No, you can't have the out takes
 

I recently completed an assignment, pro bono, for a wanna be model. The deal was she models for free and I shoot for free and we both have something for our portfolios. After culling a few hundred shots and picking out about 15 or 20 which were ok, (the low count mainly had to do with this person's complete misdirection in career choice.) I then spent several hours in photoshop correcting and cropping and what have you.

I sent her a disk with her pictures. Today I get an email thanking me and asking me, pretty please if she can have the rest of the photos for her portfolio, and as if it would make it better for me she told me I don't have to color correct them.

I had almost forgotten about people like her and now I am wanting to slam my head against something hard.

How can she not understand that I don't want second rate work to be seen by people? Is she possibly stupid? She went to the effort to bring clean clothes and wore makeup and bathed. If second rate is ok in her book then why did she bother getting dressed?

even if you watermark 'em...


pretty please....

Maybe if she saw a couple she'd decide they were not worth putting in her portfolio.

How many does she need for her portfolio anyway? 15-20 sounds like plenty to me, unless there were a lot of scene/costume/etc. changes. (disclaimer: I know nothing. I'm shooting from the hip.)

It sounds like she'd be better off doing a different gig to show off something different--either with you or with another photog.

EDIT:.. umm.. was there any paperwork? model release, etc.?

Ms Model:

I am an artist, like you, and my medium is a subtractive one. I remove everything but your inner beauty, much like a sculptor removes everything but the statue inside a block of marble.

I would no more have you pollute your portfolio with the "outtakes" as you describe them, which in any case, have already been removed from my system, than I would expect you to carry around a trash bag of marble chips, the residue of the sculpting process. Likewise, I have no interest in any snapshots you have taken of your preparation process.

It is the final result that each of us wants to display to prospective clients. No one wants to see the process, only the final product. Thank you for your understanding.

Yours,

footfootfoot, artist

Very well written V - I think that is an excellent response.
But I am not an artist'

Dear Ms.Model,

Those *were* the outtakes.

F3

Was there nudity involved?

About time someone asked that.

Thank god, no.

Fortunately, all you really have to do is say "no." After all, would you want to work with her again? Probably not.

I completely understand your feelings about having second-rate work attributed to you. I have similar problems sometimes -- I'll do a project for a client, and since my stuff is "work for hire" that client owns it all as soon as the check clears. That client may then edit, re-work, and otherwise totally mangle the masterpiece I've delivered to him...and still say that I wrote it. Chances are he won't go out and tell people I wrote it, thank goodness, but I can't use it for my own portfolio. I have so many samples I'm posting in my portfolio in the "raw" form, as submitted to the client, instead of the pretty final piece, because the client screwed it up before sending it to print. Frustrating.

Sigh, yes it's true. I know what you mean about the work for hire problem too; I have done a few jobs where the stipulation was "no attribution." Bills need to be paid.

It turns out that she wanted a shot where she had a more serious expression. Rather than ask specifically for what she wanted she just asked for everything. OOOOkaaaay.

Anyway, I do have a shot which is fine for her to have if she wants to look serious.

Thanks everyone for humoring me.

hehehe... not humoring at all.

See, that's where I get in trouble most often. My first response to requests is to *cough* assume *cough* that what is being asked for is what is wanted. It's a reasonable enough place to start such a conversation, but it rarely ends there. Your conversation started in one place and ended in a very different place. Why couldn't it have just started where it ended? Why not ask in the first place what you want in the last place?

As a negotiation tactic, I find that to be extra work. I only have so much work in me... I don't need extra. Being direct has a powerful appeal.

Exactly.