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Some of us are aspiring pros, why don’t we wallow in shared misery of the freelance assistant life? And also maybe recommend gear, techniques, etc to each other. I’ll start. I work as a freelance assistant & digital tech in the NY/NJ area. Sometimes this means I get to work on magazine shoots for GQ, or do digital tech for Cosmo. I also assist on commercial jobs, corporate portraits, products, beauty, architecture; a wide gamut of experience. But then there’s those jobs that are absolutely infuriating. I have a few under my belt, by now I’ve figured out the warning signs and can usually stay away. What’s important to take away from these stories is These People Make Money At Photography so no matter how much you think you suck, know that by being even slightly more competent, your day will come. At least that’s what I tell myself  Stage One: Tutorial Let’s call this first guy Captain Bedsheets, because his ‘thing’ is taping bedsheets to flat surfaces, regardless of where the subject is. He’s older, likes to reminisce about the Good Old Days, but he’s also super proud of being an early adopter of digital  . My favorite part of the job is the drive home, he will bellyache about everything involved in the shoot, even though literally everything he complains about was completely within his control. So like he’ll complain about models, even though he had final approval from the client on which models they choose. Or he’ll do a shot in a building’s lobby, and get mad that people are walking into the shot. I have also witnessed him calling canon customer service on separate occasions because lightroom wasn’t working, the Cam Ranger wasn’t connecting, and because the camera’s video component didn’t run for 45 minutes continuously (on a paid job where he was doing video for the first time ever).The hiring conversation was also fun. He wanted to know if i’d work for less than my day rate ($250). Answer: NO, thanks for your time, I’m not the assistant for you. “what i mean is I pay $200 per job, and the jobs are usually 4, never more than 6 hours.” Ok fine, let’s give it a shot. (Note: As you read this, just imagine I put the  smilie into every sentence somewhere). Surprise surprise, every single job is at least 6 hours long. Whenever he has a job for me, he sends an email, then 15 minutes later a text, then 15 minutes later a phone call. If I still haven’t responded, he alternates texts and calls every 30 minutes until I do. Because it’s urgent, getting a definite answer on a one day job where he’s not sure which day next week it is, so he needs to be certain I'm free for all 4 potential days next week.So my first time working for him was corporate headshots in an office about 2 hours away. He doesn’t trust me to drive myself there, and meet him at the appointed time. No, I have to drive to his house, then we carpool, because strangely enough other assistants have been late or called out sick. Somehow, for an 11am call time, I have to be at his door at 6am to load his car, drive for 2 hours, and dick around in a diner for another 2. Already, I hate him. I arrived at 6:02 AM, because none of the houses in this suburb have numbers on them, to which he bitches me out about punctuality. Again, 4 hours early to a drive that might take 2.5 in standstill traffic. Plus, he’s a self-described ‘conspiracy buff’ so he knows 9/11 was an inside job, steel beams etc., but he’s ‘not like the other conspiracy guys’. But he won’t elaborate on that point beyond  Now I definitely hate him, 15 minutes into the drive.We arrive, go to this office building, and start setting up. He uses a 5d3 with the usual lenses, connected to a cam ranger tethered to an iPad. Not a terrible setup for location work. Then I open up one of his overstuffed pelican cases. Calumet Travelite strobes, not terrible by any stretch, but all missing their modeling lights, pretty much beat to death. On top of that, are like 10 folded white bedsheets. Then theres the extension cords, they’re the crappy, brown, 2 prong ones that my grandmother had a ton of and are probably a fire hazard. And masking tape. so much old, lovely masking tape. Wait, aren’t strobes 3-pronged? Why yes they are, the strobes each have to be plugged into a 3-2 adapter, then into the extension cord. So definitely a fire hazard. He also uses Adorama’s Bolt strobe system. Which is the worst. Rebranded chinese trash, and the great part is the modifiers get tightened down directly onto the flash tube. The head plugs into a small battery pack, which you then connect to the stand. He does it by wrapping the shoulder strap around the light stand, then tightening a superclamp on it. A janky-as-gently caress solution when purpose-built clamps exist on ebay for $10. With what he’s spent on replacement bulbs between these two systems that he beats to death, he could have invested into a decent Profoto kit by now, and not look like a buffoon. The second nonsense part of his gear is the triggers. He uses one pocket wizard on the camera, one on a strobe, and then early-90s optical triggers on everything else. So much of the scene setup is wasted aiming the optical triggers, usually using an optical trigger extension cable (plus masking tape) to put the trigger where it can see the flash of the PW strobe. I found additional 2 pocket wizards in his bag and almost walked off set, because those are ‘backups.’ Also he does not carry spare AA batteries, in TYOOL 2016, because you can just go down to a pharmacy and get them. Yes, and that takes time and makes you look unprepared. He also has every sync cord he's ever owned in the same Pelican case. I guess just in case he needs to sync the camera to an 80s speedotron 20 feet away. The third gear-specific irritation is that it’s all in overstuffed Pelican cases and fabric bags. When I say overstuffed, I mean bulging with gear. So anywhere we go, I have an overstuffed domke bag with the camera & bolt on one shoulder, an overstuffed light stand bag on the other, and an overstuffed Pelican case rolling behind me. Once I had to drag this mishmash 2 blocks lengthwise in NYC because he wanted to park at the cheaper garage away from the location, and refused to park in front of the location so I could unload. I blew his mind on the hospital job below by bringing my own gear cart. ---- So with all the strobes assembled with soft boxes, I set up a fairly simple 3 point corporate headshot, on a clean wall, in this conference room. Except I did it wrong. He wants me to put masking tape on the bedsheets, then tape the bedsheets to the wall He calls this ‘whiting’, as in ‘I need you to white this wall, and then white that one over there’ like it's a normal lighting technique. So now I have to tape bedsheets to the wall, then bounce the strobes through the soft boxes and then off the walls. It’s insanely inefficient, the 750 w/s strobes are basically at full power to get f/5 or so. And not to mention, how is this dude getting rehired by clients? Don’t they see this nonsense and ask themselves, What The gently caress?So it’s insanity, it’s unreal how bad he is, and i need to see exactly how far down the rabbit hole this goes. i ended up working for him like 7 more times. So here’s a picture dump of my favorite behind the scenes shots of this idiot’s lighting. You better believe the bedsheets don’t ever stop being used. Also, just look at the distances between the light source and the subjects. It’s like he just doesn’t understand the inverse square law. Stage Two: Corporate Attorney Headshots So this was a job on the 40th floor of a corporate tax attorney in Manhattan, in their law library. Note the white seamless taped to the top of the stack, the bedsheets taped to and between the stacks. To the left is a floor to ceiling window facing southern Manhattan. Oh? Gorgeous late afternoon window light? No No, close those shades and tape bedsheets to them. Also note the bolt on a stand as a 'hair light' firing straight up into the drop ceiling.  The purpose of this bedsheet business is to make the apparent light source larger. Which one can easily do by buying a larger softbox. These are 2x3, and I know for a fact he owns 4x6 softboxes  Plus, they're bedsheets, they're not mean to be reflectors. Every single lighting scenario can be 100% improved by using a bigger softbox pointing at the subject.Stage Three: College Lifestyle So this job was shooting college students for like an internal campus magazine. Couple of locations, indoors and out. This is where I started bringing my own light meter out of curiosity, at no point was the flash contributing more than 40% of the light in any scene. We start in the cafeteria lounge:  What you’re seeing is barstool-type chairs flipped upside down, with bedsheets taped to the chair legs. Originally, he wanted me to flip garbage cans upside down, to have sheets taped to them. I argued with him that the client would think he’s insane if they saw that. Also it should be noted that the flash, once bounced off the sheets, is just going into the back of a couch and barely affecting the scene. Plus the flash is only pointed at about half of the sheet-wall thing. Two of the four bedsheets are redundant. We move to a hillside outside, then the steps of the library, then library interior. Here we go:  That’s a Bolt on a stand by the way. It should be noted that it’s just the stock plastic speed light foot on the bottom, screwed into the top of the stand, so the flash head does not angle down below horizontal No bedsheets in the stacks, he is trying to feather this Bolt with a 12-inch square softbox from 10 feet away.We had a similar setup on a job shooting the IT department of a hospital. He very mad they wouldn’t let him tape sheets over the intake ports on the cooling system of the multi-million dollar file servers so we taped sheets to… cardboard boxes stacked at the end of the server row. And this is the next library shot… He’s bouncing the Bolt off a loving white erase board, maybe 15 feet from the subject. For real, because all the sheets are back in the cafeteria. Pretty sure he's getting lens flare from that flash. On the drive home, he complained that the school’s volunteer student-models were too ugly, and he was mad at himself for not bringing the bedsheets/calumet strobes into the library. Which I would have had to make 3 trips back and forth to set up. Stage Four: Hospital This job was simple on paper: Three doctors on a white seamless. Ended up taking all day.  So, this is a room just off the main lobby of the Hospital. Bedsheets on the right is taped to a glass display case, one on the left to a wall with a recessed light. The white seamless is on a pair of C stands that I brought myself. He wanted me to masking tape the seamless to the ceiling Flashes at nearly full power (plus the Bolt firing into the ceiling as a hair light), only about 70% of all the light in the scene. Speaking of which: This is the histogram for that white seamless shot. See, Captain Bedsheets is a ‘fix it in photoshop’ kind of guy. Which he is proud of, and can’t help but beam to the clients about how easy it is nowadays to move some sliders and fix any mistakes. Mini Boss: Prescription Client Campaign Day 1 So, this job was for some kind of awareness campaign a deep-pockets pharma client was doing for ‘remembering to take your pills on time’. Some nonsense like that. Anyway, Captain Bedsheets rents out a monster 12,000 square foot studio for day one. For an extra $25 the studio has a huge scrim that can work exactly the same as a bedsheet, or there’s a Broncolor Para 222 available for $75 that would solve literally all of his problems. Every single wall is painted white, as is the floor and ceiling. Except one is brick. You know what that means:  Subject location is 3/4 up that staircase. And the front strobe is firing into an off-white decorative studio partition. Because as mentioned, the 6’x6' scrim would cost $25 for the day.  