Reply To: Excuses

[IHF]

The worst excuse… This wasn’t a paid shoot and/or it was just practice.  What were you practicing exactly?  Maybe I can overlook everything that is wrong, and try to see through it, if you could tell me what you were working on.  Practice shoots, are so you can have full creative control.  Take your time setting up, working on posing, lighting, settings, new techniques, or learning new equipment, or learning how to use new backdrops or props  etc.  They are for YOU.  To me that means I’m going to see your very best.  What turns you on, and drives you, not sloppy pointing and clicking, or shots that completely resemble all your other shots in your portfolio.  They should be different because you are practicing something new.  they should be better, because you are implementing something you have learned.  Unless of course you are just practicing how to use a memory card, and downloading and uploading files.  In that case you have it down.  In my head when this excuse pops up, I think… if you have to make up an excuse for this, this one actually makes you look really really bad.  Wouldn’t it be better to say something like, “My client sprung this on me last minute and needed the images in a hurry.  I had no control over the situation at all.   I ended up giving the images to her free of charge, because I wasn’t very happy with them myself”. That would make more sense to me, even if it were made up, and not a very good excuse either.  At least I wouldn’t lose respect for you.

but yeah, that one really gets my goat.

One that makes me laugh “it’s what the clients asked for”.  Especially when it’s not technically sound, and not about the editing at all.  “Oh your client wanted to be underexposed, and have a tree growing out of their head.  Oh I see now” or “oh they wanted to be positioned that way so they look really large, and look as though they don’t have a neck”.  It’s pretty rare to have any client in THAT much control anyway.  Don’t most people trust their photographer to make decisions like that?  LOL  I question the editing as well.  I mean I highly doubt anyone wants to look like they have some sort of liver disease, or wants their children to look like starving vampires, and actually requests this before the shutter is even clicked.  But I laugh more when it’s not editing in question, because really???  How lame are you?