Why I’ve stopped shooting TFCD

April 15, 2008 | Category: Site News

In no particular order.

I need my weekends back. At least some of them. I’d go for two or three months straight where I couldn’t make any other plans because I was preparing for weekend shoots. For me a shooting day starts off very early in the AM to clean and prepare for the shoot… and ends around midnight when I’m done prepping the CD to send out to the model. I try really hard to get the photos out within 24 to 48 hours.
Too many No-Shows. Even ONE is too many… but I spent more than a few Saturdays and Sundays waiting around for a model that didn’t show up.
Having fewer shoots means that I can spend more time working on touching up old photos. I have a massive backlog of photos that I want to work on but never seem to get a chance.
I’m trying to avoid burnout. There are just so many ways to photograph a person given my limited budget and lately I feel like I’ve been repeating myself.
Not being booked solid weeks and months ahead means that I can accept paid jobs when they come up instead of having to put off a PAYING client just to work with a TFCD. And yes… I know I could move the TFCD, but some of those models are ones that I’ve waited months to work with.
I’ve more than accomplished the goal that I set for myself when I decided to do TFCD. I wanted to expand my portfolio and meet some new people to work with. At this point, I’ve lost track of how many people I’ve photographed.
I could use some money to buy new equipment. Let’s face it… I’m not going to get rich doing this… but I’d like to be able to replace equipment when it breaks and upgrade to new lenses and a new camera body at some point. New lights and backdrops would be nice as well.