Ryan Schembri has not stolen images!
This is another entry into the photo shyster category which is reserved for industry leaders in the photography world that are doing shady shit that is NOT stealing images. Shady shit is qualified as things such as not delivering products or images to clients in the promised time, not delivering what photographers pay for with mentorships or workshops and so forth.
Enter Ryan Schembri.
For those who don’t know him, Ryan Schembri entered into the photography world about 10 years ago or so. Not long after dipping his toes into wedding photography he began to collect lots of awards including big ones such as the Grand Award at WPPI, Photographer of the Year with AIPP and also was a Grand Master of AIPP. He began to speak at various conferences and lead his own workshops shortly after, as many do. He’s pretty well known within the industry, especially to those in the awards circuit and in Australia (where he is based).
Now that you have a gist of who he is, lets get into the thick of it.
TLDR: Ryan Schembri allegedly has dozens of photography clients waiting on images and/or products, allegedly left at least one workshop early, allegedly failed to properly cancel another workshop where at least one student is still waiting for a refund, and allegedly has at least mentee waiting for a refund after not delivering what was promised. Despite all of this, Ryan has recently posted he’ll be traveling the world workshopping before retiring from teaching photography despite being based in Australia where travel to/from the country is difficult due to the pandemic and slow rollout of the vaccine.
Photography Clients
According to The Age/Sydney Morning Herald, there are at least a dozen couples still waiting for deliverables from Ryan Schembri. Inside Imaging claims this number is around 30. Either way, that is a LOT of clients that should not be waiting on products.
One client stated in this article that they paid $7700 in 2017 and are still waiting for deliverables that were part of their package.
Two couples wanted to be anonymous in The Age because they still do not have wedding photos and were worried that by speaking out they would never get them.
In another article about this mess by Inside Imaging, a former second shooter of Ryan’s tells about a client that had been waiting for months to see images from their wedding. Eventually Ryan sent them a dropbox with 30 unedited images which prompted the second shooter to eventually get all the files from Ryan and edit and deliver the images herself. However, this client was still without an album and prints, which they had paid for.
This story takes a WILD turn though.
Directly from the Inside Imaging article:
She said that making matters worse was he was far from truthful to the client ‘and how long he was willing to string her along.’ ‘He told her the album had been posted before Christmas “but Australia Post must of lost it”. She then contacted the album company (GraphiStudios) directly, and was told they had no such order. Ryan had even [allegedly] made a fake email and receipt for the purchase of the album. After she confronted him with the e-mail from GraphiStudios he blocked her. No contact could be made.’
According to The Age, the NSW Department of Fair Trading has had 16 complaints against Ryan Schembri since 2018. However, they appear to only act when this is 10 complaints a month so while these complaints are noted, they aren’t acted upon.
There’s also many stories compiled on the Ryan Schembri Photo Review Page of various couples who are waiting on photos, deliverables and so much more. It’s really heartbreaking to read these stories.
After The Age article was written in April Ryan vowed this was the “wake-up call” he needed to finally finish up what he had promised to those couples.
He told Ryan Schembri Photo Review Page that his next wedding was May 22nd and he’d have everything delivered by then. So far, that promise, like so many others, has not been met.
Earlier today this comment was left on one of Ryan’s public posts on Facebook from who appears to be yet another client who appears to be waiting on products.
Photographers
There’s a bunch of fuckery afoot here so I’ll try to summarize everything.
Per The Age, Ryan Schembri hired Rocco Ancora to do post-production work for him. Rocco eventually stopped doing Ryan’s editing when the invoices that were unpaid kept mounting. Eventually some were paid but according to the article he’s still owed around $2000.
In the Inside Imaging article, Susan Stripling came forward with her story of what happened when she attempted to host some workshops with Ryan.
Ryan hosted a, according to Susan via Inside Imaging, “truly stellar” workshop at her studio in June 2019 after which he then proposed they host a collaborate workshop together in NYC and London.
Susan and Ryan’s NYC Workshop took place on November 6 & 7, 2019.
On day one Susan was surprised when Ryan’s workshop had changed from the one that he’d taught previously. Instead of being photography focused it leaned more towards life coaching and was more of a sales pitch for his one-on-one mentoring than the previous curriculum. Susan was not comfortable with this but didn’t have much opportunity to do anything about it.