Next shot, Inside the studio’s bathroom. I don’t have any pictures, but there is an entire, professional studio at his beck and call, and he’s shooting in the loving bathroom. He's also shooting from the doorway of the bathroom, and there's a client looking over his shoulder. They are both blocking this light (surprise surprise, full power) He later commandeers the prep kitchen, and a couch out of the waiting room. Unbelievable. Then he will shoot out on the sidewalk a block from the studio. Then we shoot up on the roof, where I hold a bedsheet up and another assistant bounces the Bolt off of it. Then we come inside:  The red guy is the subject. And the sheets on the left are taped over windows, into which the strobe is firing at full power, 25 feet away from the subject. Most of that light is just going through the sheet, outside  And of course another assistant firing a Bolt into a bedsheet draped over the back of a chair (and blocking most of the light with his body). It is literally nonsense. On the drive home, he complains about being overcharged for the studio when he barely used the actual studio.Final Boss: Prescription Client Campaign Day 2 So Day 2 of this job was supposed to be easy, but again took forever because he booked 2 locations and didn’t account for how long gear takes to set up and break down. Location One is a doctor’s office. Same poo poo, different day:  I’m standing at the subject position. Again, the bedsheet on the right is taped to the window blinds, and the flash is pointed at maybe half of the sheet area. Also the entire production is mostly unsupervised in an OBGYN office. Location 2 is a newly built modern apartment complex. We’re working out of a demo apartment on the sixth floor. There’s like 7 models involved, and only one makeup artist, and he’s getting pissed because he wants the makeup artist on hand to do touchups (all over the grounds of this complex), but also she has to do the makeup for all the other models in the demo apartment. At this point, he’s just being an obstinate dickhead. I took her aside and told her not to worry, he sucks and tapes bedsheets to loving walls. And we shared looks at each other through the rest of the day.First shot: on the roof. Red is the subject location, green (inside) is the photographer position. He had us drag armchairs from a nearby lounge out onto this roof deck.  Let’s get a closeup of that bedsheet setup.  Yeah, that’s a bedsheet draped over a garbage can, an apt metaphor. Then we did a few shots in the lobby of the apartment. Note that the red splotches are covering the subject.       I was pretty much in open rebellion by the end of the day. Did I mention there were 2 other assistants? Onward to the parking garage:  Yes, 2 people to do the job of a light stand. And then the final couple of shots were inside the demo apartment.     At this point even the clients are openly mocking the bedsheets. They are now being taped to a wall that is painted white. “It’s not about the color of the wall” Yes it is, you loving moron. And then of course, the drive home was full of bellyaching about things ultimately under his control. Did i mention most of the models today were People of Color? And he hosed up their names all day? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tRh2pI55vM I don’t answer the phone anymore when he calls. Lessons Learned: First and foremost, client perception. I try to at least appear professional and use the best gear I can afford. There is no loving way a guy who tapes bedsheets to walls can be anything but mocked when the client returns to their office. His clients are pharmaceutical advertisers, lawyers, real estate moguls, and he’s doing the poo poo I did when I was building a Model Mayhem-quality portfolio. I am shocked he has repeat clients, it looks absolutely ridiculous. Second: take charge of your set. Don’t bellyache after the fact, make it happen now. The client doesn’t want to hear whining about the light not being perfect. loving Deliver. Also, it’s another story for another day, but don’t over promise and under deliver. Third: Don’t be an rear end in a top hat. He just talks down to everyone. Don’t lie to assistants about how long the day is going to be, or screw people over. After the second time a promised 4 hour job turned into 9, I told him not to call me anymore. ‘but it was a 4 hour job, the drive doesn’t count because I did the driving’. Yes it does, when it’s 2+ hours each way. Magically, I’m back up to my day rate. Fourth: Know your equipment, take care of your equipment. You should never say to a client ‘oh yeah it does that sometimes’ or ‘i’ve been meaning to get that fixed’. Finally: If you're a location photographer, USE BATTERY POWERED STROBES. Not every location will have convenient wall plugs, and not every plug works. I remember I worked for Captain Bedsheets shooting hospital portraits in a hallway, and he was mad he couldn't string an extension cord across the hall because the hallway was located between oncology and radiology and we could not impede the gurneys. You know, gurneys with very sick people needing MRI's and X-rays of their loving cancer. I have some more stories, but I’ll write them later. red19fire fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Apr 19, 2016 |
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Apr 18, 2016 04:22
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Incredible. Thank you for taking the time to share this, my cringe level was maxed out the entire time and I almost started to sweat. 
