How NOT to get a free modelling shoot

OK, I’ve calmed down now…  

I’ve just had an extraordinary transaction (if you could call it that) with a young woman wanting to enter the world of modelling.

Now, because I ‘exist’ on the web, and have done for some time, I’m pretty easy to find when people are searching for “photographer Melbourne”, or whatever. So as you can imagine, apart from client enquiries (which I could always do with more of!), I get a fair few ‘cold contacts’ from people for all sorts of reasons:

• Students wanting work experience
• Assistants wanting work
• Beginning photographers wanting advice, and
• Aspiring models wanting to do a shoot on a ‘TFP’ or ‘TFCD’ basis

If you’re not involved in the modelling world, you will of course have no idea what TFP or TFCD mean. They stand for ‘Time For Prints’, or ‘Time For CD’, respectively. What this means is that a photographer, model, and often stylist, get together to create (hopefully) a masterpiece – and they all get each other’s services for free for the purposes of adding something good to their portfolio.

Arguably the model is the most ‘commodified’ in this agreement, simply because there are so many aspiring models out there, and if the photographer and stylist are good enough to make the model look good, why should they do it for free? Anyway, it’s a feeling many photographers can relate to as well; figuring how to stand out from the crowd when you’re starting out can be a big stress.

So back to the story…

Back in December I got an e-mail from this young woman (let’s call her ‘Melissa’), introducing herself and wondering if I’d like to do a TFCD shoot.

I replied that I may be, and asked her to send a picture of herself – which she did.

This is when things started to get weird.

Four days after she sent me her photo, I got the introductory e-mail again. You can imagine how this looked to me – like I was being spammed along with every other photographer in Melbourne and she had forgotten that she had even contacted me. Not a good look!

Now get this… after I mentioned this to Melissa (in the nicest possible way), and she apologised, I got another introductory e-mail, this time two weeks later. I guess alarm bells should have rung by this time, but (for better or worse) I always like to give people the benefit of the doubt 🙂  So I agreed to doing a shoot (if only to stop her from e-mailing me!)

The next few exchanges were relatively normal, while we agreed on some details about the style of the shoot, and confirmed a date.

Five days after we confirmed the date, I got six e-mails from Melissa (three of which were in the space of three minutes). And guess what – one of these e-mails was to ask about a date for the shoot!

By now I was getting a bit crazy but persisted because I am such a nice guy (I really am, I swear).

After a few more exchanges, we managed to confirm everything again (or so I thought), including a make-up artist.

But guess what? A week later I got another e-mail asking a whole bunch of questions we had already discussed – so I replied, explaining this.

Let’s see, what happened next… oh yeah, next I got an e-mail from Melissa asking if I had ‘any references from models’ who I have shot with. Now the question in itself is perfectly reasonable – since Melissa is pretty young and doesn’t know me from a bar of proverbial surfactant. But the timing, as you can see, was pretty poor. The right time to ask for references would be at the very start of our discussions, when we were both deciding if we wanted to proceed. The wrong time was after everything was already confirmed.

Anyway, I obliged with the contact details for three models I have worked with recently (two of which were for magazine shoots).

(We’re nearly at the end of the story – you’ve read this far, don’t give up on me now)

Two hours after I sent the references, I got an e-mail from Melissa saying that due to ‘personal circumstances’ she was ‘unable to do our shoot and at this stage’… ‘not in a position to reschedule’.

OK, that’s cool, I thought – whatever. As you can imagine I was actually somewhat relieved that it was all over!

I was wrong… four days later, Melissa sent me an e-mail, making no reference to her cancellation, but saying ‘I got some great references from you, and I am willing to reschedule a shoot if your (sic) happy to’

Well that was the last straw for me, and I (not too harshly, I hope) explained how this all looked to me, and that she had blown it. And of course I wished her luck with her modelling.

And to give Melissa some credit, she replied gracefully.

— THE END — (phew!)

Looking back on this, I guess it’s possible that this girl had bipolar or something, in which case I feel bad… however –

Good stories always have a moral, so here goes:

The moral(s):

• Respect people’s time and mental energy, especially if you’re asking them for a favour
• Think before you press ‘send’

There is probably a moral in there somewhere about the way I dealt with this, too. If you know what it is, please do let me know :-/

Technorati Tags: modelling, model, manners, psycho