It's Hard to Find a Good Photographer

...if you're looking under a rock or in Antarctica, perhaps. No, I take that back. Explorer groups that travel to Antarctica will probably have a pretty good photographer to capture the journey. But in Portland, no, it is definitely not hard to find a good photographer! And a good portion of them seem to have found me.

Yesterday morning when I posted an add on Craigslist entitled "Seeking Female Photographer for SuicideGirls Shoot" I was expecting a variety of responses. I've posted ads on CL before--and answered them--so I knew that I'd probably get a fair few responses that simply didn't meet my or Makal's requirements, and hoped to get at least a handful of very promising skilled photographers. At this point, approximately a day after the ad went live, I've received 15 responses. I've been keeping track of them in Gmail, labeling them "SuicideGirls" (like I'll be labeling all the SG relevant emails I get...) and starring the responses I can see myself working with. Of those 15 (and I expect more to come in over today and perhaps tomorrow) I've starred 6 photographers. Most of this is with Makal's help; yesterday as replies came in I'd link him to the gallery (if it was worth linking, that is) and we'd talk about the quality of work. We also went through them all again last night together, just to make sure we're on the same page. We are. :)

Some of these people are professional fashion photographers here in Portland. Others are more casual practitioners, maybe having a portfolio with a lot of high school senior portraits or boudoir photos. And some, well, yes. Some. I thank everyone for applying. ;) One of the emails I got this morning, when I opened her Flickr site I think my jaw literally (literally) dropped--I mean, this girl's got talent, and has done SuicideGirls shoots before. Always a plus. Some women who replied told me that they've been both in front of and behind the camera, which I feel is an excellent consideration in choosing a photographer. Yet another woman told me that she has "a pretty sassy digital camera". Ha! Yes, you definitely get points for personal style in emails with me.

Part of my ad, which was mentioned in the ad's title, was regarding why I'm looking for a female photographer. Namely that this process--meeting someone, me getting nekkid, them taking pictures, and posting them online for the world to see--is still a fairly new concept to Makal (camwhoring aside; that's really a different world) and one that he wants to be more involved in that not. It's not like we expect a male photographer to be creepily poking a boner out his pants while photographing me (though that's happened to me before...). It's simply a matter of Makal's comfort with the project. And if he can't be there with me during the shoot, well, he'd prefer I work with a woman. And as I said in my ad, I'm perfectly fine compromising so that we can both stay happy and enjoy my work.

The fact that my ad was specifically seeking a female photographer was very important. If a man is a good, professional photographer and he knows it, I wouldn't expecting him to listen to the "female" stuff anyway. So the guys who wrote me saying, "Good luck finding a female photographer; if you can't please consider me even though I'm a guy... your boyfriend is welcome to come along to the shoot" definitely got respect from both Makal and I. The guy who wrote trying to argue why finding a female photographer shouldn't matter and that if my boyfriend is uncomfortable with a male photographer he probably won't feel much better with my pics online--and all in one long run on sentence separated by ellipses--well, I won't be asking him for a meeting.

I also found it interesting that only the men that replied (and that I did not feel were right for my project) felt a need to say "I've met Missy [Suicide]" or "I've done work for this news company" or "I'm accepted to this very selective art school". Women that replied, no matter the quality of their work, felt no need to brag like that. These same men are also the only ones to offer legal advice and to criticize the legalities, obviously without even accessing the freely available photography contract rules from the SuicideGirls site. Oi, men.

Oh, and one woman and supposed ex-SuicideGirl wrote me bashing their practices and saying that there are better sites to work for. She included tons of links to stuff--most of which didn't work--and used sarcastic, bitter language to really stress how horrible the SuicideGirls site is. The only link that did work was to a site she said SG sold images of some of the other nay-sayer girls to (models who are publicly known to have gone on to model for other hardcore/alt porn sites). Thanks, but I've done my research on this. Conflicts happen in the business world--especially if that business is flooded with females--and I'm not going to deny a site's quality or slander their business practices just because some people decided they didn't like the contract or the business owners after all. You can read about the conflict between SuicideGirls and some of the former models on Wikipedia, Wired News, and The Boston Phoenix.

So, at this point in the process I'm going to start replying to the people I definitely won't be working with. Letters of rejection suck, but at least I'll be replying to them. I'm also going to contact each of the photographers whose work and/or personalities I do like, and letting them know what's what. I'm not sure what I'll say to them, other than "I like your photography and would like to work with you". But with these final people, the more pressing issue is who to choose to go first. I mean, there's no reason I can't work with all of them, doing a shoot every other week or something. They've all got very unique photographic styles, personalities, and experiences, and each would behoove a certain set theme more than another.

Ugh, but which one do I pick first?!?!