Rusty Bodega fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Apr 18, 2016 |
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Apr 18, 2016 18:37
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Magical. I have no desire to ever go professional or to do anything beyond loving about with my own projects but holy poo poo, the crap I have in my apartment would have done 100% better than those setups.
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Apr 19, 2016 00:15
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God drat this is fantastic. 
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Apr 19, 2016 14:44
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Would like to see some of his finished work. IMO this is why photographers should study cinematography, if he tried this with continuous lighting it would be obvious that these set-ups are insane.
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Apr 19, 2016 15:07
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Yeah I'm curious as hell about his stuff came out
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Apr 19, 2016 15:37
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Holy poo poo, this is hilarious. I've only assisted a handful of times, but I've never had a bad experience. 
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Apr 20, 2016 00:01
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Apr 20, 2016 00:37
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Apr 20, 2016 02:15
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DJExile posted:Yeah I'm curious as hell about his stuff came out I'm afraid to link it lest he find this thread, but I checked his site and none of the pictures I've been present for are up on it. Also it's 100% flash-based site so i can't grab the finished products. lmao red19fire fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Apr 20, 2016 |
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Apr 20, 2016 02:54
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This one is years ago from my first foray into 'fashion' photography with another run of the mill delusional lunatic. I answered an ad looking for a once a week assistant, after a few emails I'm invited to interview at 1pm on a wednesday. I get there, and there's 4 other dudes in the lobby of this building. All of us have an appointment for 1pm  She arrives with her 'main' assistant at 1pm exactly, and invites us up to her studio. She decrees that we are going to be tested by putting up a 14' seamless on autopoles with a chain roller system, by yourselves. Like it's a loving reality show contest for immunity from being voted off the show or something. The other 4 laugh and leave, I stay because I see dollar signs. The next test is to set up a Broncolor Para 88 on a boom. Fine, done. 3 hours and a bunch more bullshit, and I'm 'hired' as a photo assistant. But in her mind, this also means on-call personal assistant. A few days later, she calls me at home, she needs me to talk to the designer at livebooks to whom she's paid $10k to design her website, she is very mad that he doesn't return her repeated calls. I emailed him, he said that he's sent her 3 different mockups per the contract, none of which she has approved, and she keeps calling to make changes that are against company policy (like stealing designs from other photographers' websites). It's basically straight out of Clients From Hell. He's sent her a 4th, which if she doesn't approve, she gets nothing and forfeits the entire sum. I think it was $10k, I remember specifically thinking 'holy poo poo i should have gone to school for graphic design.' Here's the logos she sent him to base the website design on:  I emailed her to explain this situation, and said she should give squarespace a try. She emails me Raw files, plus like 5-7 different versions of at least 20 images (and by different versions I mean jpg, png, psd, loving PDF, all with slightly different crops & colors), and demands that I set up a trial site for her to check out. For free, on my own time. So I do, which she immediately emails me to say I used the wrong versions. She wants me to come into the city, a 4 hour, $30 round trip, so she can show me on my laptop which pictures to use, in which order, on this test site. Also, this entire site needs to be 100% ready in less than a week for a big fashion client to check out, which the designer says is basically impossible. This whole website business is parallel to the one test shoot I was present for. By now, maybe you've gathered, she's a person who creates drama for herself, creates unwinnable situations and wallows in it, complaining to anyone who will listen. I should have just terminated completely at this point, but this was my first Big City Assistant job. For this next shoot she emails me the day before to bring in an external hard drive because she doesn't have enough space on hers, which she has spread across like 4-5 different drives in her camera bag. A cardinal sin. The Test Shoot So she calls me in for a test shoot with a French Ballet Dancer. I set up the seamless, Bron, and Capture One, along with the 'main' assistant. If i need to set foot on the seamless, I have to take my boots off, switch over to hospital slippers, then switch back when I leave. Fine, I get it, clean seamless. No one else has ever done that. It ended up being like 5 hours. She sent me down to Starbucks for refreshments, with like 2 credit cards and a gift card with the instructions to put no more than $10 on each card Big Ole Red Flag.Back in the studio, she's trying to time a leaping shot, with the seamless filling the frame edge to edge, and the dancer's feet also edge-to-edge. A shot requiring masterful timing, framing and expertise. None of which she can figure out. She keeps changing his instructions, plus the tempo of her timing. So it starts with "one...two...three". Then she tells him to jump at 2 and a half. But then the tempo becomes "One. Two............. Three." Next time it's "One........ TWOTHREE" If that makes any sense. Also, she is shooting on a D800 which has the slowest shutter lag of any camera, ever. There's a noticeable delay between pushing the button and the shutter firing. The dancer says he can only do like 3-4 more leaps because his knees are hurting and he needs to get back to the ballet soon. I suggest as a compromise, why don't I call out the timing, and they adjust so that he'll be in the air and she takes the shot on 3. Boom, get the shot in one. But she screwed the framing, so his toe is over the edge of the frame. Oh well, hence why it's a test shoot. Shoot wraps, the dancer packs up and hustles out, I break down the set. She cuts me a check for $35, because 'it was only a test shoot so [I'm] only paying $70 for the day' and she'll pay my day rate on a real shoot. It's also dated for a week from that day, so she's kiting it. She tells me she'll pay me the rest next week when I organize her files and finish her website. So, $30 and 4 hours of travel time to get a check for $35, and work for free on top of that. And she needs me to call her dentist first thing in the morning, and also arrange for Sekonic to fix her light meter. gently caress that. I don't even bother going back for the check. I explain in email that she has to either approve the livebooks site, or enter her credit card and finalize the squarespace site, but there's no need for me to be present for this. I don't hear a peep for a few weeks. You don't use a full cadre of Broncolor lights, brand new D800's, in a Soho studio, complaining about a $10k graphic designer, and then kite checks to assistants. gently caress you. Then I get a call at 9pm on a Thursday, that she urgently needs me to come in at 6am for a shoot the next morning. I say no, I have a job scheduled already. Even if I didn't, gently caress her for demanding I work for nothing on like 8 hour notice. She does that awful move where she wants me to bend to her will but is passive-aggressive about it. Like that weird voice that like parents in whole foods use when they want the tantrum to end but also respect Brook'Lynn's boundaries. Then she wants to know the status of her website. "well, did you approve the livebooks mockup or pay for the squarespace hosting?" "no" "then it's exactly where it was weeks ago." Then she wants me to come in to the city to set up a backup server in her office, immediately after my job tomorrow. Nah, I don't know how to do that. Gotta go to sleep, big day tomorrow. 10 minutes later, a text: 
red19fire fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Apr 20, 2016 |
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Apr 20, 2016 04:26
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Should have just said "cool"
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Apr 20, 2016 11:11
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this is the best loving thread
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Apr 20, 2016 13:11
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red19fire posted:She arrives with her 'main' assistant at 1pm exactly, and invites us up to her studio. She decrees that we are going to be tested by putting up a 14' seamless on autopoles with a chain roller system, by yourselves. Like it's a loving reality show contest for immunity from being voted off the show or something. The other 4 laugh and leave, I stay because I see dollar signs. What you saw was a great SA thread opportunity and took it. God bless you, OP. 
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Apr 20, 2016 16:13
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Reality show contest bit reminds me of a group interview I did for a local family portrait studio. Since I was the only guy in a group of about 15 other women so I had to make sure I tried a little to stand out. My friend was part of the hiring process but said she gave 0 input as to whether I should've been hired or not because she didn't want to show favoritism. So it was cool that I got the job on my own merits. After I got the gig I worked there for about 4 hours before the owner of the studio asked me to meet with him at the sports bar next door along with my friend who was the assistant manager at the time. Holding my application and pretending to really examine and ponder it he proceeded to tell me I wasn't "Magical" enough to work at his studio and I wouldn't be trained as a photographer which he claimed cost thousands of dollars out of pocket for him. I nodded through the entire meeting and as soon as we were done I walked right out to my car and went home. Friend texted me and apologized profusely and said I would get paid for my half day and I told her to not even bother. The thing is I was told to avoid working for the guy by people that knew him, and I still decided to take the chance. This is a guy who runs the biggest photography meetup group in the state and only posts events where he teaches you how to "fix" your poorly exposed photos and peddles his custom LR presets for $$$ so you can achieve the same Magical look that his studio offers. Probably for the best. When a grown rear end man tells you that you aren't magical enough for his cookie cutter operation instead of expressing concerns like a normal loving adult its probably the best to get the gently caress outta dodge. iSheep fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Apr 20, 2016 |
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Apr 20, 2016 18:48
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wanna see this dude's magical work 
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Apr 20, 2016 22:21
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It's just the fairly typical portrait photography look the masses desire of crushed blacks, vignetting, and overblown highlights. It's literally indistinguishable from all other photos of the genre. They're not technically bad just aggressively generic.
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Apr 20, 2016 22:34
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i am super disappointed to hear that
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Apr 20, 2016 23:05
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Yeah there's a big difference between shooting good work and shooting bullshit people will buy. I worked at a glamour shots in a mall for like a month. Even though I was consistently outselling the store average, I was fired because I wasn't following the shooting script of like styrofoam column & rose for every shot. I was also bringing in my own modifiers because theirs were so old the diffusion was yellow E: It's not all doom and gloom, I've gotten to do some legit cool stuff. This was on a job shooting a major actress for a national magazine in a $20 million penthouse apartment in manhattan.  Take note: One Profoto 7a and a 5' octa. No bedsheets anywhere.  One of the biggest supermodels in the world, in a Hamptons mansion. Same light, Profoto 7b with a 5' octa. I also worked on the app video for Mariah Carey's drink app https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcniOvbJYes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIQCa1ZclGQ which was a hilarious shitshow of its own. This green screen studio was larger than my parents' house. red19fire fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Apr 21, 2016 |
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Apr 20, 2016 23:56
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red19fire posted:
No, obviously the light is bouncing off the bedsheet on the bed. 
