143/365: ANOTHER CANCELLATION

23 MAY 13

 

I totally called it. I was talking about this just the other day, that I knew this client was going to cancel on me for the now 3rd time, but I had hope that for once, things would run smoothly and we’d finally get a chance to do this engagement photo shoot after all this time. Initially I was planning to go downtown yesterday to scope out some new spots to go with her theme, but I talked myself out of doing it because I just didn’t want to waste my time, money, energy on doing this if it wasn’t going to work out for Thursday, so I stayed home. Today was looking good. I confirmed in the morning via email, sent a back and fourth around midday, and it was looking like it was going to happen, and then just 2 hours before the shoot, I get an email, that she’s cancelling and is having to re-schedule. I AM NOT in a good mood after last weekend’s triple cancellations, 2 of which rescheduled, and one who never returned my final emails. So this was like the icing on the WTF cake. So I angrily punched in the numbers on my cell phone, steaming mad, just wanting to reschedule and hang up, when she answered the phone. It wasn’t her usual voice. It was slow, and tired, and upset. I said her name into the speaker, double checking on the caller ID, to make sure I’d dialed the right number, but it was her. Instantly, I felt bad. Have you ever had a moment where you were about to dog someone out and then you realized something terrible had happened, like their dog was run over by a car, or their car was broken into, or…I thought someone had died by the tone in her voice. Instantly my anger and frustrations just vanished.

 

At 3pm I’d made a last check of things in my four bags. The camera bag, the “bathroom” bag, the cooler, and the props bag. I’d made sure everything was there, charged, in tip top shape, and I had plans to go pick up a couple of balloons to add yet another element to the already full props bag. This was going to be my first dusk to night shoot so I was amped and nervous, but trying to remain as confident as ever. I know her, but I’ve only met her fiancé before once. That’s where the nerves came from. I was running through my checklist gnawing on a piece of the focaccia bread I’d made yesterday, when I decided to give it one last check. Sure enough, there was the email. We need to reschedule. I spoke to this voice, which seemed much too emotional for one simply answering the phone. What’s wrong I inquired hoping nothing terrible had happened to make her sound this way. Her voice perked up, but not in a happy way, in a way that had an edge to it, a hard edge. She answered the way I’d intended to when she picked up the phone, with my frustration and anger at the day.

 

An hour later, I no longer felt any of the earlier frustration. That had long ago been replaced with a kind of pity and an understanding. Long story short, in the wedding planning scheme, she’d learned the tough lessons that sometimes friends are not who they appear to be, and she’d learned for sure which family was there for her, and which weren’t, and even her fiancé had learned from his job that employers don’t always give you the whole truth. A lot had been raining down on her head from these three arena’s in her life and her support system was not a nice sturdy nylon bag. It was a net filled with many many holes. I offered her my help in anyway I could give it after hearing her story. There is a point where you know that someone is reaching their breaking point, and it sounded like she was rounding that corner. She more than apologized for cancelling, and knowing the whole back story for previous cancellations, made me understand what all was happening. I've known her for a while and she is a very real person, not one to make things up, or come crashing down, so we just talked, and talked for hours. She vented about life, I vented about life, and the next thing I know, its five hours later. I don't know who felt better after the conversation, me or her, but I think we both needed to release some things into the universe and I think we both left feeling like the burdens of life weren't all on our shoulders.

 

This whole situation has brought me to a certain realization and that is that I must go back to the days where I used to charge a sitting fee. A sitting fee is a fee you charge basically to reserve a time and date on your schedule so that the client(s) knows that you wont' schedule anybody else, their time is reserved, and you will honor the times listed. What it really does is ensure that if like me, you've put all this time and effort into scouting a location, or prepping for a shoot, or showing up and they cancel 20 minutes before a shoot, you are still guaranteed that sitting fee whether they show up or not. I used to do it, but I didn't really like the practice, but now---you know, hindsight is always there----I know why so many photographers use this. I could have booked someone else, I could have spent time and effort on someone that showed up. Like I said, now knowing her situation, I can't be mad or upset at her, and she is a friend of mine before being "just a client" in any case, but going forward, given the sheer amount of time/energy going into just the prep, the sitting fee is coming back or I may require 50% deposit, one of the two. I'm sure someone out there is groaning, and shaking their head furiously, like, you idiot, but fool me once...you know the rest.

 

In other news, I was clicking through my photo stream and I notice an inordinate amount of people have looked at my image of the sun in the puddle. I hadn't put the image in any groups, hadn't advertised in anywhere, so I had no clue what was going on, so I went to Explore via Fluidr, and searched through it to try and see if I'd made it to explore, I mean, there really couldn't be any explanation for it, other then that, but I couldn't find it. I searched and searched on the date I took it, the day after that, and by that time after going through nearly a thousand images, and not seeing it, I couldn't figure out what was going on. Turns out it made it to explore on the day I had posted it, not taken it (my mistake). As of now, an amazing 905 people have looked at the image in just one day. I find this to be really amazing because the image is somewhere near the end of the list for that day. I even thought, well, I guess that's the reason for so many views, but the images surrounding my own, don't have as many. You know what---this is now the 5th image that has made it to Explore. I don't get it. I really don't. I read up a while back on what images make it in, and one person said you know you have to put tags, and put it in popular groups, but not too many, or be a photographer with not that big of a rep, and all these things, but this was an image I certainly didn't post in any group or advertise with tags, or do anything aside from post it up and talk about a book I was reading that day which has gotten to be really interesting, and it makes it in. Of course I love the image and was amazed even as I took it, but so too do I love a lot of stuff I do, but it never makes it in. I'm happy I made it to Explore. It's like the Paparazzi spotting you and taking your picture for 10 minutes and then they're gone like you never existed.

 

Image: My mammoth sunflowers are on their way up to the sky, soon to be 12 feet. From growing the 6 foot variety, I know that these things are so weak at the stage. They fall over, they don't stand straight, the wind and any drops of water knock them over, so I put down the bottle tops of some empty plastics. I use these as tiny green houses when the plants are younger then this and remove them when thy get too tall. They also serve to keep squirrels from walking through and digging up their roots to bury their pecans.

 

Done