Melody Yazdani Photography

I recently had a photo session with Melody. It was such a great experience because I am normally camera shy. I thought I would have to wait two weeks to see the images, but Melody showed them to me next day. She’s compassionate, professional, and incredibly talented. I highly recommend her.

I had nice photoshoot with her (it’s like taking informal pictures, no sunshade or professional tools, just her DSLR cam), selected pictures for printing, paid in full amount (5÷25÷15), I was told to receive photo print within 2 – 3 weeks. As of now, it’s already 2 months but haven’t received anything. Multiple ways to contact her (phone/​text/​email) have been unsuccessful. I had paid $ 70 for groupon + $ 112 for the photo/​frame. I posted this review in a sense she reads this and replies to me.

She is a good photographer, but her customer service is absolutely deplorable. She hardly ever returns calls/​text/​or emails. When she does, it’s after several attempts. It’s unreal and extremely rude and unprofessional. I was told I would receive my pictures within 6 – 8 weeks. It’s been over 3 months and she has not returned my calls or text and I yet to receive my print.

In my opinion turnaround time and the price is very high, Photographer is not responsive and takes a long time to get back.

I wish that I had as much artistic talent in writing as Melody does in her photography. I truly cannot capture how amazing it was to have her for our engagement and wedding photos. To start, her prices are competitive for the DMV area, and she can customize packages for whatever your needs are. The engagement photos were stunning, and I loved getting to know her. I felt like for years I was someone who hid from the camera, often joking with friends about what disfigured faces I somehow managed in pictures. Melody has an eye for coaching and finding that right angle to get the perfect portrait. She also made my (now) husband and I feel immediately comfortable, so she was able to capture the joy and love in candid photos taken throughout the night. Beautiful pictures, great fun person, what more could I ask for? I’ve read other reviews that have negatively commented on how long it took to get the digital images. In my experience, it was about 25 days… which may have felt like an eternity because her sneakpeek photo was BREATHTAKING and I immediately wanted to see more. But, realistically, that was a great turn around time. I’ve had several friends tell me they haven’t received their wedding photos until 6+ months after the date. Her photos speak for themselves, but wait until you meet her. She is a gem!

Purchased the groupon, which was a wonderful deal. She immediately made me feel comfortable in her home studio for my Friday morning shoot. She and her makeup artist, Libby were so nice and professional. She clearly demonstrated how I should pose to highlight my pros and minimize my cons. We laughed and joked and talked through the entire shoot.
Fast forward to the next Tuesday, I return to select from a range of maybe 25 proofs. Gorgeous! In her email instructions she had sent a website outlining prices, but I couldn’t follow it well so we discussed options when I had my favorites instead of planning before I even saw the pics. As others noted, she is incredibly skilled and that means you have to dole out a pretty penny. I am lucky to be an adult — it was pretty easy to hone in on my favorites and pick three that I could afford. Any parent would be tortured trying to pick from an excellent selection. This was a treat that I had saved my pennies for.
Final analysis: if you are willing to pay for the quality, melody is top notch and you will look like a model even when you walk in looking like a zombie. If you are looking for a deal but not an individual and customized experience, try the parlors like glamour shots or jc penny.

I will start by saying her work is beautiful, I wish I could afford her WHOLE sessions! We signed up for one of her mini-​sessions after it was offered on her Facebook page. We showed up at her in house studio at the scheduled time, she took 15 minutes worth of pictures of my two kids together and individually and 2.5 weeks later we received the beautifully edited proofs (full disclosure I wished I could afford every one!).
At the start I didn’t see how she was going to capture cute/​timeless photos of my two kids (1.5 and 5 years) in just 15 minutes, but she was great with them and had a really good rhythm for the pictures. I liked her photojournalist/​candid style and will say that while we did buy one picture of both kids smiling together, that the other two we bought were just priceless candid shots of them making «their faces» which is just amazing to capture in a photograph (since I take roughly a million pictures of each of them and have not captured what Melody was able to capture in 15 minutes, can’t imagine how awesome the pictures would be from a full shoot!)…
The price for the mini-​session was about $ 100 and included one digital negative or print, the additional digital negatives were a bit pricy, but not so bad that it stopped me from buying two additional ones and hoping I can buy a few more next month. She does her billing through PayPal, so make sure you give her an e-​mail that is linked to a paypal account (that caused some mis-​match for us in the beginning, or maybe I just don’t have my paypal set up right). She was responsive, but it sometimes took an e-​mail or two to get a hold of her. I can’t really fault her for this level of response given that we’re clearly not her main demographic (which appears to be full photo sessions in the ~1k range). Once we ordered our pictures and sent payment via paypal, we had the digital files we ordered within hours.
We would certainly take advantage of another Mini-​session if/​when offered, it really allowed us access to a level of photography that we would have otherwise not been able to afford. As I said before her work is beautiful and very high quality. Just be prepared to wait a bit here and there for responses and proofs… but I figured once the pictures were taken the moment is captured, so if it takes a week or two weeks to see the proofs I’m probably still going to love them just as much.