[Gothic BC] On the Price of Photos

I frequently get asked to send people the electronic version of the photo I have taken of them, and I occasionally do. I should admit that whether or not I get around to depends more on whim than time. And said whim is influenced by whether or not I know the person making the request reasonably well, whether I've been asked nicely, whether or not I had a good time taking the pictures, and whether I'm in a good mood or a grumpy one.

Right now I am in a grumpy mood.

For those that don't know, I don't get paid to come out and shoot. For Sin City, Sanctuary, and Restricted Entertainment's special events I get in the door for free, but for other events I can't even count on that. The only time I make money is when I have my photo-booth set up and sell prints, which is only potentially profitable on nights like Sin City where photography is otherwise prohibited. But even at that, there is the occasional Sin City where sales aren't good and I'm lucky to cover my bar tab. But if I have had fun and have some good pictures to show for it, the money doesn't matter so much.

Conversely, there are nights where sales are good, and I come away with a decent amount of money but I've been so seriously annoyed by people that the money doesn't make up for the aggrivation. Now "decent" is relative, since what I walk away with at the end of the night is really not that much if I take in the number of hours involved. And don't forget that in addition to the seven or eight hours I'm at the bar, there is still four or five hours of work, minimum, going through the pictures and posting them. And when am spending hours going through pictures of people who have pissed me off, I start feeling pissed off anew and a lot less motivated.

I won't bother going into detail right now about how people manage to suck other than to say that those who do always fall into one or both of the following categories: 1.) rude, 2.) stupid.

So that is just the cost in time and aggravation. There are, of course, material costs. There are the frames, the paper, and the ink most obviously, but also the gear. I've just had to order what will be my third printer since I started doing the on-the-spot prints. A new printer costs about what I net in an average month at Sin. About half the wear on my camera comes from the photo-booth work. I've already gone through two cameras and the one I am using now only has a couple more years in it, at best. A new camera body voids about six months of "profit." The then are the flash heads. I use relatively inexpensive ones at Sin City, but when it comes to photo gear, "relatively inexpensive" still isn't chump change. I have already used one to death (and when the capacitor goes in even a low-powered studio strobe, it is a pretty dramatic and spectacular event... lots of smoke!) There have been more than a few close calls with people knocking into and nearly knocking over my flash (see category #2, above.)

Bottom line, pretty much literally, is $10 for a print doesn't make me much money at all. It covers costs. If I didn't like doing this, it wouldn't be happening.

Sending off the source files for nothing does nothing for me. As a favour for a friend, yes, that's different. Giving work to an asinine yob I don't know from Adam, no. And when I say "asinine yob" I have a particular person and conversation in mind. I had someone, about six or seven months ago, try to argue that it "doesn't cost you anything" to send him the files. That conversation has stuck me since it happened. It serves in my mind as the archetypal illustration of a cretin who can't see that value in creative work beyond the material costs of the tangible end product.

There is a subject I could go on about. But I'm grumpy enough already.

Some days I just wish I could pick up the world by the scruff of the neck and shake all the stupid out.

[ Reposted from my blog on Gothic BC #GothicBC ]