How I tricked myself into taking 'free' photographs

Photographers in general are approached by many, and not all of them are people who understand the amount of work it takes. This is no surprise, as we all have smartphones with "megapixels", and can take stunning photographs in a heartbeat. With, or without filter, and so on. Right?

Well, you see, there is a huge difference, to start with filters, they are physical instruments for me, that I can apply to a light source to alter the results of the photographs that I take. So, no offense if you don't know about gels, light modifiers, reflectors, technical understanding of light, etcetera. I know a lot of you do appreciate good photography.


Anyway, so I met this guy when I was doing business with an old friend of mine. And he was a talker. Big talker. Money here, cars there, big tittie ex-girlfriends, oh well... kudos to him for living at his mom when he invited me over to offer me "a unique opportunity". I thought to myself, well... why not? Let's take the bait, and see where this is going. "Can you give me the bottle afterward, since you're expecting me to do free photography?" (High-end bottle photography is pretttyyyy hard)- "no can John Doe, I need these bottles, one for myself, and one to giveaway, besides they go for over 100 Euros" he replied. Oh man, that's one major first red flag.


But I was intrigued by his way of selling himself with his big talk. At the same time, I was like, you're expecting me to take some photographs that I usually sell for 100 E a pop + my time for free and nothing at all but a unique amazing opportunity to work for this brand? He has absolutely no idea how much it costs to produce anything for high-end brands... he has to be kidding me I thought. At the same time, I thought, I could use a test object to photograph. From the conversations we had, it was always the same type of conversation, even though he called me and required my help or whatever, he was always the extremely busy one (old classic), had very little time, and told me what to do, and with a "take it or leave it" attitude.


At this point, I've collected flags from all across the world that has red in them.

But either way, I decided to take some time off, and photograph these bottles. The labels were horribly placed, damaged, and extremely dirty. For a guy that "knows best and works at the top of the top AAA", it surely was an amateur job. My grandmother would've grabbed better wine bottles from the liquor store.


I have always assumed that people who do "big business" understand the amount of work anyone has to do to reach a certain point, and that such type of labor should always be rewarded. Anyway, I send him the photographs and never heard from him again, other than the "can I pick up the bag and the bottles of wine?".

The joke's on me though, because I got never rewarded for my work.

The company didn't even know the guy. LOL


Anyway, here are the photographs that I took.

Do note, they are photographs for a pitch, just three simple visual concepts (product, social media, and commercial utility of the product shot). So yeah, they do not represent the work I sell. But I thought to share this story with some cool photographs with you anyway.

Cheers,
Ruben

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