Part of a Dying Breed
“Well, we lost three Photographers this week.” The Passer says with a shake of her head. “Two of them were good, too.”
“It’s not a job for everyone.” I say. “Some of these young people, they have this thing called, oh, a life.”
Most of the Photographers that I have met since I have been at the Company are now gone. I remember the first time I went to a meeting and how shocked I was at how old everyone was. This is not an easy job, so I was surprised to see so many bald heads and heads with snow white hair. I am pretty much leaning toward the bald side myself now, but I don’t really think of myself as all that old. These guys were old.
Among them were two Photographers that I thought would be perfect for The Company’s new scheduling and both of them are now gone. These were Photographers who took their time, watched the details, and were always behind on the old Assembly Line Portrait model of shooting fifty sits a day. One of them found they couldn’t make any money with the new system, the other is an old man and just can’t do the work any more.
One of the Photographers that left this week was one of the New Stars, one of the Favored Few who got the good accounts because he took the portraits that the Company is bitching and moaning at me for not taking. This has happened a couple of times now, the great new Hot Shot Assembly Line Portrait Photographer who quits after getting the best The Company has to offer. The depressing bit is that The Company never goes back to the Old Timers and hands those good accounts back to us. They hire someone else to be the next star that will quit in a few months, or weeks.
Out of the group of about 20 Photographers that were working in my part of The Company when I came on board, only 6 remain five years later-counting me. And two of those are older men who are not well, one of which has only shot a handful of Shoots this year and the other one hasn’t shot at all this year.
We are, by and large, a grumpy lot. When we get together we talk about how much The Company sucks and how much the Supervisors suck and how we would like to shoot all the PreSellers. So it is possible that The Company will be better off without we curmudgeonly few.
The problem, of course, is that the FNGs are also a bunch of unhappy people, and they are much quicker to throw up their hands and say to hell with this. This is in part due to the fact that they tell so many new people they are going to be making a lot more money than they actually will. Yes, the Anointed One or Two will make a good living doing this. This is because they are given the Best Shoots-like every week. And since this blessed handful of people are also Trainers, when the FNG asks how much money they made last year, the Anointed One can honestly say that they made 50K last year-while the rest of us made a good deal less.
Another problem with the Old Timers is that we don’t take direction well. A Supervisor I seldom see came by my Studio the other day and spent the whole time he was there trying to improve my photography. My regular readers can rightly assume that I did not take kindly to this Button Pusher trying to tell me how to take Portraits. Among his many odd comments to me was that I should tell all my Passers to mind their own business and not mess with my Portraits. Really? Well, unlike the Wandering Advice Givers, I actually have to work with these people and they are none too impressed by Photographers who try to tell them what to do. He seemed to be genuinely surprised when I ignored all his suggestions-just as I was genuinely surprised that he was trying to tell me what to do.
No, I will not do you a favor.
The Company cares very little about the people who work for it. We are easily replicable parts with no real cost associated to us-much like any other cog on any assembly line. Of course, there is also very little they can do when someone quits. It’s unlikely that any company in any industry will beg someone to stay once they have decided to leave. It would be nice if they would stop going out of their way to piss us off, though.
In the Old Days, about a year ago, the Boss and the Supervisors could only look at our portraits if they went to a Shoot and looked at portraits on a Passer’s computer during lulls in the day. They would then find two or three random sits and give us a list of items we needed to pay attention to and how we could improve our portraits. We would toss these in the trash as soon as they left and go about our business.
When the word came down from On High that we were free to be creative and do whatever we wanted-well, there was no reason to bother looking at sample sittings anymore. So all of us got really sloppy and shot whatever we wanted to, however we wanted to. Oh, Happy Day.
But that was then. Now The Company is on a big Back To Basics kick and we are once more expected to follow that rulebook we all toss out the window a year or so ago. To make matters worse, Management can now look at all of our images online. There is no longer any barrier to how many sittings can be critiqued-except for time and interest. Our Boss and the two Supervisors seem to have nothing but time on their hands as they have been sending out new critiques on a regular basis.
I haven’t talk to the Photographers that quit, and I am unlikely to talk to them, but I tend to think that at least part of the problem is this sudden urge to tell us how much our pictures suck. In my own case they have sent me to Shoots where I have had very little chance of success and all the cards stacked against me. This tends to make some of us shoot a little below our potential. To this, of course, The Company says if you had just done a better job, then you would have had better sells. How simple life would be if the only thing holding us back was the fact that we are all Assembly Line Portrait Photographers.
I had a couple of good days last week. I was at a well-to-do Shoot. I had just about the best Passer in the Company working with me. All the people who made appointments showed up when they were supposed to show up. I took a few different shots, as I am tweaking the Standard Set-and here, at least, it seemed to work.
I also took a number of the shots I am regularly told not to take. We Old Timers can be a bit stubborn at time.