I can’t say I have all the experience in the world, but with now a few years behind me I have some and I have some of the bad experience too. There has been situations where I have had shoots with friends and they use forever to pay me, it’s a very awkward situation to be stuck in as repeatedly asking for your money from your friends is not a thing that helps on the friendships. I have been in a situation where there has been miscommunication and I tried my very best to fix it, even offered free prints, though the mistake was from both sides, yet they insisted on trying to bring me down. I’m still here, I’m perhaps stronger then before as well, each mountain I have to climb does make you better and wiser. Now I always take my payments when my clients have seen the photos and have picked the ones that they want. Now I always sign contract so that my clients know what they’re getting from me.
But what I wanted to use this blog entry on was a new experience that has taught me to put my foot down and say no when enough is enough, and has taught me to value myself. I was suppose to spend my weekend shooting at LondonExpo, I had at least 17 shoots planned and the Friday would start with three. I was especially excited about Friday as I had agreed with one cosplayer that we would take photos of the expo area, we had been a lot back and forth about where when she two days before Expo sent me a link to a location and asked me to check it out so I could see if it worked. It wasn’t all that far from my house so I decided to walk, enjoy the nice weather, and the location was really wonderful and I spent about an hour there walking around looking for places we could shoot. I get back home send her a message as I never got her number after I lost my phone, nor was it in any old messages, and I just hoped she would answer me in time. I never got any answer, not the morning after and I ended up sitting at home until three o’clock after getting up at eight in the morning waiting for her to answer me. In the end I just decided to go up to Expo since I had other people to shoot with
First person I meet when I arrive is her and the first thing I get is “we decided to cancel”. I instantly felt disrespected, I had been sitting around all day, I had been running around on several locations trying to find something that could work. She tend asked me to join her for a shoot straight away, which ended in her friend shooting while I was just sitting around doing nothing, and in the end I just had enough and left. I texted the second person I was suppose to shoot with, she had told me her plans for everyday at the Expo and had seemed very interested in having a shoot, what I get back is “just a shoot on Sunday would be fine”. Again I feel disrespected, I’m there to take photos, I’m not there to hang around all day. And so I text the last person who was up for a shoot but used one and a half hour on showing up, and when she shows up she had a whole group. I was not informed about a group, and honest I didn’t want to shoot all her friends. I asked her because I liked her cosplays, that does not mean I like what her friends does. But I couldn’t find it in my heart to say no so I took photos of them all, and it was perhaps the worst shoot I have had so far this year. Nothing was in my control, a lot of their poses was horrible and they spent their time playing around expecting me to take photos of that as well.
I went home feeling angry and disappointed. And I decided to cancel Expo. It’s not a dramatic thing, it’s not because I’m sad. But I see that it’s time to set my foot down and say no. I won’t let people push me around like this, I’m worth more then waiting around all day, more then getting canceled on and more then taking photos that I shouldn’t. I have decided that unless the photos I take are not a paid job or benefits my portfolio I will not do it anymore. In many ways I’m glad this happened because I’m sitting here thinking about my own value and slowly finding it. I am of course sad for those others I had appointments with but hey shit rolls downhill.
Another one from LondonExpo, wanted to try a different kind of editing since I always have quite bright photos with warm tones, here not as bright as usual and not as warm as usual.
A before and after (after&before when you look at the photo) of my work. Someone requested this on my dA, so I thought I would share it here on my blog as well. It’s hard to see it here when the photo is so small, but there’s a lot of skinretouching and a lot of the loose wig hairs has been removed as well. Trying to get better at this, goal is to have a natural skinediting.
Another photo from LondonExpo, this girl was amazingly alike the character she was cosplaying, been a while since I have seen such a good cosplay from Kuroshitsuji.
For some reason this got very popular on my model’s Facebook & dA, so I wanted to share it here as well.
Also from LondonExpo, sorry about all these random portraits but I guess something is better then nothing.
Another one from Expo, and another one from the DragonAge shoot. Spent so long retouching this photo and I feel that the outcome turned out quite natural and nice.
Photo by my friend&roomie Jessica Proto, me at LondonExpo shooting a Cats cosplayer. I will be adding up photos from this shoot at some point, I’m slowly working my way through the huge amount of e-mails I have received from people wanting the photos I took, which of course makes me very happy. Nothing feels better then seeing people happy with the photos I have taken and using them.
The character Horo from Spice and Wolf, another photo from LondonExpo.
Hatake Kakashi from Naruto, had a little shoot with this awesome cosplayer.
Character from Dragon Age, from a shoot this weekend at LondonExpo.
