Thursday 13 December 2007

Getting paid

Any professional photographer will have his or her own horror stories about the business of being a photographer. Unless you're a major name in advertising photography, or whatever, getting the work can be difficult. But there's another aspect which may be less obvious to the outsider: getting paid a reasonable fee for your work.

I get many approaches from magazines for editorial shoots. The exchange usually goes something like this:

Hi, I'm from XYZ Magazine. We're planning a feature on [insert subject]. We need a photographer for a whole day.

I duly confirm that I can do the job and that I'm available, then I ask how much they are paying. This elicits one of two possible responses.

Either: Well, our budget is really limited, so we're hoping that you'll do it for free. The exposure will be really good for you.

Or: Well, our budget is really limited. We can pay X. [where X is an absurdly low number that wouldn't even cover my gasoline for the day]

Two things about this nonsense irritate me. Firstly, the fact that these magazines set unrealistically low budgets for photography (and presumably for every other professional service they'll need). Secondly, the fact that this happens repeatedly indicates that there are (so-called) professional photographers out there who are accepting these offensively low rates, or working for free.

If you're one of those photographers: shame on you!

If you're one of those magazines: shame on you!

Monday 3 December 2007

Parking madness

What is it about parking in Portugal? Portuguese drivers seem to think they can double-park wherever they want, blocking other people in.

My apartment is in a backstreet of Loulé. On the ground floor is a popular café and several solicitors' offices. On my side of the street cars park along the kerb. On the far side, there is a parking bay for cars to park perpendicular to the street. All day long cars arrive to visit the café or one of the offices and, if no parking place immediately outside their intended destination is available, they simply double-park, blocking in two or three legitimately parked cars. Naturally, when the owner of one of the blocked cars wants to leave, they lean on their horn to attract the attention of the offending driver. This means that, sitting here in my office, I have to listen to the insistent blasting of car horns all day long. And frequently, when I want to go out, I find myself blocked in by one of these arrogant idiots.

Furthermore, often when I arrive home in the middle of the day and wish to park, I find an empty parking slot blocked by a double-parked car - yes! they are even too lazy to turn into a vacant spot, preferring to block it and two other cars! I've even seen an offending driver come out from the café to let someone out, then reverse back into his original position, thereby blocking the now-empty spot from being used by anyone else!

When the offenders do eventually emerge to move their car they rarely, if ever, show any sign of remorse or guilt, or even haste. On the occassions when I have challenged them for their arrogance and rudeness, they bristle with offence at my anger, claiming variously that they "were only five minutes" or "this is how it's done in Portugal".

Well, enough is enough! I'm going to start a one-man campaign against these rude, arrogant morons. If the police won't help (which I strongly doubt they will), I'm going to print up some multi-lingual notices and spend a day or two gluing them to the windshields of offending parkers.

Does any other country suffer from this kind of pig-headed, self-centred rudeness by drivers?