A friend calls me in a panic; the designer his boss, [Client], hired to do a presentation for a pitch isn’t giving the boss exactly what he wants. After a few vague instructions, I give [Client] different options. I realize that [Client] doesn’t understand that Photoshop can’t create photorealistic imagery with the exact composition and details he wants — well, at least, not within a few hours.

[Client] agrees to a collage of existing photos but then continues to ask why each photo doesn’t match his specific requests.

Me: “To achieve what you’re looking for, you need to stage the entire thing in real life and photograph it.”

Client: “Cool, so the machine can do that, yeah? Can you get this to me in an hour?”

I told my friend the bad news. [Client] refused to pay for the five hours of work I did giving him different options.

I was called into an office to do the executives’ headshots. The owner was a man in his seventies.

Owner: “I want to look young and vibrant in my pictures!”

After explaining what I could do (and what I have done), I glamour-lit him in the way I would a fifty-year-old woman, and afterward, I removed most of his wrinkles and liver spots.

After I delivered his images to him, I got a call.

Owner: “Everyone else looks great in their pictures, but I’m upset. I don’t have hair in my headshot!”

He’s completely bald.

Sometimes, a feel-good story can make a person smile, so here is my feel-good story.

I was working the late shift at a call center for a major retail chain’s website. Hey, it was money, and I had to pay bills. Our computers were crashing with every other order, and yet we had to keep taking calls.

I got a call from a woman who wanted to get a few electronics. Apparently, the website wasn’t behaving and she couldn’t get an order to go through. I was starting to help her when, yet again, our system went down. I told her we could either chat until it was back up, or she could call back later, but she elected to chat. It was slow, so our call times were not being monitored as heavily.

Caller: “What do you do as a hobby?”

Me: “I’m an avid photographer.”

Caller: “Oh, I love photography! I used to do modeling, and I always admired the photographers’ equipment. I hoped to do that after school, but I’m in a wheelchair now due to an accident.”

She started crying.

Caller: “My dream of being a photographer is gone because I can’t walk anymore.”

Me: “No, it isn’t. Just because you can’t walk, it doesn’t mean you can’t take photos.”

Caller: “Really?!”

I started talking about cameras and basic photography, and when the system finally came back up, I started taking her through some of the equipment the site had, told her what was good for beginners, and even told her some of my favorite photographers who are also disabled.

By the time she was ready to go through an order, she was getting camera equipment as well as the other items she had wanted to order. She was SO happy that she asked to talk to my supervisor after, and apparently, she went and gave me a big compliment to my supervisor. She went from crying because she thought her dream of doing photos was over to cry-laughing because I told a few corny photo jokes and got her to realize that she can still do what she wanted to do. I got a huge email later from my supervisor about it.

You get a lot of jerks — and I mean A LOT of jerks — when you work in a call center, especially since they think they can treat you however they want since they can’t see you, but calls like that really made the job not so bad after all.

A middle-aged woman enters the store.

Customer: “I want to print some photos on one of your machine things, but I’m not sure how to do it.”

She is gesturing toward the instant machines, and she is holding a digital camera in her hand.

Me: “You need to put the memory card in there, and the rest of the options appear automatically.”

Customer: “Can you show me how?”

 I take the camera and show her how to open the hatch at the bottom to take the memory card out. She immediately starts freaking out.

Customer: *Shouting* “You’ve ruined all of my photographs now! Opening it like that in the light! You should know better! They’re all gone!” 

I did try to explain, but she kept cutting me off. She finally stormed out of the shop amidst threats of legal action for ruining an entire holiday’s worth of photographs.

I’m an equestrian events photographer. My state doesn’t really have horse races, but we have a number of fairly large jumping competitions. (For those who speak Equinese, we have hunter/jumper derbies and grand prix.) Due to the nature of the sport, one of the first things a successful equestrian learns is how to land safely because falling off or being thrown is more or less inevitable. We keep photographing through a fall because they’re our best sellers: families buy them to embarrass the rider, and trainers buy them to show their rider exactly what went wrong that caused the fall. Fortunately, nine times out of ten, the only injury sustained is bruised pride.

I’m at a show doing my thing as usual when a rider gets thrown going over a jump. (It was a hunter class, so I believe it was at most a three-foot height.) I get the entire fall on camera, and I note that the rider cracked her head on the standard — translation: the tall frame of the jump — as she fell, striking the back of her helmet near where the base of the skull meets the neck.

EMTs quickly check her out and move her out of the ring. She’s really wobbly, so I offer her my camping chair. Both the rider and the EMTs thank me and sit her down while I move to keep shooting.

I’m not trying to eavesdrop, but I hear snippets of the conversation between the rider and the EMTs, which I would have politely ignored had I not heard the rider say the words:

Rider: “No, I didn’t hit my head.”

I whip my head around to face her.

Me: “Yes, you did.”

Rider: *Surprised* “I did?”

EMT #1: *Concerned* “She did?”

Me: “You absolutely did. I have pictures.”

EMT #2: *Very interested* “You got pictures of the fall? I’d love to see those if I could.”

I scroll back through my camera reel.

Me: “One hundred percent. Just let me find them real quick.” 

For that one time out of ten where injuries worse than ego are sustained, on-site EMTs will often ask my coworkers and me if we got pictures of the accident so they can see exactly what happened. Sometimes a rider will have a particularly painful injury that blocks out another, less severe injury that still needs treatment, or sometimes a rider will hit their head really, really hard, and they need to know exactly where.

Fortunately, my boss is freaking awesome and will gladly provide any pictures needed for medical reasons free of charge, so I make a note of the file numbers in case the rider or her doctor end up needing them later.

[EMT #2] looks at the pictures and gets a grim expression.

EMT #2: *To [Rider]* “Yeah, you’re going to the hospital for an X-ray right now.” *To me* “Thank you so much for these, and for saying something.”

Me: “No problem. If you need the pictures, just email my boss and she’ll give them to you.” 

I hand him a business card.

EMT #2: “Thank you. We might.”

The EMTs got the rider loaded up in a golf cart and took her back to the main building, where I surmise she was eventually put in an ambulance and taken to the hospital.

I texted my boss about the situation and the possibility that she might need to pull some files for medical; she thanked me for the heads-up and praised me for helping out.

The next day, [EMT #2] found me again and told me that, while he couldn’t disclose details for legal reasons, the rider had gotten her bells rung really good but hadn’t suffered any permanent damage. Wear your helmets, folks!