squidflakes posted:

My one other assisting horror story isn't as bad as the last one but it is one of the reasons I cut ties with a company who had been giving me reasonably steady work.

A some years ago I quit my day job and started putting full time effort in to my photo business. The first year was tight but I managed and the second year was looking pretty good until everything seemed to dry up in late August of 2011 or so. Through some friends I got in contact with this local cruise company that did weddings on their party yacht and while they already had a photographer, a local mom-tographer turned wedding pro, she wanted a back-up so she wouldn't have to work every weekend.

Since I was technically listed as her assistant the deal was that I got a pretty generous day rate but I had to turn over the raw photos to her for processing. She had a signature look, you see, and wanted to preserve the illusion that she had done all of this work herself. Any sudden increase in the quality of her work or her apparent leap in skill was purely coincidental mind you, she'd been taking classes... yeah, that's it, classes.

After six months I started noticing a trend in the weddings she bailed on. Namely, if it wasn't 100% white people, she wouldn't show up. After I was contacted by a few of the couples about their photos I also found out that non-white couples were being given the absolute worst shots, poorly edited, and were waiting months for maybe a couple of dozen outtakes. I went to the cruise company about this and they blew me off. They also told the photographer and she sent me this horribly racist screed and threatened all sorts of retribution if I went to the media or "the Black Panthers." Instead, I contacted the couples I had already shot, sent them my edits from the raws, and apologized profusely.

Regular client work stared picking up after that so I told the cruise company I'd be busy til further notice and that they should find someone else.

December of 2012 (I think), I get a frantic phone call from the owner of the cruise company. They were hosting some ridiculously fancy super duper special wedding and the regular photographer bailed, and her new assistant called in sick, and the wedding was going to start in an hour. I threw out a ridiculous number for my fee and they agreed.

I got there in half an hour, got set-up, and started mingling for candid shots. They weren't kidding about the super fancy either. The first couple I shot was probably wearing jewelry worth more than my house. The bride looked like she'd just waded through the English crown jewels.

The regular momtographer suddenly appears out of nowhere and drags me in in to the kitchen. She starts hissing and whispering about how I needed to make her look good and don't gently caress this up and how I have to give her half of whatever I was making because this was *HER* gig and how dare I, etc, etc, etc. She then stomps out and demands to see the bride and I think that's when it hit her that the entire bridal party was African. Like, got here by plane last night from Nairobi, African. All of these women are wearing these amazing silk and embroidered dresses and jewels and perfect make-up and she might as well be wearing a burlap sack. Still, they were all gracious and pleasant while she's doing her best to avoid touching them and wearing this awful grimace that I'm sure she thinks is a smile.

The ceremony goes fine, the bride looks like the pinnacle of all beauty in the world, the groom looks like the luckiest doofus in the world, but they had an obvious chemistry and it was pretty cool to watch. The momtographer is stomping around trying to find good angles. She's packing something like a D3000 with the kit lens and she's just rapid firing for all she's worth. She orbits back to me every so often to whisper awful poo poo about interracial couples or to tell me that I should change my aperture for some loving reason.

Anyway, the ceremony finishes up and I'm trying to get the families together for group photos. The momtographer has disappeared and I'm trying to wrangle a good fifty people but everyone was in good spirits. The mothers of the bride and groom want endless variations on groups, poses, positioning, and what have you, so it takes a good thirty minutes to get through all of that. By this time everyone is itching to get to the reception and I really need to get some water.

I think I'd been sitting a full minute when the momtographer comes bursting in to the kitchen ranting about how no one can find me and she can't believe how lazy I'm being and how I'm just like one of those lazy n*****s out there. About half the kitchen staff is black so there is this sudden brief silence but she's completely oblivious. The mother of the bride has asked her to do some shots in the women's dressing room of the bride changing in to her party dress, but she flat refuses. She walks me over to the women's dressing room and says something like "I refuse to be alone in a room full of n*****s so my assistant will be taking the photos." to the mother of the bride. This poor woman looks like someone has just hit her in the head with an axe handle. She stammered something like "But, he's a man."

After that it was an escalating shouting match between the mothers, the momtographer, and the cruise company owner. Like, both mothers in tears, the momtographer dropping n bombs left and right, the cruise company owner trying to smooth things over, a total mess.

In the end, I was working directly with the bride and groom to get them their photos. The momtographer refused to give up any of her photos, then later claimed they had been lost in an accident. The cruise company owner, for some loving reason, gave half my fee to the momtographer who claimed I had been drinking on the job and she had actually done most of the photography with my camera.

They called me back exactly one time after that but I flat refused to ever work with them again.