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Apr 21, 2016 04:46
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Why do all creative professions suffer from dumb poo poo like this? Graphic design is the same with both horrible clients and horrible designers. I often wonder what it would have been like to just have a number crunching job where the numbers are either correct or not, not being filtered through the warped mind of some rando who's paying you to interpret their hosed up vision.
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Apr 21, 2016 08:13
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KinkyJohn posted:Why do all creative professions suffer from dumb poo poo like this? Graphic design is the same with both horrible clients and horrible designers. I often wonder what it would have been like to just have a number crunching job where the numbers are either correct or not, not being filtered through the warped mind of some rando who's paying you to interpret their hosed up vision. No, book keeping is loving horrible too if mums stories are anything to go by
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Apr 21, 2016 09:39
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KinkyJohn posted:Why do all creative professions suffer from dumb poo poo like this? Oh boy, let me tell you about corporate communications... 
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Apr 21, 2016 13:45
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KinkyJohn posted:Why do all professions in every field everywhere suffer from dumb poo poo like this? Fixed that for you. How anything ever gets done in human society I'll never know.
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Apr 21, 2016 15:34
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A Saucy Bratwurst posted:Should have just said "cool" No, that shows you were willing to type a full word. Just respond with 'k' and that should set the tone just right. OP I don't know how you deal with this. These people are straight up stupid.
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Apr 22, 2016 20:11
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Some products can be confusing.
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May 1, 2016 21:51
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I just finished a 9 month stint as an assistant, working two or three days a week, but I can't remember anything as horrible as these. My boss was actually reasonable. We did have an incident with an assistant, though. Over the winter we had a big fashion shoot, but I fell sick just a few days before it started. We'd already booked one more experienced assistant, so we just had to find another one on very short notice, just an extra pair of hands. The job involved having the assistants drive most of the gear over 1200 km, while the rest of the crew had flights. The first few days were not a problem, but on the night before the last shooting day the replacement went out for drinks, got absolutely poo poo-faced, got back to the hotel at around 6AM, and was utterly incapable of getting out of bed. So the remaining assistant had to do everything by himself, including driving back most of the way, because the replacement was still too drunk to sit behind the wheel when the day wrapped. Mind you, this was a 1200km drive over about 14-15 hours, and the idea was that the two could switch when needed and get some sleep while the other one was driving. The replacement ended up being so embarrassed she forfeited her pay. DanTheFryingPan fucked around with this message at 11:23 on May 2, 2016 |
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May 2, 2016 11:14
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red19fire posted:This was on a job shooting a major actress for a national magazine in a $20 million penthouse apartment in manhattan. KinkyJohn posted:Some rando who's paying you to interpret their hosed up vision. Actually, it can be both good and bad. For this job, the entirety of the lighting instruction was "I need it to be toppy and punchy, but not too crispy." Figure it out, stupids. He means he wants a high mounted light with strong falloff, but no hotspots. This photographer has great vision, but can barely change the ISO on his camera. Which he freely admits to because he also has humility. My favorite bad communicator is of course, Captain Bedsheets. His go-to model coaching phrase is 'gimme an easy grin', repeating it like a monk. And yet every picture after this mantra, the model (from pros down to corporate headshots) have a quizzical look, like your dog hearing you speak a foreign language. At the end of Day 2 of the bedsheet gauntlet in the OP, one of the models finally said WHAT THE gently caress IS AN EASY GRIN, as Captain Bedsheets was muttering under his breath that the model was 'giving me nothing'.
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May 3, 2016 02:45
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red19fire posted:My favorite bad communicator is of course, Captain Bedsheets. His go-to model coaching phrase is 'gimme an easy grin', repeating it like a monk. And yet every picture after this mantra, the model (from pros down to corporate headshots) have a quizzical look, like your dog hearing you speak a foreign language.  i love this
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May 3, 2016 02:49
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I mean if that first guy freely admits he knows nothing technical then thats not too bad I guess, sounds poo poo but atleast hed be understanding of you not knowing wtf he wants. But how do you get to be a pro photog and not know anything?
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May 3, 2016 04:14
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A Saucy Bratwurst posted:I mean if that first guy freely admits he knows nothing technical then thats not too bad I guess, sounds poo poo but atleast hed be understanding of you not knowing wtf he wants. But how do you get to be a pro photog and not know anything? At that level it's more who you know. The way to get to that level is just networking, when it comes to the work you can pay someone to do basically everything. All you really need is vision and the ability to convince someone to pay you ridiculous sums to execute that vision. Like how that Beckham kid is a 'photographer' and shot a Burberry campaign? I'd bet dollars to donuts the 1st and 2nd assistant worked their asses off, signed an NDA and cashed a sizable check. E: Also one of my favorite idiot photographer moments was on Creative Live a few years ago. There was this Arizona wedding photographer who kept -ing about how he puts religious references in his wedding photos. More specifically, he always does a shot of the bride washing the feet of the groom, because it signifies a wife's duty & servitude to her husband, as in the Bible it signifies Jesus' duty & servitude to mankind. But he also kinds of glazes over that Mary Magdalene, the prostitute, washed the feet of the J-man before he went on the cross. A much better metaphor.Dude also had the most  backup system ever, involving 10-14 separate hard drives.
