Never again will I do one, Call beg whatever these is no way hell I will do it again. This young lady who shall remain nameless Natasha contacted over a month or 2 wanted me to shoot her for free that is the definition of TFP if you don’t know (Officially it means Time for Prints) but I don’t need to practice and when I do need to use someone for a project of mine I contact them, but anyway I had some open time between shoots like 4 hours at the studio so I tell her yes I will she is claiming broke as hell so this will be a TFP and I was developing charters for K1.
I do the FREE SHOOT (TFP) she has no budget according to her, no money none, nada. So we have no MUA (make up artest) but she says she can do her own, I send over my photo shoot check list so she knows what wardrobe to bring. We do the shoot.
A day later we are going over the images and she kicks the external backup drive off my computer, it was a mistake. The drive contains most of the work I have shot in the past 3 years. I had not archived the past 8 months to DVD (wont make that mistake again). The external drive fails, SEMA is in a couple of weeks I have several automotive customers whose images are on that drive. Now I am SOL ! Cherry Data systems is other the other side of Atlanta I have had great luck with them some years ago but they are busy. I need to start designing the SEMA media like yesterday.
Long story short it took me a week and countless hours to cobble together the images I needed, I always burn my raw work to a CD after a shoot and label it. Then store it in a one of those hard shell CD cases, but not in order (wont do that again) I only index my drive.
.. Sorry I digressed I shoot 3 looks and Give her a CD of some of the images. Now 1 month later I get a call from a fellow photographer who wants to rent my studio cool, because this photographer sends me customers I give him a freebee. Guess who he is shooting Natasha now she has big budget money she can afforded to pay the stylist, MUA and of course the photographer. She did not know he would be shooting her at my studio. She sent me a message the day before asking to do something and I ended my response that “I will see you sooner than you think. “
At first I was pisssssssssssssssed oh I was pissed the hair on my ball had fist and were ready to fight, but I was my own fault in that I devalued my work by doing a TFP that was of no benefit to me. This was Gods way of reminding me that one should not do TFP’s that does not benefit ME!
Funny thing she arrives at my studio and says “Hay aren’t you happy to see me “my reply “Yea like a hemorrhoid”
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