Kathy Casstevens Photography

Kathy and Stephanie were amazing at our wedding this past weekend. They made sure we got all of the shots that we wanted and brought wonderful ideas for photos to take in the parks. They directed the (chatty) wedding party perfectly to make sure we were on schedule to capture everything we wanted. I absolutely loved working with them and will definitely use them in the future for family photos and other special occasions. Very friendly and helpful, rescheduled us 3times after our first 2 weddings were cancelled. Kathy also did our engagement photos and endured 100 degree weather to capture wonderful photos for our save the dates. Love this dynamic duo!
Mar 12th, 2022

May 25th, 2021

We had a lovely experience for our engagement photos in May 2018. Kathy captured beautiful photos of us in the Starved Rock State park area and helped us to feel comfortable during the experience! We highly recommend Kathy Casstevens Photography for wedding and other photo needs!
Dec 11th, 2019

Kathy and Stephanie are amazing! Pictures from our engagement session and wedding are absolutely beautiful. She even went the extra mile by taking my own bridal portraits a week after the wedding, in a much more relaxed setting, so I could have more pictures of me in my dress! The pictures were out of this world. They are always on point and so helpful in so many ways! Definitely recommend Kathy for every and any types of pictures you need!! Just the best
Feb 17th, 2019

Married on 06/08/2018 Novice Photographer We ended up going with Kathy and her daughter Stephanie as a backup since our first photographer flaked out on us. For $1500 we had both Kathy and her daughter shooting pictures of our wedding. The package included 3 pen drives of digital photos, no edits, just the raw files, which was fine with us since we own our own editing software. I must give Kathy credit for her ability to organize our large group and get every photo on our list of family photos to be shot. She was on time, she had the ability to direct a large crowd and she knew where all the hot spots were for getting scenic photos on Starved Rock grounds. However, it is clear after reviewing the digital files that her daughter Stephanie is the better photographer of the two. Stephanie has a better eye for composition than Kathy. Stephanie has the ability to capture artist photos, while Kathy is better suited for portraits... or rather she has a very journalistic style of shooting photographs, which is not ideal for a wedding. I was slightly disappointed in the quality of the majority of the photographs we received. Primarily, most of our photos were slightly crooked and slightly out of focus. Which was not terrible, but it did take us longer to edit the photos altogether. What really got me, was how closely cropped a lot of the photos Kathy took during the portraits were. Rather than focusing on the entire scene, she focused on getting almost too close up in the portraits - this is where her journalistic style comes into play. I was hoping to get more background of the Great Hall in my family portraits with the bridal party, especially of the decorations on the mantle. Some photos had that, but a lot of them didn't. Both Kathy and her daughter bragged about their ability to shoot manually without using auto-focus. However, this left us with a bunch of slightly out of focus photos, especially of couples shots, wedding party staged scenes, and family group photo shots. The photos were not terrible, but they were not as great as they could have been. I know we were a large party, but I was hoping for one of those 180 or 360 landscape style photos of that scene... didn't really work out that well. She is not the professional photographer she talks herself up to be, she is a novice at best, with potential and a daughter that really knows how to get some good artistic shots. We did get a lot of photos and had the convenience of 2 photographers covering the entire wedding but the end product is average at best.
Feb 3rd, 2019