red19fire fucked around with this message at 17:27 on May 3, 2016 |
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May 3, 2016 08:10
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So my final assistant horror story is the first time I actually worked as an assistant. I answered a craigslist ad for an unpaid intern. Mistake number one. For anyone who wants to be an assistant, get paid. Even if you know nothing, even if you're just moving light stands. You're doing something the photographer would otherwise do himself, they should be paying you for saving themselves the effort. Lesson #1: gently caress YOU, PAY ME. He claimed to be a Vogue fashion photographer. Which you would think means he shoots covers and features regularly, right? No, he got a picture run at 2 inches tall on page 317 in Vogue Italia when they first started that photography submission system online. Or I met a photographer years ago who claimed to be a Maxim photographer. No, you got a postage stamp-sized picture printed as #97 of 100 on the Maxim Hot 100 College Girls insert. Lesson #2: check your references. The rule that I live by is this: "Take care of your equipment, and your equipment will take care of you."It is a lesson drilled into every Marine from day one. This man was not like me. His car was a dirty BMW full of McDonald's wrappers which hadn't had an oil change in at least 10k miles, with the rear and sideview mirrors snapped off. His strobes were beaten-to-death elinchrom monos with cracked body plastics and broken modeling lights. how do lights get so beaten to death? because his wife & kids would come to the studio with him, on every job. Where the kids would run around knocking poo poo over. And of course he'd then complain about the cost to repair elinchrom flashbulbs. Then he also committed the cardinal sin of DAM, he had entire life's work on like 4 or 5 external hard drives in the bottom of his camera bag. Not mirrored, not backed up, just strewn across 5 drives. Finding a particular shoot meant plugging in a drive, scanning for the folder name, then plugging in the next one. One time, they knocked over a light, broke it, and he just expected me to go home and get my own lights so the shoot could continue. And that opened the floodgates, now it was expected that I'd always bring my lights to his shoot. Because a professional fashion photographer only has two 500 ws strobes and needs his assistant's scrubby alien bee strobes to supplement it. Which of course I went along with because I didn't know any better. Refer to Lesson #1. So let's get into the real scumbag poo poo. He was really unscrupulous, like he had this one client who wanted to be an actor, but for some reason he wouldn't leave Philadelphia to find acting work This photographer would hit him up on facebook every time he got a new haircut to update his headshots. at *only* $500 a pop. loving brutal.Towards the end, I moved from my smallish apartment to a big loft outside of the 'city' area, with the intention of making it a live/work studio space. I wish I had pictures of that place, it was amazing, like 1600 sf or so. He found out about this because I scheduled my moving day on a day he had presumed I would be assisting him The next week, he said he was canceling his lease on this current studio because he expected I would let him use my studio/loft apartment whenever he wanted. I quickly made something up about the rental agreement not allowing subletting, but he had this look on his face like I was Judas Iscariot reborn.The final straw was for a beauty client. I spent like 12 hours assisting on a shoot of an entire portfolio for this high end hair salon. At the end of the day, I was helping one of the stylists load up their car with their gear, and she said something about '...that's why they pay you the big bucks, right?' and I didn't understand. She showed me the invoice. This fucker was charging $250/day for an 'assistant fee' but telling me it was an unpaid internship. I found out he had been doing this from the first day. gently caress YOU, PAY ME is now Hammurabi's loving code. ---- Speaking of my old baller-as-gently caress studio, this reminds me of the most ridiculous offer I've ever gotten. I moved into this studio in Philadelphia with the Peter Hurley-fueled idea of starting a headshot studio in a city where anyone who takes their acting career seriously moves to NYC . I put up a post on Model Mayhem looking for models to test my lighting setup. Got a few bites, shot a few people, solid stuff.A few weeks later, I get a MM PM from another photographer in Philadelphia who wants to "partner up" on my studio, meaning he wants to use my place a few days a month plus use all of my lighting equipment. I said that's fine, I just need to be present because I live there, but I can schedule around my day job. No No, he wants a key to the place, anytime access even if I'm not there. So I've got the capital, i.e. the studio and the lights, what does he have to contribute to this 'partnership'? No money, obviously, but he will give me the personal cell phone numbers of agency-repped fashion models in Philadelphia who are friends of his. So he gets to use my studio and equipment anytime, and I get cell phone numbers, who are going to say 'how did you get this number, speak to my agent, weirdo'. Stellar. Also during this exchange I mentioned that my day job was a motorcycle mechanic. He asked if I would fix his bike, I said sure, bring it by the shop for an estimate. No No, he wanted me to fix it for free, and in exchange I could keep the non-running, non-titled parts bike he has of the same model. He just like didn't get how fair deals work. loving snake people. red19fire fucked around with this message at 20:43 on May 5, 2016 |
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May 5, 2016 20:29
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red19fire posted:The final straw was for a beauty client. I spent like 12 hours assisting on a shoot of an entire portfolio for this high end hair salon. At the end of the day, I was helping one of the stylists load up their car with their gear, and she said something about '...that's why they pay you the big bucks, right?' and I didn't understand. She showed me the invoice. This fucker was charging $250/day for an 'assistant fee' but telling me it was an unpaid internship. I found out he had been doing this from the first day. gently caress YOU, PAY ME is now Hammurabi's loving code. jesus christ
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May 5, 2016 20:43
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 that's all so, so brutal
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May 5, 2016 20:47
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oh god Red I want to buy you a beer and give you a hug. That is awful.
