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8th-snype
Aug 28, 2005

My office is in the front room of a run-down 12 megapixel sensor but the rent suits me and the landlord doesn't ask many questions.

Dorkroom Short Fiction Champion 2012


Young Orc
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.

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red19fire
May 26, 2010

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' :cripes:, 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.

HookShot
Dec 26, 2005

red19fire posted:

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.
Ah, cool, thanks. I kind of figured it was in the same vein as "work for exposure" but couldn't fit the acronym into anything and it was really bugging me.

Your stories are all amazing, by the way. I'm so glad I don't ever plan on going into professional photography.

BANME.sh
Jan 23, 2008

What is this??
Are you some kind of hypnotist??
Grimey Drawer

HookShot posted:

I'm so glad I don't ever plan on going into professional photography.

yeah all these stories are so much worse than anything i've ever encountered in web development

red19fire
May 26, 2010

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 :fuckoff:

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. :smug:" 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 :stare: because I guess it was the gear that was loving up all these jobs, not him :rolleyes: He was up to :10bux: after a week.

red19fire fucked around with this message at 00:16 on May 6, 2016

8th-snype
Aug 28, 2005

My office is in the front room of a run-down 12 megapixel sensor but the rent suits me and the landlord doesn't ask many questions.

Dorkroom Short Fiction Champion 2012


Young Orc
I replied to a CL listing for an "online magazine" that was starting up a Seattle version and was looking for photographers. Turns out they weren't looking for editorial spreads they wanted you to sticker tag local stuff with their logo and take a photo of it. Oh and the person "running" the operation was a 20 year old marketing student who doesn't seem to know how to lock down her FB privacy settings in TYOOL 2015 so I saw all her random posts about minimum wage activists being lazy. My refusal email was a little mean.

HookShot
Dec 26, 2005

red19fire posted:

The magazines byline was 'Maxim for Libertarians' :cripes:

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The Dorkroom - Maxim for Libertarians

Make it happen, SoundMonkey

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

My biggest problem as a sort of "in-house" photographer/videographer is that most of my projects are literally last minute. It's very common for the co-owner to suddenly drop in my office announcing some unusual situation (like a foreign student who's taking a dozen classes with us while staying here for a month, or a meeting of important people) and demand pictures for social media. It did serve well as a crash course in semi-professional photography when I first started a few years ago, as I'd have no time to do much more than yank their Canon T5i out of the closet and try to get good shots right on the spot.

The most ridiculous was probably when we were donating our old crane simulator to a robotics institute in Alabama. They showed up with essentially a mobile robotics museum in a tractor trailer and had just enough space in the back to fit the simulator. I got asked to take photos, so I went out for a few hours to take pictures of them loading it up. I also decided to shoot some video just in case we needed the footage.

Practically as soon as I got back in, the co-owner who usually drags me into pet projects immediately asked if I could make a video for the occasion. She had no idea that I had filmed anything since she had just asked me to take some photos. She just assumed that it would be possible for me to take enough usable footage after the simulator had already been loaded and the truck ready to pull away to make the idea worthwhile. She was very lucky that I had filmed enough to stitch together something comprehensible AND that the lighting was fortuitously good enough in the truck that I had neat robot footage instead of needing to use a flash for everything because the office doesn't have lighting equipment and nothing would have fit in the trailer anyway.

It's worth it because as a contractor I have some freedom to change my pay and I get a higher rate for photo and video work for them. Whenever I have my day job put on hold to do photos or videos, I immediately switch my hourly rate for that bit of time to the higher one.

Rusty Bodega
Feb 12, 2012

Colowful Wizuds
Red19fire is my spirit animal. Just when you think he's out of horror stories he's got another in his back pocket. :allears:

squidflakes
Aug 27, 2009


SHORTBUS
My first job in photography was for this couple that did the sports portraits for all of the rec centers and local little leagues and Pop Warner teams in the area. They were on par with those horrid school picture sweatshops, but I was still in high school, needed the money for a car, and really thought Photography Assistant sounded like a cool as gently caress job title.

I'm not even sure where to began.

I got the job through a friend who was quitting. He wouldn't tell me why he was quitting and I never had an interview with the couple who ran the business. I was told to show up at an address that was way back in the sticks and being as this was before Google Maps, I had to buy a map at the corner store to even get a reasonable idea of where they were.

