Goes, comes around

It's Beer:30 right at this moment in Miami (as if a freelance photographer ever needed an excuse), and I'm celebrating a cluster of new calls from editors about upcoming assignments. More than just the potential work (though it has been too quiet down here lately), I'm drinking a toast to myself for out living an extremely, um, difficult editor at one of my former top clients. Advantage: Loomis!

Everyone has their handful (small or big) of photo editors and art directors who they have bad or strange relationships with, either because of a personality conflict or something that goes wrong on a job. I worked with this particular editor (who I won't name out of professional courtesy) on a half-dozen shoots to great success until suddenly all hell broke loose on 2 or 3 stressful assignments in a row completely destroying my relationship to the entire magazine.

The first bad job seemed like a hiccup in the road... maybe I should have read the writing on the wall? We talked for 2 months about one big shoot during which time I asked again and again for specifics about what exactly she wanted (it seemed like the perfect gig, and I was suspicious there wasn't a catch hidden somewhere). I basically had total freedom to cover an event in my own unique style and do whatever I wanted. Wrong! After getting my film she totally changed her story and claimed that she had told me again and again that I had to follow a certain script, and announced that I had screwed up the assignment (They ended up using the work as a double-truck... go figure). Same basic story on the 2nd job... horrible communication and then complete hysterics.

On the final straw I was sent to do a portrait of this famous person who proceeds to completely fuck the assignment because he is a giant asshole and also suddenly realizes that he hates the magazine and staff writer there with me. OK whatever. Not much I can do there and certainly not my fault! I call the editor from the location and tell her the bad news. She responds by changing the whole assignment and asking for a GQ-style shoot of another subject also at the same event on the fly, complete with props, etc. Sure, I'll do the best I can I tell her... I shoot for over 2 hours with a very cool subject and get some fun stuff. She ends up hating everything despite my being extremely helpful and flexible with her. And to top it all off she throws a fit when she gets the bill from Redux that she was charged for TWO shoots! In the end I was only paid for one.

So a toast... not really to out living this one terrible editor... but instead to all of the many other editors out there who are super cool, amazingly professional, real human beings. You have no idea how much we photographers appreciate you! And another toast... to me... who will be heading down to the Dominican Republic this weekend for the now fired editor's very cool former assistant. Life is sweet.

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Comments (2)

Love that...

Cheers ..I thought it was all excitement and travel and meeting cool people and living life your way and not having to answer to the 'man' and having cool equipment and being an artist and only photographing people who want to be photographed and those people being photographed being good looking people and getting the great images everytime and always having satisfied clients and always feeling good and having the overall good life ..when you're a photographer. No?

Great post as usual. Good riddance make a perfect pair of words don't they?

Enjoy and good luck with the potential gigs.

-Sherman

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