Studio Has Delivery Problem With Wedding Photos

Eight more couples have complained about Mark Fowler Photography since 5 on Your Side reported three weeks ago about two couples who had not yet received the pictures they paid for.

Jennifer Norton said she paid the family-run Cary studio $2,445 to photograph her August 2006 wedding. When the proofs arrived a week after the wedding, she loved the hundreds of moments capture by photographer Brian Fowler, the son of Mark Fowler.

But getting Fowler to deliver the final pictures and albums took much longer. The parents' albums came around the New Year, but the Nortons' album didn't arrive until February 2007 - and it was incomplete, Norton said.

"When I first got the album, there blank pages like this throughout the album," she said.

Norton had to pick out the pictures, tape them in place and insert the pages into the album, but said she's comparably lucky.

"I feel bad for the people that still don't have their albums," Norton said.

Other of Fowlers' customers from August 2006 called 5OYS to express their frustration with delays in getting their albums from the studio. Ramsey and Adrienne Connor said they paid the studio nearly $2,800, and they, too, love the proofs of their engagement and wedding photographs.

"The only complaint is, we want the rest of our stuff," Adrienne Connor said.

"We just want our albums," Ramsey Connor added.

Brian Fowler spoke off-camera to 5OYS at his father's Chatham County home. He said Mark Fowler is sick, and the family doesn't have health insurance.

Mark Fowler is also on probation from pleading guilty to tax evasion three years ago. At the time, the court also ordered him to pay nearly $30,000 in restitution.

The studio is working to get all their customers the pictures and albums they paid for, Brian Fowler said.

Brian Fowler originally promised to complete the Connors' album by last Friday, but that didn't happen. He later said the mattes are on back-order and said the couple should have their album by the end of this week.

Of the 10 couples who complained about the studio to 5OYS, four have since received their orders.