Working for free... TFCD and my shit experiences!

“Looking for photographers/makeup artists looking to expand
their portfolios and get great exposure… for xyz publication”

This has to be one of the most frustrating things as a
makeup artist and photographer, although I’m learning it is a big part of the
business and a big reason why the “business” is not a majorly profitable one,
or a get rich quick job as a lot of people seem to think it is.

I have even fallen for certain advertisements like this, to
work for free in order for exposure, but in reality, I know that deep down
inside, I just shouldn’t be doing it, at all. And as such, I have now  become extremely picky about “working for
free” or as people like sugar coat it “TFCD”. I am sick to death of delivering
top quality work and never getting anything in return. I have agreed to work
for exposure on my makeup once more at the end of this month and that will
surely be my last month of working for free. Exposure, my friends, will not pay
the bills, however good, hard cash in your bank account will definitely pay one
or two bills, or Edgars store accounts from the latest shopping spree at MAC.

For example, sometime in October, one of South Africa’s
extremely talented photographers (in my opinion) asked me to come and do a TFCD
with three very credible models that are all signed to great agencies and have
done a lot of high quality work. After the shoot, I emailed him and thanked him
for such a great opportunity and to no avail, had absolutely no response, I tried
sms’s, emails, messages on Facebook but to no avail and I left it for a while. In
the past 3 weeks or so, I sent him an email asking why I hadn’t heard back from
him as it felt like he was avoiding me. I know the crap that comes with doing
TFCD shoots as a photographer, and I understand, he may not have even opened
the RAW files on his pc, but I just wanted to be informed about what was
actually going on with these said images that I had given my time, kit and
petrol to work on.

He did reply, I was shocked, and said that all the images he
had edited were on his facebook page. I didn’t respond to this as I thought
that was shocking, that he couldn’t take 2 minutes out of his day to email them
to me before uploading them to a social network and secondly if he could only
upload them and for whatever reason had forgotten  my email address, why the hell did he not tag
me in the said images that he had uploaded on facebook? It takes about 2
seconds per photograph, and I spend at least three hours doing the three models
makeup. Frustrating ethics indeed, for someone who is so good at their craft. Writing
this now, I think I may just go and tag myself in these images and then at
least I have some sort of “credit”.

Working for free for publications – free publications and
why I think its bullshit. Once I had bought my new set of lights last year, I decided
I needed to test these bad boys out, and as it was towards the end of the year
all my general culprits and guinea pigs were busy with exams, on holiday, or
for whatever reason unavailable at that moment in time. I had received an email
from the acting “manager” of photography of LT Mag and asked me if I’d be
interested in shooting a band from Edenvale for their publication. I agreed,
and I continued chatting to this guy about the what the publication would like
from this particular shoot and he told me not to worry, as he would tag along
and make sure we got the desired shots.

Anyway, long story short, the band had arrived at the said
time that they were meant to be at my studio, along with their own manager. They
were just as clueless as me as to what the publication wanted out of the
magazine, and they thought I was already briefed, and I thought that they would
have already been briefed, but neither of us were briefed about this shoot as
the acting “manager” of the publication was absent, nowhere to be seen and had
somewhat vanished off the face of the earth, and had not given us any contact
details for himself other than… an email address.

This was on a Sunday afternoon, so I wanted to get out of
the studio and back to my life as soon as possible. Did a couple of happy
snappies in the studio, played outside with some natural light and voila we were
done.

Then it came to be new year, and I had still NOT heard from
the acting “manager” of photography of the magazine, so I still hadn’t bothered
to edit these images. And the second week in January, this guy emails me saying
he needs the images urgently as the publication requires them. I then informed
him of how upset I was with the unprofessionalism he had shown by saying he would
have been there and for whatever reason didn’t have the decency to at least
phone/email/sms/send a carrier pidgin to explain that he would not attend, and
then brief me on what was required. So on this email, I asked him what format
does he require the edited images in, what size does he require the edited
images to be, what method must I get these images to him and lastly – how many
images of the band does he require.

He replied and told me, but I in the mean time had 7 paid
model portfolios, all were my gold and platinum packages which require at least
more than 20 edited images to be sent to the client within 3 weeks of the
shoot, obviously, you can image what my priority was, and as such it upset the
magazine staff even more to which the editor emailed me and asked me what was
going on, she was under the impression that the acting “manager” had taken the
photographs and somehow I’d taken them off him and she wanted to know what the
story was. It turned out that he wanted to use MY images and have himself credited
as the photographer of the images. In all honesty, the images were terrible,
and I’m rather embarrassed about the quality of them and would prefer them to
not be published under my name but, yes, they are MY images and not this acting
“manager” of photography at said publication of the time.

