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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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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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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: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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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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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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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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8th-snype posted:I'll shoot all day long if it's good for me or my portfolio, if someone approaches me it's unlikely I'll shoot the job for free. I'm still a dayjob haver though so I can afford to shoot a few things that sound fun and still eat. That's one of my rules, if it's your idea, you pay for it. I have no problem working for free, if I have complete creative control. Years ago, this magazine startup wanted me to shoot a cover for their first issue. The magazines byline was 'Maxim for Libertarians'  , and the issue theme was 'government surveillance'. Fine, let's do this.I came up with what I thought was a great cover concept: I would have a busty blonde in front of a bright orange wall, with blue masking tape covering her mouth. Corny, but whatever, it was my first 'pro' gig. More importantly: I had the model, stylist and HMUA all lined up, plus they were willing to work TFP. Because a magazine cover is actual good exposure and good for your resume. Plus the stylist had this chain-mail bra incorporating handcuffs that was pretty dope and fit with the theme. Nope, the magazine nixed that idea. Instead, they wanted me to shoot a male and female model on a white background, in black leather trench coats, talking on cell phones. "you know, like they're in the Matrix." This was in TYOOL 2012, The Matrix had come out almost 15 years before this. Nah, hard pass.
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May 5, 2016 23:21
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It's not that bad, these are just insane situations that I probably should have seen coming. I'm also not competing against like $100 facebook wedding photographers anymore. SPEAKING OF WHICH, I have a silly story about that too. When I had the Philly studio I was trying to do everything headshots, ecomm, whatever. I got a RFP (request for proposal or bid request) for a t-shirt company in Ohio to shoot their entire line on a model for their website catalogue. My bid was like $1000 for one day of work, model per diem, photoshop, studio costs, licensing, etc. Pretty bare bones, minimal bid for like 20-30 shirts on a white seamless, I thought. I lost that bid to a guy in Delaware. Who put in a bid to shoot it for free, plus rent the studio and pay the model out of pocket. And of course the client went with 'less than free' as the bid offer, because why wouldn't you? And of course he screwed the pooch, hosed it all up, and the client emailed me 2 weeks later to see if I would still do the job. My price went up to $2k  This Delaware jerkoff did that for like 2 or 3 more bids, I have no idea how he was getting requests at all, must have been a genius at SEO or something. Also whenever I would sell off equipment on craigslist, he would email me within 30 minutes to see if I would trade my item for "A vintage, unopened 1977 bottle of Crown Royal. " Doesn't matter what it was, he did it for everything i put on CL for like 6 months, from a pocketwizard to an Einstein strobe.Before I finally moved out of Philly, the last i heard of him was an email from Kickstarter. Somehow he had my email, and added me to a kickstarter where he was trying to raise $100k so he could rent a studio for a year, get top of the line Broncolor lights, and a then-cutting edge hasselblad H3D medium format digital system because I guess it was the gear that was loving up all these jobs, not him He was up to  after a week.
red19fire fucked around with this message at 00:16 on May 6, 2016 |
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May 6, 2016 00:11
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I have one story about this architecture photographer I worked for who was really good but just a lunatic. For example, his work car (a mercedes M class that I don't think ever had an oil change) was loaded with 6 huge tenba gear bags each weighing 40 pounds, which I would have to drag to each and every room of whatever house he was shooting. When I get a break next week I'll write up the whole saga, I worked for him for like 8 months.