After the couple showed me around and told me a bit about the set-up they plopped me down in front of a PC and dropped a double ream sized stack of order forms and mumbled something about docking my pay for every mistake I made, then they wrote down the file path and name of the executable for the file, then disappeared in to the back of the house.

The house itself was this massive rambling structure and the work area was in the first of many massive living rooms.

About half way through the stack I can hear the couple talking about something which escalates in to a screaming match.

"GOD DAMMIT DEBRA!" followed by someone slamming a door.
"DAMMIT MEL!" another door slammed.

It was silent for a moment, then I hear these weird creaky voices yelling "Dammit Debra! Dammit Mel! Goddammit Debra! God Dammit Debra!"

Mel and Debra had two huge African Grey parrots that lived in a little room between the work area and the family kitchen and any time there was a loud noise both birds would start shrieking "DAMMIT MEL! GOD DAMMIT MEL! DAMMIT DEBRA! KISS MY rear end! GOD DAMMIT DEBRA!"

That ended up being the soundtrack for my entire time at M&D.

Mel and Debra had three of the shittiest children I've ever met. Spoiled, arrogant, and mean little fucks who would occasionally come in to the work area and knock over the stacks and stacks of "filed documents" or try to engage you in a conversation then run to their parents claiming you had hit them or tried to touch them.

After five months of solid data entry I finally got the chance to go out and actually assist. Like Captain Bedsheets, Mel and Debra's equipment was beat to hell and unreliable in the extreme. Everything was either vintage 60's or 70's gear (this all took place in the mid-90s), obviously second or third hand, or the cheapest knock-off brand they could find. Mel himself was a gouty old man with a consistently sour smell and a disposition to match. He either didn't know or didn't care about high capacity film canisters because after 36 exposures I had to be ready immediately with another loaded camera in his hands before the next child got in to position. There was usually just enough time to rewind, eject, and load another can before he'd start yelling "FILM! FIIIILLLLM!"

Sometimes he would seem to get really upset with the way some of the kids posed and would have to go show them how it was done, usually by strategically bumping and grinding against them with his crotch accompanied by grunts, sighs, and a few muttered instructions.

Once, while I was unloading the back of the van he started yelling. Not his normal angry yell but this incoherent shriek. Then there was silence. Then he yelled "GOD DAMMIT DEBRA MY FAT rear end IS STUCK IN THE VAN AGAIN! GET THE loving POLE FOR CHRISTS SAKE!" They had a special pole for wedging Mel out of the driver's seat of their '78 Chevy conversion van.

Sometimes I would have to help Debra with the back-end parts of the business. Usually data entry but sometimes sorting, packing, or making the lovely little photo trinkets they sold for an obscene mark-up. Debra would take these opportunities to tell these sad, intensely personal stories about her childhood, her marriage, and her lack of sex life.

I was fired monthly. After a bad fight, either Mel or Debra would storm in to the work area and fire whoever happened to be there, only to call and apologize profusely a few days later and beg you to come back. One time Mel accused me of making eyes at Debra which sparked off a fight that ended with the phrase "GOD DAMMIT MEL, SO HELP ME, ONE OF THESE DAYS I'M GOING TO LET HIM SATISFY ME WHILE YOU'RE GONE AND THEN WE'LL SEE WHO'S loving WHO!" One time I was fired because I refused to make lunch for Mel and Debra's children. One time I was fired because I told Mel that ASA 200 and ISO 200 were the same speed of film.

I lasted about a year, mostly because they paid $10 an hour at a time when minimum wage was $4.25.

BANME.sh
Jan 23, 2008

What is this??
Are you some kind of hypnotist??
Grimey Drawer
lol

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007


holy poo poo hahahahahaha

HookShot
Dec 26, 2005
I can't decide if my favourite part is the van pole to pry him out of the van, or when she threatened to sleep with you.

Rusty Bodega
Feb 12, 2012

Colowful Wizuds

squidflakes posted:

Hell. Hellfire.

:stonklol:

squidflakes
Aug 27, 2009


SHORTBUS
The clearest memory I have of that place is Mel getting stuck in the van and the 10 minutes it took Debra to finagle him out. It was one of those things that starts out hilarious but just makes you want to cry when its all over.

