I am a wedding photographer. At the time of this story, I was relatively new to the industry, and I would get bookings based on the quality of my portfolio but not the quantity. Therefore, I would accept half my fee as a deposit, and I would ask for the other half when I was ready to send over the final photos.

Me: “Hi, [Client]! I’m happy to say that I’ve finished touching up your photos, and they’re ready for you whenever you are!”

Client: “Oh, wow, that was fast! Please send me the link!”

Me: “I would be happy to. I just need to settle the other half of my fee, first.”

Client: “Oh, yes, I’ll get that over to you soon.”

Since I was early, I didn’t think much of it. However, a few days past the original delivery date:

Client: “You promised me the photos were ready early! But I still don’t have them!”

Me: “Oh, I’m sorry if there was a miscommunication. Yes, the photos have been ready for almost a week! I just need to settle the bill, and I can send them straight away!”

Client: “I can pay you at the end of the month.”

Me: “That’s fine.”

Annoying, but fine. The next day:

Client: “I still haven’t got the photos!”

Me: “Yes, because you said you would pay at the end of the month.”

Client: “You mean you won’t send them until I’ve sent you the money?!”

Me: “That’s usually how it works, yes.”

The client hung up on me. At the end of the month, I sent them a reminder email, and I sent another one the week after that. No response. I figured maybe they were going through some post-wedding budgeting issues, and they would get back to me when they could. I had plenty of other projects to keep me occupied anyway.

Three whole months later, I received a very angry call from an older woman. I recognize her as the mother of the bride.

Mother Of The Bride: “You absolute monster! You’re holding my daughter’s wedding photos ransom so you can get more money from her?! You send over every photo right this instant, or I am taking you to court!”

Me: “I think there’s been a misunderstanding. Your daughter hasn’t paid me yet, which is why I haven’t sent the photos. I’m not holding any photos ransom!”

Mother Of The Bride: “That’s a lie! I paid you [amount] myself months before the wedding!”

Me: “That was a deposit, ma’am — 50%. I am owed the other 50% before I can send the photos.”

Mother Of The Bride: “You’re just making things up to get more money!”

Me: “If you check the contract that your daughter signed, you’ll see it’s quite clearly written there that my services are [full amount], with half paid before and the rest upon delivery.”

Mother Of The Bride: “Well… even if that’s true, that’s a ridiculous amount of money to charge for a few photos!”

Me: “I actually come in cheaper than the competition, ma’am.”

She hung up, and I didn’t hear back again so I assumed she had checked the contract and discovered I was right, and she was now figuring out what to do.

Amazingly, another three months went by, and I received yet another call, this time from the bride again.

Client: “How dare you?! You’re stealing my photos!”

Me: “Are we really going to go through this again?”

Client: “I can see my photos on your website! You have no right to use them! Take them down now!”

Me: “Oh, you mean my online portfolio. Yes, well, since you didn’t pay for them, I own them until you do. The pictures at your wedding came out so lovely that I had to use them on my site. They’ve helped me drum up quite a bit of business!”

For clarity, none of the pictures showed the faces of the client or her guests. I’d put up some candids of shoes, the cake, her dress, and a few other non-identifying features.

Client: “You’re profiting off of my photos!”

Me: “Yes, just like I was originally supposed to!”

A year after the wedding, the groom finally paid. He had no idea what was happening, but when he asked where the wedding photos were, he heard the long, drawn-out story. He was incredibly apologetic on the phone.

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Client: “I’ve been looking at all these photos being taken by A.I.”

Me: “They’re generated by A.I., not taken by a camera, but yes, I’ve seen them, too.”

Client: “Well, if A.I. can make me anything I want, why do I need you for my projects?”

Me: “Well, A.I. can be very random, and it’s full of strange artefacts that you might not want in your photos.”

Client: “It sounds to me that you just don’t want to admit that your job has become obsolete.”

Me: “And it sounds to me like you just don’t want to pay your creatives.”

My once-regular photography work from that client suddenly dries up, but I am fine with my wedding and magazine work. (Try getting an A.I. to take nice pictures at a wedding!)

A few weeks later, the client is back on a call.

Client: “You do photo touch-ups, right? I need you to do some fixes to our photos, but at a discount since you’re only touching them up, not taking them.”

What they send me is the most laughable attempt at A.I.-generated photography I have ever seen. Some of these artificial people are outright monstrosities.

Me: “What do you need me to do with these… uh… images?”

I refuse to call them “photos”.

Client: “Just fix some of the things that look a bit weird.”

Me: “Like how this person has sixteen fingers?” 

Client: “…”

Me: “On one hand?”

Client: “Look, just tell me when you can get them done by!”

Me: “Ask your A.I. to fix them for you.” 

I did not take that job, nor did I take any other job from them again.

I am on the phone with a woman who wants to hire me to take pictures at her high school reunion. She is at a McDonalds while we are on the phone, and she is SCREAMING at the employees:

Client: *To the poor McDonalds workers.* “You didn’t give me my ketchup packets!”

Employee: *Through the phone.* “The condiments are available at the side counter.”

Client: “Not good enough! I’m not paying for you to be lazy! You put them in my bag for me!”

I should’ve known then not to take the job, but I was very young and naive and in total disbelief that actual grown humans actually behaved this way. I ended up leaving the reunion in tears after she screamed in my face too. 

The same woman was in the local news a few years later; she was arrested for violently beating her nanny IN FRONT OF THE NANNY’S CHILD! Just a terrible, terrible human.

A client for a municipal website asked me to clean up a photo of the city hall, and he sent me two photos. One of them was a blurry photo that looked like it was taken on a smartphone by a running drunk, and the other was the same city hall photo but in a full rainstorm.

Me: “I can’t use either of these photos.”

Client: “Why not? Didn’t you say you were good at Photoshop?”

Me: “I am, but I can’t fix a horribly blurred low-resolution photo or clean up heavy rain where you can barely even see the building behind it.”

Client: “That’s a shame. You came highly regarded to us, and I thought you were capable of more.”

Me: “Why don’t you just take another photo? Or, I can even do it myself since I don’t live far from the city hall.”

Client: “No, that’s okay. I no longer have any faith in your abilities.”

I work as a freelance photographer’s assistant. Last year, I had a new photographer call and ask me to assist her on a portrait shoot for a big national magazine. I thought, “Great! A new client and more work!” I looked at her website, and she seemed like a professional who did lots of interesting work. I thought maybe this could lead to a great working relationship.

This portrait shoot went smoothly, and everyone left happy that we had done a good job. I backed up all the files, she paid me cash so I was very happy, and we all went our separate ways home.

Later that night, I got a call from the photographer.

Client: “Where are all the photos?”

I talked her through to the folder on her computer where I had saved everything.

Client: “They’re not there.”

Me: “Well, are there any files in that folder?”

Client: “There’s a load of other files. No photos, though.”

Me: “What do you mean by ‘other files’?”

Client: “They all end with .cr2.”

CR2 files are Canon RAW files.

Me: “…how long have you been shooting digitally?”

Client: “About six years.”

She had never, in years of shooting digitally, shot RAW. She explained that she only ever shot in JPG and didn’t know what a RAW file was. I asked her what her normal post-production workflow was, and she didn’t understand. I asked her how she normally edited her photos after shoots.

Client: “Email. So what is a RAW file, then?”

A professional photographer who shot with a high-end DSLR, working for one of the big national magazines, asked me what a RAW file was.

I never worked for her again.