"AITA for leaving my photographer a bad review for posting my pregnancy announcement photos online before we announced our pregnancy?"

Last night our pregnancy announcement photographer posted our pregnancy announcement photos onto her Facebook and Instagram portfolios. I found out because one of my friends tagged me on a comment all excited that we were pregnant. I called and completely freaked out on the photographer.

She was apologetic and took the photos down before she totally blew the news to everyone, but I'm still pretty livid. We never signed any kind of contract with her, and she never indicated that she would use the photos on her page.

AITA if I leave a bad review on her Facebook page? She's newer to the business, but I feel that a photographer should know better than to post something like this before checking to make sure the parents have announced the news themselves.

Here are some of her responses to questions in the comments:

"Did you explicitly ask your photographer not to post the photos?"

No. Nor would I have minded her doing so if she had waited until after we had announced the news ourselves.

"Did you tell them it was a pregnancy announcement and when you were planning to announce?"

Yes to both. The photo session involved us holding a big sign with our last name on it that said "Baby Preggasaurus Due August". We did tell her when we were announcing as well.

What do you think? AITA? This is what top commenters had to say:

cloudedmind419 said:

NAH. She made a terrible mistake and should have cleared it with you first. She owned up to it and immediately corrected her actions as much as she could. Understandably you have the right to be upset also it just doesn’t seem to rise to the level of warranting a business-hurting review.

If anything I would likely still use that person in the future. Everyone makes mistakes in every business and that’s inevitable. I would rather do business with a person that has already gone through the full range of mistakes possible, rather than deal with the person that still needs to make them (with the assumption that they corrected their mistakes professionally).

Virulencer said:

ESH. This is the purpose of contracts and release forms. Sign some next time. She shouldn't have posted them without your consent, but leaving a bad review because of something she corrected and can learn from isn't helpful to her or her future clients. It just makes you feel better which seems petty to me.

knumbknuts said:

NTA, leave the review as factual and as emotionless as possible. That fact is strong enough on its own. The only thing I've ever heard that's worse was when a friend's fertility doctor told the friend's mother before the friend that the procedure failed.

And TrillahKillah said:

yes YTA. You’re going to ruin a new photographer’s (who you probably booked because they were cheap) business because of a misunderstanding like this? You brought up the contract as if to say “since there wasn’t one they had no right to use the photos” .. um no. What YOU needed was a contract that stated the photographer can’t use the photos until a certain date or at all.

Without an NDA or whatever, they are literally just photos on the PHOTOGRAPHER’S camera. If anyone has ownership at this point it’s the photographer and they often show off their own work ... because they’re a photographer. OP it is wildly out of line to write a bad review, ESPECIALLY since it sounds like the photographer did everything to accommodate you once you brought it up.

Update:

Thank you to everyone who advised on this situation. About an hour ago, I got an email from the photographer profusely apologizing. She had clearly put a lot of thought and consideration into what took place, and explained the steps she is taking with her other past and future clients to ensure that nothing like this happens again.

She also took it upon herself to reach out to the friend who did see the photo privately to ask for her discretion. In light of this (and the perspective that many of you offered), I will NOT be leaving her a negative review. Even though she messed up pretty badly, I believe that she feels true remorse and I don't think that there's a risk of this happening to anyone else.