One other moment I remembered, Mel and Debra were Jewish and had two separate kitchens so they could keep super kosher, but Mel would always stop by this chain BBQ place called Woody's and order two pork chop plates. He'd eat one there and get the other to go, and would try to sneak it in to the house when he thought Debra wasn't looking. I walked in on him eating one of the pork chops once and he had that face like a dog that had just gotten in to the trash, only his mouth was ringed with BBQ sauce.

squidflakes fucked around with this message at 22:56 on May 13, 2016

xzzy
Mar 5, 2009

What a miserable life.

My life ain't worth a biography but it's a heck of a lot better than that depressing existence.

BANME.sh
Jan 23, 2008

What is this??
Are you some kind of hypnotist??
Grimey Drawer

squidflakes posted:

he had that face like a dog that had just gotten in to the trash, only his mouth was ringed with BBQ sauce.

Lon Lon Rabbit
Mar 27, 2006
Here comes a special boy!
The worst I've had are pretty tame compared to these.

All the photographer's I've assisted have been super nice guys off the job but there was one guy who would flick a switch once the client arrived and become really stressed and bossy and demanding even on simple shoots. Just stuff like getting really exasperated that I put his 80mm in the 50mm pouch of his suitcase the first time I ever packed up for him, the fact that I was failing to shade his eyes adequately at the same time as shading his telephoto while he strafed quickly away from me to follow a moving model. He'd also often blame me when his lighting was wrong and needed adjusting after he set it up himself and told me not to touch it, or was upset at me when his flash sometimes didn't fire and it was obviously my fault cos I set the light up and not his crappy cheap triggers. It was stressful because he made me feel like I was doing a really bad job for not figuring out his idiosyncrasies instantly (and his rules seemed to change from shoot to shoot), but the moment we said goodbye to the client he was all friendly and smiley and happy with my work every time.

The only other bad experience was this one guy (again, super nice) who had these awful job's he'd do for market research companies. Basically they paid him to go around various stores in Tokyo and photograph the store displays of certain products at different levels (e.g. the beauty section of a department store, then at a local mall, then a drug store and then convenience store). I think they used the photos to determine how to consult their clients in how their own products should be displayed in similar markets in order to stand out. For some reason they had really strict requirements about how these shots had to be evenly lit and taken very straight on, so the photographer really had to spend a few minutes setting the shot up to get it properly. Problem is, most of these stores in Japan have rules against this sort of photography inside their stores, so my job as an assistant was to wait at the end of an aisle and basically run interference asking staff random questions so they wouldn't notice what he was doing, or warning him when a staff member was about to round a corner so he could hide his camera.

Pretty harmless, but it felt demeaning as hell and taught me nothing at all about photography. Dude was nice and paid me well for it though so that's something.

Now the only assisting I do is for one specific friend who I trust and we work well together and I am glad I don't have to do those smaller jobs anymore.

MMD3
May 16, 2006

Montmartre -> Portland
This thread is amazing, I hope more people have stories to share.

red19fire
May 26, 2010

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.

red19fire
May 26, 2010

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 :classiclol:

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007


every captain bedsheets story is the best :munch:

Also looking forward to the horror stories of this architecture guy

Rusty Bodega
Feb 12, 2012

Colowful Wizuds
Still lurking for the entertainment.

I have some horror stories from corporate communications but I don't think they'd fit the bill here unless people were interested.

red19fire
May 26, 2010

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 :rolleyes: 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 :shrug:

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 :smug: 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

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

red19fire posted:

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.

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.

For what it's worth, I've been trying to get people at my workplace to be more tough on customers than they have been. Constantly making deals and exceptions and working your rear end off overtime to fix customers' mistakes for them has only been a problem for us.

red19fire
May 26, 2010

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.

For what it's worth, I've been trying to get people at my workplace to be more tough on customers than they have been. Constantly making deals and exceptions and working your rear end off overtime to fix customers' mistakes for them has only been a problem for us.

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.

ReverendHammer
Feb 12, 2003

BARTHOLOMEW THEODOSUS IS NOT AMUSED

squidflakes posted:

"GOD DAMMIT DEBRA MY FAT rear end IS STUCK IN THE VAN AGAIN! GET THE loving POLE FOR CHRISTS SAKE!"

Well, that was a collection of words I was not expecting to read in that order today... but here we are.

