Would you have turned down this shoot and $500?

One of the hardest things to do is turn down a job and that’s exactly what I had to do in this case. I got a call from a friend from a large company who produces concerts very last minute.

He asked if I was free to rush out to the venue to shoot a well known older artist and get all access. I would be the only photographer there is what he said. The shoot paid $500 and I would shoot and give them the images.

That sounds great and all but what are the particulars I asked. Where are the images being used, what do they expect from me, what can I do with the images? These are the hard questions we have to ask and I think he had pause and was thinking why are you asking me these questions.

So he said he would get back to me and with some answers in a few minutes. When he did he said heres the deal. They need you to shoot and they will use these images for their archive. And when I here archive that means they can use the images for anything they want. That’s not a deal breaker to me but the deal breaker was “you can’t do anything with the images”.

Right there what’s the point, if I cant share them or use them in any way there’s no reason for me to shoot. The second deal breaker is that I would have to turn the images over right there, ALL THE IMAGES. That means no editing no tweaking no doing what I do to make my images POP.

I reluctantly had to say sorry I can’t. If they simply said you can deliver us the keepers tomorrow I probably would have done it. It wasn’t about the money, the money was nice, nothing to sneeze at but it’s the principle of the matter.

I always question my decisions, should I have taken it because something cool could have come out of it? Or if I did take the job would they think they could take advantage of me because I turn all the files over and give them all the rights.

What would you have done?