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May 5, 2016 20:55
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Why don't we also make this a PYF Idiots from Model Mayhem thread, too? This is one of my favorite things, a model contacted me for a TFP shoot, the goddamn herpes of the photography industry. And she happened to have her own 'TFP model release': quote:Model Release Form For TFP / TFCD It's a rights grab, and loving stupid, too. Model releases are a simple document: In exchange for X (the offer), Photographer is allowed to use Model's likeness for Y purpose (consideration). No one else gets to tell you how to use your IP, you tell them what they get and then they say yes or no. You're not on the hook to edit any number of photos anytime they want, and have your work edited by an unknown 3rd party if you decline. gently caress that. There was another one I can't find where the model wanted to be a co-copyright owner, as well as have a 3rd party editor involved. The problem is that desperate MM idiots will sign these hosed up agreements, so this BS will perpetuate. I balked, responded with a hearty 'lol, yeah so here's what a real model release looks like' and she responded with gently caress you, i've gotten other idiots on model mayhem to sign this so therefore it's a real contract used throughout the photography industry. Dweebs with cameras pay me $100/hr for nude bodypaint bullshit photos, therefore I'm A Serious Professional Model. red19fire fucked around with this message at 21:07 on May 5, 2016 |
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May 5, 2016 20:59
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red19fire posted:Why don't we also make this a PYF Idiots from Model Mayhem thread, too? Amateur legal documents are my absolute favorite things.
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May 5, 2016 21:07
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People signing contracts with anyone from MM is just silly, I don't use a contracts for TFP portfolio fodder and I won't sign anyone else's. I don't need a model's permission for promotional use and I won't ask someone to give me commercial rights to their likeness unless it's a paying job.
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May 5, 2016 21:28
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As someone who only takes pictures of things that can't sign a release form (rocks and animals, mainly) what does TFP stand for?
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May 5, 2016 21:42
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HookShot posted:As someone who only takes pictures of things that can't sign a release form (rocks and animals, mainly) what does TFP stand for? Trade For Prints, some people also use TFCD as Trade for CD (of all images from a shoot). Ostensibly it's supposed to be a trade of professional services for a common goal. I.E., both you and the model (and/or stylist, HMUA, etc) all get great pictures for your portfolios. And it works if everyone's at the same 'level,' so to speak. I sound like an rear end, but I'm at the level where I get no benefit from shooting a brand new model wannabe, that's why they should be paying me, the 'benefit' scale is tipped way in their favor. In the modern era it's been twisted into meaning 'work for free'. Or for 'exposure'. Or any kind of job in which someone wants a service but doesn't want to pay for it, similar to unpaid internships where you're doing the job of an employee. Just out of control egos, people who don't have much to offer thinking this mythical element of 'exposure' is compensation enough. For real examples, the casting call page on Model Mayhem is incredible. I've been proposition to shoot a wedding for free because 3 of the bridesmaids were engaged, and if I did a good job they might hire me. (However in every possible universe, the bride gloats about how she got me to work for free, and advises them to do the same to some other photographer) Shoot a fashion show for free because their blog gets 1,000 hits a month. Commercial headshots especially, those should be considered an investment by the client but instead you the photographer should be grateful to have aspiring actor #185829838572 in your portfolio because it'll look great once they win an Oscar in the near future (actual thing said to me). I think my favorite one was a lady who wanted me to come into NYC twice a week to shoot street fashion of her for her instagram fashion page. Which she was planning to launch in 5 weeks. No money, no exposure, not even a subway token and a half a sandwich; just the vague promise of future exposure. Or the female model who wanted to do a shoot with a male model. In a wedding dress & tux. The day before her wedding. Also the male model is her fiancee who's never modeled before. Also if you could show up to the wedding ceremony for a few hours to take some fun shots (she has a list of fun shots she needs) that would be great exposure too, she's a professional, agency repped model after all. You can even use some in your portfolio (with her written permission). If you couldn't tell she wants engagement and wedding photos, for free. TLDR: People think TFP is some magic incantation that gets professionals to forget their work is valuable. red19fire fucked around with this message at 23:06 on May 5, 2016 |
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May 5, 2016 21:58
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