The next day, which was supposed to be a second full day of teaching, Ryan left midway through claiming that there was a cancellation of a flight and if he didn’t catch a flight back to Australia that afternoon he’d risk missing a wedding he had booked.
After the workshop Susan followed up and checked out his story regarding the flights. None of the flights from the itinerary she had been sent by Ryan were cancelled. It’s unclear why he left early.
Next up was supposed to be their second of the two workshops in London on January 27 & 28, 2020 at The Caledonian Club.
Unfortunately, Susan and Ryan’s London workshop did not sell as well as the NYC workshop. Ultimately they decided to cancel the London workshop about 6 weeks before the event and refund those that had purchased seats. Ryan told Susan he’d email the attendees and refund everyone.
He did not.
About two weeks before the event Susan began to get emails about the upcoming workshop and she discovered much to her horror that Ryan had NOT emailed the attendees and refunded them.
In an attempt to soothe Susan, Ryan told her he’d just go ahead and do a solo workshop since he was already going to be in London for a big shoot. Susan shot this idea down and insisted that he refund the clients. According to Inside Imaging, Ryan claims there was a hiccup with Eventbrite and this is why he couldn’t issue refunds.
Ryan also claimed to Inside Imaging that he’d booked The Caledonian Club and cancelled before payment was required but despite claiming to have it, he never showed proof of such booking to Inside Imaging.
So far some, but not all, of the students have been refunded.
Next up is Kelly, a wedding photographer who hired Ryan for one-on-one coaching after attending Ryan and Susan’s workshop in NYC according to Inside Imaging. She hired him for a little over $5000 (valued at $18,997) for a 12 month personal coaching program with Ryan that included things like monthly group calls, access to any workshops, a 6 day retreat, shooting a wedding alongside him and access to his (now ex) wife’s life coaching business.
What did Kelly get? Not nearly as much as promised per her interview with Inside Imaging. She only had 5 sessions in the 12 month period (which lacked structure) and a couple other small bits of her package. She requested a partial refund after nearly a year-and-a-half and while Ryan Schrembri has claimed to have sent partial refunds they have never arrived in Kelly’s bank accounts.
What she said to Inside Imaging is exactly why I am writing this today.
‘I want more people to feel confident enough when they have something bad happen to them,’ she said. ‘And I fell into several traps along the way. I thought that because so-and-so trusts him (Schembri), I should trust him. He’s got a big reputation – lots of awards. He’s like the cool kid at school, and I fell for it. He’s well respected by so many and yet here I am feeling suspicious. So I questioned myself – “what’s wrong with me?”’
There’s even an old post on Fred Miranda from a photographer who purchased DVDs from him and they never received them. Other photographers joined in and said they had similar issues with him. While this may be anecdotal it shows there’s a long history of him failing to deliver goods that are paid for.
Now What???
After the two articles were published in April, one in The Age, one in Inside Imaging, Ryan made all kinds of promises but yet a month has gone by and from what I’m hearing, allegedly there’s been very little as far as deliveries.
While they did not make a fuss of it like they did for Lisa Saad, according to Inside Imaging, in September 2020 the AIPP has revoked Ryan’s membership after finding he had not complied with their standards (it is unclear what exactly triggered this).
Canon Australia informed Inside Imaging that Ryan Schembri is no longer a Canon Master.
What seemed to have kicked all the dust up again after the round of bad publicity in April was that he recently posted some workshops he’s hosting this year before he ‘retires’ from doing photography workshops as he plans to move into something else next year.
It is unclear exactly how Ryan would be able to do the workshop in Dallas as the Australian government has banned its citizens from leaving Australia due to Covid 19, except in exceptional circumstances.
So… now what?
Ideally all of Ryan’s clients would get their images and products they’ve paid for (or refunds and releases so that they can take their files to other photographers to build albums and create products with), he’d refund the photographers he has to refund or pay for services and he’d straighten up and start being a good human. No more running out of workshops early, no more weird stories about booking venues that aren’t booked and no more workshops until all of this stuff is fixed.
After reading everything… I don’t know if that will happen. I’m sure it will be more promises and, again, more promises broken.