The XKCD Larper
Mar 1, 2009

by Lowtax
I email a Craigslist ad about video editor / camera man work. The guy sounds OK if not a little manic over the phone. He is shooting a documentary about a rising boxer. He asks me to come to the doc subject's home in Rhode Island (3 hr drive) the next day at 11 AM. I get there and the fucker is asleep. He's a 4'10 sweaty little balding fat jewish guy. He has incredibly nice gear, all $8K+ cameras and tons of SxS cards / lavs etc but it is all loving BEAT. He can't seem to think straight for more than 15 seconds. I help him shoot all day as he screams gibberish at me in his nasally voice and gets in the way of every single nice shot that I manage to set up. His subject openly disrepspects him, saying whatever non-family-friendly stuff all day ("I have to take a _SSSSSsHIT_ right now" stressing the poo poo really hard) and walking away from the camera and so on.

We go to a sparring match for the subject and he keeps insisting that I get IN THE RING to shoot incredibly built boxers that are jumping around whaling on each other. Outside, everyone I interview says the guy is a great guy, a little hard to work with, but OK. At the end of 12 hours of this he tries to say that he wants to pay me a day rate of $125, and I push back, saying $15/hr was agreed on over the phone, and that he's covering my gas for 300 miles of travel. He gets really pissy and says he'll pay whatever I charge him but it might mean no more work in the future. I say OK, let me know if you have anything else for me, close my hatch back and say goodbye.

2 minutes down the road he calls my phone, screaming that he wasn't able to get a ride from any of the people that were at the match back to the boxer's house (They all bailed on him). I whip back around and pick him up. He keeps screaming that I'm going the wrong way and I tell him that he needs to quiet down so I can hear my GPS. I get back to the house, unload his gear, and say goodbye again.

No surprise that he still hasn't paid the invoice.

The XKCD Larper fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Aug 22, 2016

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007


The XKCD Larper posted:

We go to a sparring match for the subject and he keeps insisting that I get IN THE RING

:stare:

FingerblastFridays
Jun 7, 2014

red19fire posted:

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. :smug:" 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.

I miss bass

red19fire
May 26, 2010

The XKCD Larper posted:

I email a Craigslist ad about video editor / camera man work.
No surprise that he still hasn't paid the invoice.

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.

The XKCD Larper
Mar 1, 2009

by Lowtax

red19fire posted:

Yeah, my general rule for questionable CL gigs is either I get paid up front or before I leave set.

Good policy. I'm a noob to freelancing, I will probably start doing that.

The XKCD Larper
Mar 1, 2009

by Lowtax
Happy that I made my dumb long rear end post in here cuz I need it for reference :D he's calling today to see if we "can work something out"

red19fire
May 26, 2010

The XKCD Larper posted:

Happy that I made my dumb long rear end post in here cuz I need it for reference :D he's calling today to see if we "can work something out"

Add interest to your invoice. gently caress that guy.

The XKCD Larper
Mar 1, 2009

by Lowtax

red19fire posted:

Add interest to your invoice. gently caress that guy.

I've done the math but I'm not going to charge it or collections fees. I just wanna get loving paid already so I can pay my last mont's rent. Ive got a title 9 complaint open with his alma mater for the unsolicited touching and general creepiness

Redrum and Coke
Feb 25, 2006

wAstIng 10 bUcks ON an aVaTar iS StUpid

The XKCD Larper posted:

I've done the math but I'm not going to charge it or collections fees. I just wanna get loving paid already so I can pay my last mont's rent. Ive got a title 9 complaint open with his alma mater for the unsolicited touching and general creepiness

What unsolicited touching?

The XKCD Larper
Mar 1, 2009

by Lowtax

Non Serviam posted:

What unsolicited touching?

I didn't wanna get in to it but basically he imposed physical closeness despite me saying "don't do that" and holding my arm out to not let him near me. Maybe 5-6 times

The XKCD Larper
Mar 1, 2009

by Lowtax
I'm wondering why I didn't throw his EX1 at the ground as hard as possible and drive back home

Redrum and Coke
Feb 25, 2006

wAstIng 10 bUcks ON an aVaTar iS StUpid

The XKCD Larper posted:

I didn't wanna get in to it but basically he imposed physical closeness despite me saying "don't do that" and holding my arm out to not let him near me. Maybe 5-6 times

And he is part of the faculty? (you said Alma mater, so I'm not sure if he just studied there)
Do Title 9 norms protect students and staff?

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Musket
Mar 19, 2008
I am really upset that one of the survey choices isnt an Iphone or Android app that turns your screen into a flash for better lighting. I mean, really... Lighting no matter the scale should still matter:snoop:

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