smurfee
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off
|
 p.1 #1 · I just had to share with eveyone... | |
So for the first 5 months of my photography career since getting paid gigs, I've been here on FM reading all about those bad client experiences. Some were very bad, some were not so bad, and some I didn't really see what was wrong and how things went wrong. (we FMers weren't there and written words don't seem to give the situation enough depth and justice for us to judge online.) Regardless, all these horror stories, I prayed I wouldn't have to go through. But coincidentally after reading a horror story on FM this morning... I happened to have one just about 30 minutes ago.
Long story short. And this should give it away why the problems happened...."the shoot was done for a friend." - no longer a friend though due to this.
Anyways, we had a shoot October 11th, 2009.3 hour session. And at the shoot, he was extremely friendly and happy go lucky, and joking and whatever. We got about 250 shots and just to take into consideration, I was just starting out at that time. Learning my craft and trying to capture my own unique sense of style. After the shoot was done, time came to pay up, and I told him i would pay half of it but didn't have the money at that moment.So, i told him I would get him the money when i had it. Eventually, it was a free session for him. And so was my post processing. FREE. nothing but FREE.
So a month passes by (today) and I meet up with him at a local coffee shop (very busy at the time) to give him the money. Soooo anyways, he arrives at the coffee shop and i hand him the money right away. He sits down and then, what does he do?
BAM! surprises me with profanity and insults about my photography that i didn't even know was coming. The type of things he said, (all jumbled up in my head so in no particular order)
- took you this long to pay me the money you cheapskate?!
- a month to deliver the final product and it doesn't even look like things have been done to them!
- you took 200 shots and all you delivered were 30 photos?! (mind you i took 5 shots of every pose)
- i could've gotten you clients but with the way you handled things, I would never refer you because the time frame was absurd!
- and alot of other words that i cannot post on a public forum.
At first i was willing to deal with him in a civilized manner but then we got kicked out of the coffee shop because he was yelling and cussing. Then when we were outside, he slapped my coffee out of my hand. that really ticked me off. I just felt like he was looking for a fight, but here's what i did. I told him as calmly as I could...
"I worked really hard on those during the time I had free. I had paying clients that had priority over the shoot that you and I had done but nonetheless, I was working on them throughout the month. If you like, I won't use them anymore for my portfolio and I'll give you uneditted RAWS so you can see how much work I had put into processing them due to how bad the studio lighting was."
Then here's what he said, I'm doing YOU a favor and you can't be thankful enough to get things to me on time?!?!?!
O_O And that's when the brown stuff hit the fan and i was dodging it just so i wouldn't have to get some brown stuff all over me..... (i walked away)
somebody here on FM posted a quote that has stuck with me since.
"Don't stoop down to an idiot's level, because they'll just win with experience!" I'm just glad it's over with and I don't have to deal with it anymore. I've taken down his photos and I am done with that.
Word of advice for new photographers. Be it friends, family, friends of friends, whatever.. have a contract in place, and don't underprice this thing they call photography. People need to know how much blood, sweat, and tears go into this Job.
The sleepless nights, the constant reviewing within your head during the day about what you could do better about the photos you just took, the post processing and times when the blacks look blue and the grays look white, the hours you putinto perfecting that one picture so that it remains consistent throughout the composition and color temps, and white balance, etc etc.
I can't be angry at this guy, but I sure am feeling down because there will always be people who just don't realize how much we actually do. 
|
I'm going to dump my studio and start paying by the hour.