Back in September, on a glamour shoot for my site, I hired a photographer off of one of my movie sets to do a batch of stills and video work for me. I didn’t hire him on purpose. I showed up thinking it was a trade content shoot where I covered the talent and make up expenses and he covered location… I would own the video content exclusively and he gets to sell the layouts while I use the images for my website. In my opinion it’s a pretty fair deal and I’ve done it with a number of photographers before.
Once I was in the make up chair he told me that his rate for the day was $1,000 and I was covering all of the expenses. I needed the content and we were all set up to go so after some back and forth with him on it, we settled back on the deal I originally had thought we had, the only difference being that I was now paying the location costs on top of it and we’d be splitting magazine sales profits.
The next week he tried to charge me half of his rate for the video content before he’d hand it over. I told him to forget about it, I’d write him a check for his full rate for the day and own all of the content exclusively and sell the layouts myself. He said that was fine. I wrote him a check and he handed me disks and masters.
The disks were immediately shipped off to a broker who had the boy/girl set sold within a couple of weeks. She called me and told me all I needed to do was send her the raws and we’d be good. I thought they were on the disks but apparently he had only given me jpegs so I called the photographer and asked for my raws. It went to voicemail and he texted me back and said he’d deleted them. I asked why he hadn’t given them to me in the first place. He said magazine sales weren’t discussed so I didn’t need them. A very long text conversation followed in which he told me he doesn’t normally shoot raws and didn’t want to archive them and the magazines weren’t interested in my layouts anyway and contradicted himself left and right while avoiding the question of why he would delete my raws without giving them to me after I’d paid for them.
Luckily, he did it all in a text conversation that I was able to print out and use to win back some of the money in small claims court yesterday. Gotta love the iPhone.
The lesson the judge hammered into us that I’ve learned and forgotten plenty of times before- always always always have contracts for even the simplest things. Especially in LA.
11 Responses
Of course, the RAW v. JPG argument is a whole ‘nother issue. Personally, I think RAW is over-rated and a pain in the keester in terms of time & processing to convert plus storing. A lot of geeksperts agree. Sure, it’s a nice way to CYA in terms of exposure, color balance, and all that but it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. If I shot everything RAW, and archived it all for the people I shoot for, I’d need a room full of hard drives. Most companies don’t want RAW. I’m not talking internet peeps, but companies like Vivid. Their art dept. wants JPGs.
P.S. iLove my iPhone too
I hate to use a homoerotic phrase like “pet peeve”, but stories such as the one you described really annoy the hell out of me.
I’ve never understood the mindset of fucking someone over for a quick payday at the expense of ruining a channel for future work or referrals. I know I must sound like a guy who stops to ask for directions in Compton, but I will never understand the mindset of a scammer.
I knew the iPhone owned me the day I made a previous girlfriend wait to perform a sexual act until my RSS feeds were done loading.
“I’ve never understood the mindset of fucking someone over for a quick payday at the expense of ruining a channel for future work or referrals.”
Now if only you would apply that same paradigm to your industry’s effect on society as a whole.
“Now if only you would apply that same paradigm to your industry’s effect on society as a whole.”
Hopefully, your contention that porn fucks over society as a whole resides way low on a list of industries and others who fuck society as a whole. For instance:
1. The Banking Industry.
2. Wall Street & stock manipulators.
3. A too-large chunk of the rest of corporate America.
4. The drug industries and organized crime.
5. More than a few politicians and elected officials.
6.Some religious groups and their leaders.
7. Too many parents who should have been neutered at puberty or before they could breed.
and the list goes on…
I’m not arguing against your beliefs, “Goodwill,” just your inferred priorities.
“I’m not arguing against your beliefs, “Goodwill,” just your inferred priorities.”
Why?
well the point kayden had was that she had the magazine layout sold and every mag I have ever shot for wants raw format, which makes sense, you have to adjust the exposure and such for the printing process.
Why? Because people who are truly and sincerely concerned about the things that adversely effect society “as a whole” look at the bigger picture and realize that certain negative factors are weighted more than others, i.e., by importance or because they are bigger, potentially more catastrophic, factors. You, it seems, either have a personal agenda or are nearly completely uninformed.
‘Nuff said from me. Have a good one.
Mike:
A. Every rag doesn’t require RAW
B. I don’t know about other shooters but I ALWAYS ask what format is required, i.e,. before I snap a pic. Same for video formats.
What’s wrong with a personal agenda? I also disagree that treating symptoms before causes is the way to cure a disease.
well jimmyd this one did LOL
i always shoot raw and burn them to dvds for archival