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Jun 3, 2016 03:26
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Ha, I just remembered a quick one from Captain Bedsheets. He hired me to assist him on a video gig. It was shooting a safety presentation by a major construction company on the 35th floor of a skyscraper under construction. All I had to do was set up the camera and external recorder and press the record button on the audio recorder while he did the video. Except he was using this paying gig as the first test run on shooting video on a 5d3. And didn't know there was a hard 10 minute limit on file size. For a 30 minute presentation. Plus, he didn't bother recording the 2 or 3 dress rehearsals of this presentation for which we were also present. He spent the entire drive home bitching someone from Canon customer services out on the speakerphone on his car while narrowly avoiding collisions on the FDR in NYC. Later I found out he lost the client completely 
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Jul 11, 2016 03:39
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No pictures anymore, but I'll do the best I can about the descriptions of the Architecture photographer I worked for a few years ago. To preface this, I should say that he's probably one of the best in the country at architecture and interior photography. and I learned a lot when I wasn't tearing my hair out in frustration. The work itself is frustrating, moving tables and pianos fractions of an inch at a time in order to perfectly balance an image, but the final images are amazing. It's not really a horror story per se, it's more a frustration with inefficiency. To start with, he's French-Polish originally, so English is his second or third language. At least once per job he would yell something at me in Polish and then yell more 15 minutes later when it didn't get done. Because I barely understand French, and not a lick of Polish. Even though he knows this, and I made it clear on day 1, he would constantly give me instructions in a language I don't speak. Let's start with the camera gear. He shoots Canon, using a 1D Mk 2, an 8mp crop sensor in 2015. His reasoning for not upgrading to the Mk 4 or newly announced X was basically that it worked fine, and he was getting his money out of it, having bought it for $8k a decade prior and having to replace the shutter twice. Fine, I get it, but the real problem is the workflow. Neither C1 nor lightroom support it for tethering, so the only way he could do his work was through Canon's free camera control software, running on a 2008 MBP using an old version of OS, neither of which he can upgrade, and also he can't get a battery for it so it has to be plugged in at all times. Which means for exterior shots we have to run a 100' extension cable from the house around the shot area, or he has to photoshop the cord out. Then to move shots, even between rooms, the entire thing has to be shut down in a specific order, moved, then powered back up in the reverse order. He also uses an old version of Photoshop for his exposure stacking. He also commits the cardinal sin of keeping his recent work on a hodgepodge of external drives in the bottom of his camera bag. Let's talk about lights & grip. Specifically, bad strobes and way too much gear. His primary strobes were a trio of Paul C Buff White Lightning strobes, only one of which had a modeling light and all of which had their bulbs replaced at least twice. Mostly because he keeps his gear in his car, in an uninsulated garage, and if he shoots in winter without letting the flashes warm up to room temperature the bulbs explode. Also it's well known that white lightnings have horrifically bad purple light casts, worse than the normal alien bees. They also have to be plugged into the walls, and those wires have to be photoshopped out of pictures, because usually the only working outlet in these houses is in the middle of the shot. The frustrating part for me is that he has a full set of Profoto lights but doesn't like to have to have lights around a central power hub, rather than being placed anywhere with monolights. Doesn't stop him from having me drag the entire set everywhere we go though I asked once why not sell the stupid Lightnings on ebay and pick up some battery powered Profoto AcuteB's, He said he needs the modeling light (even though only one works), power (even though PCB grossly overinflates their numbers) and he's afraid of batteries dying (even though they take like an hour to charge, and spare batteries weigh less than all the extension cords he had). He would rather spend hours photoshopping cords out of every picture than deal with the relatively minor shortcomings of battery powered lights He had a bunch of softboxes and umbrellas in his gear cases. Plural. He has 6, specifically, overloaded to the point of bulging with every piece of gear he's ever used in his career, just in case. At least 4 of which I have to bring into the foyer of every house we shoot. At least they have wheels. Rather than have his most-used gear in 2 bags, and leave the other 4 in the car as a contingency, he preferred to have the most-used gear spread across all 6 of the bags. So there's 4 bags of Arri-style hot lights and profoto strobes, 'just in case', that have to be humped up flights of stairs constantly. His proudest achievement was mounting two umbrellas on the main Lightning, one 4' silver reflector bouncing into a 3' white shoot-through. All of the disadvantages of an umbrella with none of the advantages of a softbox He would also use the shittiest Manfrotto light stands, that somehow had sharp edges.The part that absolutely killed me was his time management. He would consistently over-promise and under-deliver. He would tell clients he'd have 12 rooms photographed in a day, when I knew that he could get one room done in maybe an hour if we hustled. The typical day