Amanda Pool Photographer

Amanda photographed our engagement photos and wedding in summer 2022.

Getting married in the time of Covid meant that we had a small family wedding before our larger wedding that Amanda photographed, so I have two different photographer experiences I can directly compare.

Pros:
- Amanda is extremely nice and easy to talk to.
- Her photography style is beautiful.
- My fiancé got covid three days before our originally scheduled wedding and she was extremely nice and flexible in moving our contract to our new date, even putting the word out to ask about available venues for our new date when we weren’t getting the support we needed fr om our planner.
- Most of the photos we received are very beautiful.
- We got our sneak peek gallery very quickly, with an additional one added in quick succession after I expressed to Amanda that I wanted to see more of specific types of photos.
- She is stealth! You literally will not notice she is there.

Cons:
- Important photographs simply weren’t taken - the biggest being that we don’t have a photo of our two maids of honor walking down the aisle, which makes me very sad. We are also missing photos of our cool live band. We also don’t have any photos outside the aisle walk of me holding my bouquet, which was a part of the wedding I really loved and hoped I would have more documented memories of. There in fact are just very few photos of me as the bride, which I felt disappointed by, and does not seem to be the case from what I have seen of the other wedding she photographs.
- Amanda does not have experience working with plus size wedding clients (or if she does, they are not featured on her social media, which is worse). This honestly gave me pause when deciding to work with her, but it’s something I wish I had taken more seriously. Photographing a diversity of body types well takes practice, and she simply does not have the practice needed yet. I felt encouraged after seeing our engagement photos (wh ere she was much more hands on than at the wedding itself), but found that her lack of playing with angles, lighting, poses etc during the actual wedding meant that we didn’t get the photos we expected of us (which we could compare directly to the photos fr om our smaller wedding, wh ere our photographer regularly photographs and promotes her experience working with all different body types).
- Amanda did not reference our shot list during family photos, meaning that I was left in charge of rounding people up, saying who should be in which photo, etc (our previous photographer managed that all herself, for a much more complicated and lengthy set of family photos).
- She seems pretty disorganized, which appears to be from taking on more work at a time than she is able to handle. Many many emails have gone unanswered (with the excuse that she doesn’t see them when they go to spam), and deadlines are missed, follow-up questions have been forgotten about with communication regarding the missing photos mentioned above taking 6+ months.

Other important things to know:
- Amanda’s hands off style I think would really work for people who feel comfortable in front of the camera and/or are photogenic. If you feel awkward having your photo taken and need some extra help with posing, relaxing your face, etc, her style of work may not be for you. I would have loved to hear from her a couple creative ideas she had for us rather than her fully relying on us to “be natural” for the photos, but others I know feel differently. I also would have loved a reminder from her that I may want to do some of our wedding party, portrait or family photos with my flowers - as the bride in the moment, I couldn’t possibly remember everything like that and really would have appreciated some help from Amanda (or if she wanted help with those items like fixing my train for photos, asking for one of my coordinators or bridesmaids to be there to help).
- There is a balance between being fully present for the most important parts of the wedding and getting the photos you want. Amanda prioritizes letting you just be present and enjoy the moment, which is great, but I also would have loved someone just saying “hey I have a great idea for photos, it will only take 5 minutes.” Her photojournalistic approach means you may not get very many portrait style photos or many photos of just the bride and groom at all. In our case, I lined up a room in our venue for bride and groom photos and told Amanda to pull us away when she was ready to take those. As she was leaving for the night I reminded her that we never got to take those photos and she said “it just seemed like you were having so much fun!” I am definitely not the type to say “let’s take an hour away from the party to do photos,” but I would have loved to have been asked to take 10 minutes away in exchange for having fun and unique photos that we would have as keepsakes forever. For me personally, the balance just wasn’t quite right.

My husband and i have had the pleasure to work with Amanda twice now. We have worked with other photographers in the past, but by far Amanda’s work and vision has been our favorite. She not only captures us, but also captures the moments, the vibes, and the little details that make a gallery complete. I appreciate her hard work and dedication to her craft. You can really tell it is her passion.

Amanda is one of the most genuine people that i know, she caters to exactly what you want and will capture some of the most intimate and emotional moments without you even realizing it. She wanted us to just live in the moment and be present on our wedding day and not only did her photos come out amazing and beautiful but she made us feel so comfortable. She is so sweet and i can’t thank Amanda more for the work that she put into these photos for us so that we can relive our wedding day again and again!