their portfolios and get great exposure… for xyz publication”
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
is the gold price. Work for gold, it will put lots of food on your table.
