the wedding Jaime shows up late, at 12:30PM. She then spends most of the day texting and not photographing the wedding and leaves after dinner stating she needed to return home to her children.
Jaime was already scheduled to second shoot a second wedding for the same photographer and she decided to keep her on since Jaime also shot Nikon which makes editing smoother on the backend. The photographer was shocked and not exactly pleased when the day of the wedding Jaime showed up with a new camera and only one lens from a different brand. The images were unlike the ones delivered previously and were grainy and not usable. In the end, very few images that Jaime shot were able to be used. She tried to leave again after dinner but the main photographer made her stay through the first dances and made the main photographer feel guilty.
She was scheduled to shoot one more wedding with the photographer but backed out. Luckily she was able to be replaced by another local photographer.
Case #11: Jaime is hired to second shoot for a photographer for a wedding and negotiates a higher rate than was offered based on her experience and work. She leaves the wedding right after dinner claiming her child was sick (sounding familiar??).
Case #12: Jaime is hired to second shoot for a wedding. She showed up late but it wasn’t a huge deal as the guys were running behind. However, she again needed to leave right after dinner due to an emergency and couldn’t stay to cover the sparkler exit which was a huge reason why there was a need for a second shooter. When she got paid for the hours she worked (5 1/2) instead of what she was hired for (10) she was upset. There was also an issue with the quality of images but luckily it didn’t affect the gallery of images that were delivered.