Photographers are assholes: Let’s face it, photographers are assholes. How do I know this? I’m a photographer, and I’m an asshole. No, I don’t under tip waitresses (unless they don’t perform their job in a manner consistent with their occupation standards) or cut you off in traffic and then flip you off when you honk at me. I will however, not let you merge unless you turn on your blinker… You see that little lever about 2 inches from the steering wheel? Extend your index finger and click it, it’s simple… don’t be a lazy, entitled prick. I’ve been known to get extremely heated at fast food joints when they don’t upsize my orange juice when I upsize my meal. Is your crappy, from concentrate orange juice really that expensive that you have to horde it like it’s the secret to your overly inflated profits? Does 6 more hash brown nuggets really cost 80 cents? How in the hell am I supposed to quench my salty thirst with 4 goddamn ounces of drink!! And why the hell does my value meal cost me 8 bucks now!!?? But I digress… until, possibly a future rant on that whole mess. No… Photographers are assholes, mainly to other photographers… and art directors, but behind their back…. No, I can’t get a shot from the cherries perspective while simultaneously shooting wide and telephoto, the laws of physics and optics prohibit such things from taking place. (yes, this happened to me while in a shoot for a fast food joint… that has cherries) As a photographer, we NEED an ego. It’s what gets us out of bed in the morning and helps us create the images that are requested from us. Without this ego, the lectures of our parents, friends, family, telling us we’ll only fail and end up on the streets if we pursue the arts will in fact, insure we are on the streets with a sign saying ‘will take picture for food… and crack’. It’s that ego that pays the bills… sort of. We’re moody and unpredictable, and we’ll try to steal your girlfriend. Unfortunately, it’s also that ego that creates a lot of asshole behavior between photographers. Yesterday, at networking hell, there was other photographer there in all his douchy, hipster glory. Perfectly trimmed beard, large rimmed glasses and sweater vest. What a dick. I bet his photos are shit. ‘Hi I’m Joe, heard you’re a photographer, same here’ ‘What’s your last name’ ‘Deats’ he looks up, indexing the photographers in his brain he’s heard of, then says ‘no, don’t know you’ and turns to talk to somebody else…. Yup, I bet his photos are shit. And I’m sure he punches babies while drinking a pabst blue ribbon tall can. (I looked up his photos today… Total shit… except for that one with the brilliant lighting… god, what a dick) Photographers will undercut bids just to get projects, and then brag about it. We’ll shake each others hands and then secretly try to steal their closely guarded secrets so we can put them out of business. We judge, over critique to the tiniest detail, and simply bully other photographers, but in an underhanded way. While it seems that it’s the industry that slowly turns us from wide eyed excited students with cameras looking at the world for the first time into some of the biggest pricks on the planet. This needs to stop. We’re in the same profession people. We’re artists, business owners, marketing directors, bloggers, accountants and whatever else we do to try to support ourselves. I’ve always been of the mind set that photographers should network, pass business back and forth, help each other out, teach each other what we know and become a collective of kind, supportive family that will lift each other when the other is down. With the advent of digital photography, everybody is a photographer these days, business is harder and harder to get and more and more inferior product is being pushed to the market. I don’t see this as a problem, I see this as an opportunity for those of us with greater knowledge to help teach, mentor the up-and-comers. This will raise the overall quality of work and keep prices from dropping to unlivable wages. I could go on and on about this… Simply put, if you’re a photographer and you meet another photographer, be nice. This world has enough assholes in the world, we don’t need to add to it.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 22:23:00 +0000