Evoke Photography & Video

Fantastic studio and staff. Quality and customer service are clearly a top priority. I’ve had the pleasure of working with both Sara and Thomas and I was thoroughly impressed by their attention to detail, technical skill and mellow vibe. Personality and tastes will inevitably vary but while shopping around this is certainly a good place to start.
Happy hunting!

This studio LOOKS beautiful but looks can be deceiving. I had my fashion photo shoot on April 10^th and my edited Images were not available until September. Sounds unbelievable??? I have the emails to prove. At that point the promotional purposes of the shoot had passed so I was in no rush. I pay yesterday and I am told today they had no record of my payment. After forwarding the receipt I was promised I would be able to download my images by end of day. Not the case at 6pm. SO i call and I am told she would get it done by end of day. Did it happen? Nope! What is the point of a beautiful picture if you can’t use it. My birthday is tomorrow an I was hoping to be able to share my pictures for my celebration. I have a CD which is useless because I have no CDrom. Thanks Evoke.

Overall happy with our photographer Al who did our engagement photos and wedding reception. He made us feel comfortable, was unobtrusive and respectful, and captured our joy with the occasion. Would have liked a few more close ups of us as a wedding couple but felt Al was experienced and knowledgeable and would certainly recommend him to others. While we were pleased overall with the service, office staff was less easy to work with — didn’t have an easy time scheduling the engagement photo session or the in-​office photo review. Felt pressured during the in-​office photo review to buy the larger packages that we didn’t want or need. Was made to feel like we were inconveniencing them for asking that a vintage photo finish we didn’t like be removed. For the cost involved, I would have expected better service. Mostly worked with Sara who was pleasant at times but stressed/​short at other times. Also, the reception photos on CD looked like they came without much editing — not sure this was the case but we had a huge number of photos, many of which were similar to each other and some of which were blurry.

From beginning to end, working with Evoke was a wonderful and easy experience!
They offer different packages and are upfront about what you’ll get and how much they’ll charge. With your photo session for your wedding, you also get «free» bridal and engagement shots. Note they do want you to purchase the additional proofs and it will cost you about $ 300 each to do so. After looking at the quality of both packages, we opted for this option. They also include 2 free 8×10 shots automatically.
The wedding photos come automatically with the proofs. The pictures turned out amazing! They were a mix of both posed and natural shots. Our photographer Al, was easy going, non-​intrusive and easily coaxed us into giving real smiles even after hundreds of shots.
A month before our wedding, we also decided to do the videography. I was pretty concerned about having a cheesy video but I shouldn’t have worried! You pick about 4 songs you want to have played during the video and tell the videographer key moments you want to capture. They even interview your family. Roman was professional and much like a stealth ninja behind our photographer during the wedding!
Processing time for all packages do take about 4 – 6 weeks. The front office staff is very responsive to any questions you may have. They also have electronic payment plans that give you a receipt upon payment.
Best advice is to book their services as early as possible to get your date. They are pretty affordable for the quality of photos and service you get. One of the only photographers we could find in Houston that would give us our wedding proofs so you don’t have to pay them for every print.

I love it at evoke! Great people and the employees do everything to meet your satisfaction!

I had two different photographers. And they were easy to get a long! My wedding photos came out great! You get your money’s worth with evoke!

I had a summer 2012 wedding and I was extremely disappointed with my wedding pics. I agree with everything Jonathan below said. I wish I had read Unilocal before going with Evoke. My photographer did not take control of the situation. He did not scout out any good places to take pictures. As the busy bride, I had to find locations and pose people since my photographer did nothing. I cried for weeks upon seeing my pictures. Again, they offered to make it right, but you can’t reenact a wedding unless you want to fly all my family back, pay for flowers again, and all the other things. The editing process was also done poorly. I wish I had just splurged on the 8,000 dollar artistic photographers from Blanca Duran Photography.

