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Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

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Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#381

Post by ipaddr »

BeetleB wrote: post #368
ipaddr wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As seen on Netflix's Love is Blind plus the press interviews is a great deal. The question is how much would you pay for this opportunity? This buys you an instant reputation.

I'm not convinced. Wedding photography is quite expensive, so people will think quite a bit on who to get and what they're getting out of it. Pretty much everyone I know will not want to pay extra for someone "with a reputation" unless they can demonstrate that they'll do something better than the average wedding photographer. I'm willing to bet whoever is on this show will not really be better. Of course, there are…

Looking from my own experience so many photographers are available it is hard to determine who may or may not be credible. Having a tv show connection provides that extra confidence that the photos will turn out well. It is one of those moments you can't do over.

But if the portfolio wasn't as high quality as others the tv connection wouldn't matter.

I would pay a little more to reduce risk.

And the biggest draw is brand. I might not have heard of you if not for your connection to the show. This gives you free worldwide branding. You could setup an online store and sell products or sell advice as a side business.

Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#382

Post by petee »

anigbrowl wrote: post #345
SirSourdough wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see how the fact that this behaviour has been normalized in a notoriously abusive industry makes it any less predatory... I agree it’s not new but it can still be an important discussion. It shouldn’t continue to happen just because it has been happening.

It is abusive, but the flip side of that is that the barriers to entry are informal. If you can perform and you're willing to work, you can find a way in. If you're good, you'll get other jobs. If you're good and easy to work with, people will come looking for you.

It works like this sometimes, but people often look down on the fact that you gave away your work; if you're offering zero-cost, then you're probably zero-value, and undercutting someone else. True or not that's the impression given.

People tend to view someone with self respect more favorably, from what I've seen personally

Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#383

Post by anigbrowl »

petee wrote: post #382
anigbrowl wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is abusive, but the flip side of that is that the barriers to entry are informal. If you can perform and you're willing to work, you can find a way in. If you're good, you'll get other jobs. If you're good and easy to work with, people will come looking for you.

It works like this sometimes, but people often look down on the fact that you gave away your work; if you're offering zero-cost, then you're probably zero-value, and undercutting someone else. True or not that's the impression given. People tend to view someone with self respect more favorably, from what I've seen personally

True too. That's why it's a good idea to work free or cheap with peers, then charge a nominal fee, and work up.

Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#384

Post by petee »

l0c0b0x wrote: post #178

I think the scale of the 'Exposure' does matter here (please don't just downvote, hear me out). Exposure = Advertisement, right? Wouldn't you pay for advertisement? Now, if you invest very little for advertisement, you might get very little in return. Say, your investment is doing a free 'exposure' gig for a return of 20-30 potential customers. This might not be equitable to your time/equipment/team/etc. Now, in the…

Exposure doesn't work when you realize you've signed a contract saying you can't advertise that you worked on this TV show. The only exposure you'll get is that the production now knows you're a sucker to call again.

Do people really think the show will let the photographer blast their pictures with "Joes photography did this" all over the internet? Best you'll be able to do is tell your friends verbally.

Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#385

Post by petee »

walkon wrote: post #344
pavel_lishin wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it's the norm doesn't mean it's not predatory.

If someone makes you an offer and you say, "no" and they walk away, that isn't predatory.

If you offer someone with the expectation they can't say no, that is in fact predatory. Many of these people have been loongg without work, I doubt they didn't expect people to bite thinking this is their big Hollywood break.

I can offer a bum $1000 to stab a guy for YouTube, but if he happens to say no and walks away, that's not predatory? I know it's a stretch, but that is the core argument you are making

Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#386

Post by jsdwarf »

tpmx wrote: post #377
jsdwarf wrote: post #312

To all the folks who would do it "for the exposure": my partner volunteered as a graphic designer for a well-known European charity event that featured a former US president, known music groups and fashion designers as pro bono acts and had a live TV broadcast. She really liked to volunteer and we received free tickets for said event and definitely enjoyed it. She added the project to her CV, but unfortunately it had…

You're saying she should have made money from this charity event she volunteered for? Or just avoided it, because she didn't get any meaningful "exposure" out of it? For the second time in this posting, as a (northern) European I'm quite puzzled about all of this. I think we may have wildly differing thoughts about what concepts like "volunteering" and "charity" mean.