After I had explained the situation to the editor, who is
such a darling, and has to deal with this crap all the time *takes hat off to
Roz!*, he proceeded to delete me off Facebook, as his ego must have been bruised
somewhat by the fact that his stupid scheme had come out that he is actually
such a shit photographer he has to use someone elses images to credit himself
in a free publication.

What I learnt from that drama was that firstly, if someone
is working under an editor for a free publication and do I happen to offer my
services I will make sure that I speak to the editor before, and after the
shoot to confirm this person “working” under them is actually doing their job
correctly and not just trying to get their grubby little paws on my RAW images.

The world is going crazy for “free” work, but then again, so
is the gold price. Work for gold, it will put lots of food on your table.

Until then, don’t work for too much exposure!

Flea

Is Fashion The Fickle-ist Industry Of Them All?

Aaah, so an overly discussed topic in the makeup/modelling/photography world, is going to be just an even more so overly discussed topic on my blog, but hey, its my blog, I can say what I please. I'm speaking from my experiences in the industry with the numerous amount of people that I've worked with in my short career in this field.

I read on a forum the other day, something along the lines of - "models have feelings too..." and the model went to discuss how it hurts to be rejected time and time again after attending every casting that becomes known to them, only to be rejected for another girl with the same dreams as said rejected model. Sad fact of reality, no matter how in shape, and well groomed the 'models' keep themselves, unless they are that small percent that manage to get a big break, the rest of them can enjoy modelling for ammateur photographers, and have pretty photos for facebook as payment, the good old TFCD, unless if they start doing promotions, but at the end of the day, the promotion lifestyle is not going to be glamourous as everyone thinks the modelling world is.

A lot of the models that I've either photographed or made up, have literally been doing the photo session as a means of a confidence builder in their lives, not many had admitted it but when I think about these girls, their confidence and self esteem was low at the point before the shoot where makeup and discussions of the shoot expections were being spoken about, but once that shoot is finished, they have a run of confidence and finally start feeling better about themselves and then their "professional photographs" are then plastered over Facebook and all their friends will comment and tell them how fabulous, amazing, draw-droppingly-sexy that they are.

I can't speak as though I know why all these girls and boys model, but that is the impression I get based on the experiences with many of the people that I've worked with. What grills with the generalised persons that I've mentioned above is that they do not actually take into account how much work goes into preparing for that shoot on the photographers part, as well as the makeup artists part sometimes. Yes, neither photography nor makeup artistry is rocket science, in fact its quite the opposite it is an art, and so is modelling, I am not taking that away from the models. Photography = light + time, and getting that right all the time is not easy, and what is makeup when it comes to photography shoots? Understanding the concept and vision that both the model and photographer have in mind and being able to bridge the gap, contour, highlight and emphasize as well as paint and create something that is not so everyday normal than what the model looks at in the mirror.

Its not only the models and makeup artists that suffer the rejection that the models deal with from not getting work from castings. Photographers and makeup artists are in some instances represented by agencies. Agencies that if you get into the correct and right one that they can make killer livings, however, they stil suffer the same rejection, humiliation, and constant being told that their work is not good enough... The problem, may be just that, the work is crap or the problem may be that the market for that particular area of talent may be saturated and monopolised by individuals with completely different ideas than the person looking to be represented, to make a living, ad that there may be NO WORK in that particular field that the individual is looking for work in.

Another problem, in South Africa is that our industry is actually rather small and that in fact, everyone in this business knows everyone, maybe not personally, but everyone knows of each others work and opinions on certain matters, thanks to modelbase and all those lovely networking tools that photographers exploit to market to the general public masses, such as facebook, twitter, myspace, etc etc. I think all photographers, makeup artists and models have the most friends possible on facebook, because they want to market their talent to the general public, who in fact couldn't give two hoots about whether I photographed a model with the correct lighting and contoured her face correctly in right spots to make her look even more beautiful. I fear that this industry may actually be pushing themselves onto everyone on the social networks in the hope that they get a paying customer, so they can get paid for the talents that they have instilled in themselves and the artistic eyes that they were born with in order to make a living.

Thats my little bitch and moan for today on my wonderful blog.

xo
flea