I’m was terribly leaned to say so these last weeks.

I had been looking for a rockstar/excellent/fancy/good/nice/decent/okwhatever photographer this week… anything so I could see how things work in Chicago, so I could choose a local photographer for a new client. It’s insane how the search turned out, it almost made me want to commit art murder.

See, I already have a photographer, he’s nice and good and rockstary and easy to work with. Plus, he likes Star Wars.
Anyway, the problem is that he’s in Mexico. And even though bringing him for a weekend might be as expensive as having a photographer in Chicago for an hour, if I tell my client that “it’s going to be expensive because I have to bring a dude from Mexico”, it might not work out that well.

So, I emailed like Gmail itself. I got tagged so much that my spam count for the past 15 days almost got me to buy an inverted tomato plant… and yet, I received blasphemous emails charging $175 or $5,200 or $16,700 for the same thing.
This is, of course, expected.

What I did not expect were some of the new modern photography rules, like:
- “I will deliver 20 hi-res pictures, the rest will only be web-ready”
- “Every picture will be delivered in a CD, and each CD costs $50″
- “You can only use the photos for 3 years. I don’t sell pictures for-like-ever”
- “I’ll do it but I normally only do tasteful nude pictures”

Best quote? The $16K one. Only because it quoted $150 for crew meals, and $2,000 for a chair and a dresser. Let’s go nuts!

Lucky me, I’m so lucky when I need to. And the photo gods smiled at me and sent me James. Ahhh.

I thought about keeping him a secret and sell him to you, but who am I to con people? Services should be treated with respect. We work in a crazy industry where we sell services, things no one can see; we charge higher or lower than other professionals, but people normally rate themselves according to the value they can provide, and when it comes to sending out a quote, you have to be honest.
If you don’t have it, don’t sell it as if you do. And if you do have it, sell it with respect. Things like these take credibility out of our industry and affects every aspect of it, leading clients to LogoInAnHour.com and such.

Last Thursday, when the actual photo shoot happened, I was able to look at my client straight in the eye… and smile at my Canon Rebel again.