We used Evoke for our wedding and upon looking at the final photos from our special day, I was VERY disappointed with them. Horrible shadows on my family’s faces when we took our group shots, badly composed shots, totally no creativity for on location photo shots, shots of things that make no sense to take a picture of, and what I call an «opportunistic photographer» (what I mean is that the photographer who took our pictures onsite took photos as the situation presented itself to him as opposed to going out and making them). The photographer wasn’t taking enough pictures and for a lot of the shots, especially the ones of us getting ready, he had to be told what to take photos of. He took photos of people and things only when it was easy for him to take their photo so for example, there are lots of shots of us and our family posing for other people’s photos and he would take their picture too of us looking at someone else’s camera. What should have happened is that he actually control the situation because he’s supposed to be the professional photographer and tell them to hold the pose, position himself and take a shot himself with us actually looking at his camera. Instead we have a lot of pictures of us posing for other people. Another example is what they call their «candid shots.» One set of candid shots were of people’s backside. Again, the opportunity presented itself to the photog and he didn’t bother to move a few feet off to the side to get a better composed shot. Instead it were 3 shots from the same angle (in other words, the photog didn’t move, he just retook the same shot). For our family/​group photos, we had to take them inside because we got married at the Bell Tower on 34^th (awesome venue by the way) during the day and the sun was overhead and would have created harsh shadows. Well, because the photographer was lazy or just didn’t know what he was doing, he didn’t position the family correctly and/​or have enough flashes setup because on a number of our family members there are harsh shadows covering half to most of their faces. When we took our couple’s photos, we took just a few outside and near the front entrance/​parking lot. With such a beautiful place like the Bell Tower, I was expecting more unique shots on location inside and/​or out, not just in the area within 30 feet of where our ceremony was. I also thought not enough photos of key moments of the day were taken. During the ceremony, only a few photos of each member of the wedding party were captured, the bride and groom, our entrance during the reception, etc. This could be subjective of course but considering the photos we got of these special moments, their quality were subpar (people looking down, were taken from far away, member of my family not taken at all).
Bottom line is that you get what you pay for so of course I knew this going in. I wasn’t expecting Ansel Adams quality work but I was expecting something more than I as a hobbyist could do. Even I would have noticed the harsh shadows on people’s faces when reviewing the digital photo. That’s what gets me; it’s a digital photo! Review it immediately after taking an important staged photo, you’ve got the time to do it! It’s not a candid shot that would be a one time shot.
I will admit that I provided these comments back to Evoke and the studio manager took the time to respond to all my concerns and tried to make it right. We obviously can’t recreate the photos so nothing can be done to fix all of my problems. They did attempt to Photoshop some of the shadows out (they turned out just ok, all they could do was just lighten the shadow, not eliminate them) and offered to make some free prints for us so I give them some credit for that. I’m just sad with how they turned out so I give them a star for trying to make things right but I’m just cutting my loses and dealing with the situation and salvaging the photos that I can. I would say about a quarter of them are good… there’s nothing exciting about them but there’s nothing wrong with them. Another quarter are just below what I would call good and the rest I have some problem with them as I detail above.

We loved working with Evoke! They are very straightforward about their services and pricing. Our photographer was great to work with the day of our wedding and our photos are beautiful!

A & A Videographers referred me to this photography studio when I was looking for reasonably-​priced wedding photographers. This is a professional studio of 10 photographers with an office located in Rice Village. I was impressed by the quality of the photos and albums in their offices. Did you know that wedding albums have evolved? I was expecting the pages with the frames and the photos inserted between thick paper, but these days you can get fancy «magazine”-style albums that don’t look like your parents’ now-​vintage relics at all.
Using digital photography, they send one photographer out to your event and can mix posed shots with more photojournalistic styles. The photographer who came out to shoot our wedding was very nice, professional, and was unobtrusive. He also was totally cool with my epic list of group photos I wanted in the chapel during our 2-​hour time slot. Their prices were very reasonable and included bridal and engagement sessions. They threw in a couple of free mounted artwork we could use to post outside our chapel and in our reception foyer. You can pay by check or credit, but there is no discount for using cash or check.
The only think I don’t like is that you don’t automatically retain ownership of the proofs. You will have to pay $ 400 to purchase the proofs. After about 5 years, your proofs go into storage and you will have to pay an extra retrieval fee to purchase your proofs. About a month before my wedding, I got a coupon that made the proofs $ 300. I figured I could own the proofs and make my own «parents’ albums» for that amount.
Despite that one drawback, they were the best-​priced, professional photographers I could find. The others rated by The Knot or other local wedding planning sources were much more expensive so I signed the contract and we put in the requisite ¼ down payment. Balance is due about a month before the wedding and the bridal and engagement sessions must be scheduled at least 45 days before the wedding date.