Hallowe'en has come and gone again and I am tired. I made far less in sales this Hallowe'en than I have in previous years and have had far more "can you mail me the photos?" requests than I have in a while, so it may be time to remind everyone once again that I am not paid to operate the photo booth
, nor does the website bring in more than it costs to operate. At Restricted Fetish Hallowe'en, for example, I shot approximately six hundred photos over the course of eight hours at the club, and spent at least as many hours over the course of the week to going through them and editing them. Now that that batch is done, what I earned from it doesn't amount to minimum wage, and that doesn't count in material costs, let alone what the camera and other gear costs. So far this year I have had one camera and two studio strobes pack it in. That voids a year's work in the clubs right there. It's not a profitable business by itself. If this were my only income, I'd be better off scavenging empty pop cans.
And when I am not operating the photo booth and just walking around with my camera, like I was at Sanctuary's Something Wicked This Way Comes at Celebrities, I am not making any money at all.
It's a creative outlet, it's social, and I keep coming back because I generally have fun. But sometimes I don't. When I am run off my feet non-stop and don't have time to be social yet am not selling anything, it's not so much fun. When I am shown any kind of disrespect at all, that's not so much fun either. Just remember that I don't have to be there, and try not to be the person who makes me not want to be there.
[ Reposted from my blog on Gothic BC #GothicBC ]