would be arriving at 9, scouting the rooms of the house, then he'd bullshit for an hour and drink coffee with the client while I set everything up. Leaving maybe 6 hours of shooting time. I remember specifically one house, he did a 2 minute ISO 3200 exposure with all the lights off for 'natural light' at 9 pm with the sun below the horizon. Then of course, as the promised one-day shoot became two, he would bitch about having to hire me as an assistant on a day he was 'working for free' when it was his own drat fault and inability to manage his time. Or, he'd schedule me for 4 days, then cancel the 4th day at 6pm on the 3rd day, then bitch when I was charging him a kill fee for canceling on less than 24 hour notice. I think the funniest day ever was shooting in a demo house. Here we were dragging all this gear all over a NYC brownstone walkup, and he's getting surly because there's photographers coming in off the subway with a tripod and a cam ranger in a rolling case wrapping up their work in like 2-3 hours. Kind of amazing, like a Neanderthal seeing a Cro-magnon. red19fire fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Jul 11, 2016 |
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Jul 11, 2016 21:35
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chitoryu12 posted:About how prominent or talented of a professional do you think you need to be to get away with being tough with customers and other workers? I can see a lot of assistants being scared to do things like charge late fees and cancellation fees, or play hardball with a client who's being stingy about payment. My experience has been that if you give people any kind of leeway they'll take advantage of you. Spend any amount of time on Clients from Hell, and it's the same story over and over: anything you're not 100% rock solid on is going to be taken too far. For example, I shoot bodybuilding contests on the weekends. My camera is kind of bulky and can block the stage view of the people behind me, so I usually offer to give them a free copy of some of my stage photos for whoever they're there to support. Usually people are cool and grateful, but this past weekend they decided that they're entitled to all my pictures of 4 different bodybuilders. I make it clear up front about cancellation fees and such, specifically because of previous lovely clients/customers. It depends who the client is. When you work with experienced industry people, who use freelancers extensively or have been assistants before, they get it and don't complain and expect it. Like I PA'd on some weird video app for Mariah Carey, who delayed the shoot 2 days because of 'exhaustion', and the producers didn't even blink at writing 2 days worth of kill fees for the entire crew. Then you have my market, which is jerkoff glorified wedding photographers in NJ. They tend to have an entitled 'If you don't like it i can always hire someone else' mentality. But, gently caress them, there's not a lot of assistants in the area with similar skillsets & expertise, and I'd rather not deal with shitheels. I try to stick to NYC for assisting anyway, all my horror stories are from outside the NYC market. Basically the more leeway you give people now, they more they're going to feel entitled to later on, or with other freelancers. It's an endless cycle.
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Jul 13, 2016 21:28
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The XKCD Larper posted:I email a Craigslist ad about video editor / camera man work. Yeah, my general rule for questionable CL gigs is either I get paid up front or before I leave set. I worked for this frosted-tipped douche 'fashion' photographer once as a last minute replacement during a monster snowstorm in NYC, and ended up pulling double duty because the CL 'digital tech' actually had no idea how to use Capture One. Turns out he's got a large client list because he's the low bidder constantly, because he fully plans on not paying assistants. I'm sure eventually the assistant pool will dry up. Incidentally he shot 250gb of photos in a day, using a d800.
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Aug 23, 2016 00:40
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The XKCD Larper posted:Happy that I made my dumb long rear end post in here cuz I need it for reference Add interest to your invoice. gently caress that guy.
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Oct 5, 2016 00:53
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he's calling today to see if we "can work something out"
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Yeah, i don't mind doing informal stuff without a contract, but that's for like friends and small clients. A wedding for mucho dinero, for a big company like a cruise ship, doesn't matter if it's an hour notice it needs to be in writing. This is exactly what happens when slime like that racist mom-tographer gets an inch of wriggle room to bully your client. Like my fitness work i do with minimal paperwork for individuals, but occasionally a supplement or equipment company will contact me for work. They never call back once I send over an estimate requiring a signature and deposit, at least the small fry I deal with seem to think a soggy $100 bill is enough for perpetual unlimited rights. red19fire fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Dec 20, 2016 |
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Dec 20, 2016 17:41
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ansel autisms posted:why does the voting public embrace it is a better question 'Temporarily embarassed millionaires' We tolerate this because we assume it's just a matter of time until we're in charge, and don't want any threats to power that we don't yet have (we will never have it).
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Dec 21, 2016 21:18
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