The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Shoot

“We have water and soft drinks in the cooler there.” The Shoot Coordinator says and points to a large blue ice chest. “There are cookies and chips on the table there and we will be bringing you something for dinner around six.  Just tell us what you want.”

“This is all very good.” I say in honest shock and pleasant surprise.  “You didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”

“Oh it’s no trouble.  We just saw there wasn’t a lunch break on your schedule so we decided we needed to take of you.”

If the Coordinator of a Shoot greets us at the door with food, this is almost always a good sign.  An Organization with money to spare for food means a Membership with money to spare for Portraits-and more importantly, a membership willing to spend that money.  Off hand I can’t think of a single Shoot were we were fed that wasn’t a good shoot.  That is to say, a shoot were the people were nice and they bought portraits.

It’s amazing how quickly you get used to a good shoot, how you expect everyone to buy, how much a bottle of water improves your mood.   The better you feel, the better the Subject feels, the more likely they are to like their portraits.  This, you quickly come to realize, is the way every Shoot should be.

Actually, that is not a good Shoot, that is a Great Shoot.  The Good Shoots are the common fare of the Assembly Line Portrait business.  The people are nice enough, maybe the buy a little, maybe they buy a lot, maybe they don’t buy anything.  They are there for The Freebie, and that is what gets them in the door.  We are usually offered coffee, and that is about it.  They don’t pay much attention to us, and we don’t pay much attention to them.  At a good shoot, we make as much money as we can and we don’t look back when we leave.

The Bad Shoot doesn’t happen that often either, but they stick in your mind.  The people who are rude the second they walk in the door demanding to know how far behind schedule we are, the Coordinator who bitches and moans if you stop to go to the rest room or take a cup of coffee or stop to talk to a coworker.  The bad shoot has everyone show up in the last two hours and them bitch and moan that they weren’t given very good service.  Needless to say, a bad shoot is one where the sales are so low that we are only paid out small daily salary and we make no comission.

The Ugly Shoot rolls around once in a blue moon.  It’s the Shoot were you want to punch someone and keep kicking them once they are down.  It’s the shoot were everyone walks in looking for a fight.  It’s the Shoot where the Coordinator tells you they’ve kicked The Company out of their Store/Church/Shopping Center before and they aren’t afraid to do so again.  It’s the Shoot were no one wants to buy anything and The Company lost money and wasted our time sending us there-again.  It’s the Shoot with no air in the summer and no heat in the winter.  Where the floor sinks when you walk on it.  Where it smells like rot and decay.  Where you setup next the dumpster on a hot day.  Where The Photographer is tempted to say-To Hell With This, I’m not shooting here.

But as with everything else in the Assembly Line Portraits business, you can never tell.  Good shoots can be had at poor churches, going out of business Department Stores, and Malls that only have ten businesses left out of a hundred.  You just have to give it your best shot, you have to take the Portraits and hope that the Passer can sell them.  And you can curse the Preseller to an early death for booking you there in the first place.

That Dream Account where they gave us food and bought everything we showed them was booked by the best Preseller I ever worked with.  He lasted all of three months and I got to work several of his accounts.  I don’t know why he left, but it likely had something to do with his telling the Clients to be nice to the Photographers and Passers.  The lowlife Presellers that are still here tell them not to offer us anything.

In the Good Old Days-three years ago-there would be two or three Good Shoots a week and several not so good shoots.  Now we do good to have One Good Shoot a week and the Great Shoots are often one or two days instead of one or two weeks.  The Bad Shoots are also only one or two days, but this is not good news either.  Setting Up and Tearing Down is never all that much fun.

Still, I am working at the moment, and that is good.   Heading into Summer usually means fewer Shoots-good, bad, or ugly.