Re: [Leica] Re: Don't quit you night job!

[Harrison McClary <hmcclary@earthlink.net>]

David Medley wrote

>Over a cold beer I would hear how he had lost a local job because there was
>no one in town that was good enough to shoot it. The client would then call
>Blackstar in NY  and  have a "good" photographer do the job. Well, you know
>who ended up shooting it don't you? Somehow he was much better at his craft
>when the call came from NY .

Your friend spoke the truth.  For example the past two days I have been 
working on a corporate shoot on photos of toll gate booths for a company 
based in San Diego, Donal's stomping grounds.  Anyway their manufacturing 
facility is in Tullohoma, about 50 miles from Nashville.  They got my 
name from the internet and called for a quote and samples.  I have a lot 
of crap going on in my personal life now so I referred them to Ben 
Chapnick at Black Star for the quote and samples since I did not have the 
time or energy to get the stuff together for them.  I got the job, I 
think due in a large part to the fact that they called a New York agency 
to get the info.  I no longer was just some small town (Nashville is a 
small town relatively speaking) photographer, I was a "New York" 
photographer---whatever that means.

One good thing about this is that I show up shoot the shots stick the 
film in a fed ex box and invoice the expenses and forget about the rest 
of it, kinda nice to not have to worry about haggling over money, 
billing, photo usage, and things, but boy do you loose a percent on the 
shoot.

Now to the Leica related part of this post.  
     
     ******I LOVE THE R8.....IT IS A LIFE SAVER!!!!*****

I show up yesterday to shoot the product shots (I had to do a day of 
product photography then a day around the plant shooting people working 
making these things.)  and my Minolta lighter meter is having a bad day.  
I did not have a back up since someone stole my other light meter a few 
months back and I have not replaced it ..... yet.  I was really getting 
pissed when I remembered the R8 has a built in flash meter TTL system.  I 
used this to get a base reading and since it was product and not moving I 
could bracket and it worked beautifully.  This one feature was one of the 
reasons for my switch from Canon EOS to Leica R and it more than paid for 
itself yesterday.  All of the auto focus in the world would not have 
helped me in that situation!!

Now all I need is a MOTOR, note I said motor and not winder. I know the 
winder is out, but at 4fps the motor is damn near a winder IMO, and the 
winder is a little better than the old thumb advance device.

And Donal, don't feel bad about losing the clients, I lost an album cover 
shoot this week because I REFUSED to come off a quote on a total sell out 
of world wide rights to a band who was coming all the way from Japan to 
Nashville to record an album.  I don't know who they got but if they were 
charging less than me they were giving their work away for a total sell 
out, go figure....I even double checked my fees with Black Star to be 
sure I was in the ball park and they said I quoted exactly what they 
would have done.....maybe I should have let the client call them then I 
would probably be working tomorrow and Saturday ;).  The thing that 
pissed me off about this was they had faxed me a note saying they wanted 
to reserve my services for the dates in question, then the next day said 
that the "money" people from Japan demanded more quotes.  If you don't 
like my fees don't hire me then ask for a new quote...VERY 
unprofessional!!!

Such is my life, gold and garbage..just wish I could figure out which is 
which!!

Harrison McClary
http://people.delphi.com/hmphoto