No - my point is that some posters in this thread overestimate the monetization potential of exposure. Ultimately, it doesn't matter if the project is for profit or pro bono - either way you commit to unpaid work. Volunteering doesn't only have to be about a good cause, it can also be for your own professional benefit. However, you should be sceptical about the exposure potential of such a gig. The main drawbacks are that you are likely not the only volunteer in the project and that it's often pretty clear you weren't hired for exceptional talent (in the case of the Netflix show a potential customer can do a quick web search and learn that the show contacted many photographers and only accepted free offers).

Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#387

Post by [deleted] »

tpmx wrote: post #377
jsdwarf wrote: post #312

To all the folks who would do it "for the exposure": my partner volunteered as a graphic designer for a well-known European charity event that featured a former US president, known music groups and fashion designers as pro bono acts and had a live TV broadcast. She really liked to volunteer and we received free tickets for said event and definitely enjoyed it. She added the project to her CV, but unfortunately it had…

You're saying she should have made money from this charity event she volunteered for? Or just avoided it, because she didn't get any meaningful "exposure" out of it? For the second time in this posting, as a (northern) European I'm quite puzzled about all of this. I think we may have wildly differing thoughts about what concepts like "volunteering" and "charity" mean.

[deleted]

Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#388

Post by mensetmanusman »

differentView wrote: post #332
mensetmanusman wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, that means only wealthy photographers (from family, etc.) can do this. This is where the injustice comes from when ‘unpaid internships’ equals we only want rich kids to work for us. It’s how the situation propagates through time.

How does it benefit an organization to have rich kids working for them for free?

The organization may not care, but for them it is free.

Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#389

Post by setr »

bluetonium wrote: post #265
Xcelerate wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that with supply and demand, the market will bear poor/abusive conditions for people that have no rational ability to make a difference but superrationally would be able to do so. A prominent example is child labor laws. Before these were passed, the market would bear endangerment and injuries to children because something was better than nothing to families that had very little, and it was rationally in…

I disagree, I think the photography prices here are a good example of markets working as intended. Prices reward people who do work that there is an unmet demand for in society. If society already has an oversaturation of professional photographers (so much so that clients feel they do not have to compete at all), the low price of $0 for professional photography work will hopefully encourage some of these glut of pro…

It might be fruitful to look at the inverted — Netflix is doing the selling here. They’re selling the intangible product of publicity (exchanged for labor) to a group of people who are struggling to evaluate the “real” value of the product. And the argument is of course that the product in fact has no real value — it’s a trick.

The problem then is the same as snake oil; the demand exists only because the consumers lack information. And then keeping in mind that market principles only produce efficient economies when information is available and known.

Re: Netflix's “Love Is Blind” Wants Unpaid Photographer for Five Weddings

#390

Post by tshaddox »

bhupy wrote: post #366
tshaddox wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be using "founding pillars" to mean "what the founders claimed or intended the founding pillars to be." That's not what I'm talking about. For an actual physical building, it doesn't matter what the architect claims or intends are the parts of the building which are necessary for its structural integrity. Removing a chunk of the building either causes it to collapse or doesn't. Looking at the architect's…

Great, so by the logic you just set out, I think it's pretty clear that the "founding pillar" of the United States was a system that allowed us to eventually create laws that would be forced upon the slave states on account of the fact that they had originally agreed to join the Union. In other words, the pragmatic decision to keep mum about slavery (at a time when the abolitionists just didn't have the numbers on th…

That’s close enough to the notion that supporters of slavery deserve credit for the abolition of slavery, because without slavery existing it never could have been abolished. I’m not really interested in continuing that discussion.
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