100 Isn't Happening / Lens Test / End of the Year Best Scams List
There's no way I will achieve 100 photo assignments this year. It's okay. Resting is okay. Sickness and weather have resulted in many cancellations so it looks like I only have one assignment, a NYE wedding, left for the year. Again, it's fine.
Since I feel compelled to do SOMETHING I thought I would go test out a lens I'm borrowing from Nikon. As a very fancy Nikon Professional Services member I get a certain number of free product loans for the year. Earlier this month I realized that I still had a few unused loaners left so I scrambled to find something. I sent them a list of things I might want and the only lens available was the fairly boring, very redundant (to me) 17-28mm f2.8 lens. I already have a higher quality lens in this zoom range, the 14-30mm f4. The benefit of this new one is that it has a few stops wider aperture for low light situations. My experience with it was "Meh."
There are a lot lights up for the holidays so I went out and shot some of the nicer displays.
It's fine. Nikon's new, premium lenses are all classified as "S" lenses and this one is NOT an "S" lens. In fact, it's a copy of a Tamron lens. It has "Tamron Guts." The lack of the "S" means it has less weather sealing and less coating on the front element to correct for flare, ghosting, and chromatic aberration. I was getting some really weird ghosting with the lights, seen below. I should have brought the better lens to see if it did this
Hilarious, right? It really only showed up when I was over-exposing.
Anyway, I don't want to be a gear reviewer. Doesn't seem fun. I would much rather spend my time as a CRUSADER AGAINST ONLINE SCAMS.
As everyone has been posting their Spotify Wrapped and top ten movie/book/whatever lists, I was busy writing angry emails to people who were trying to rip me off. So here is a list of the top 3 attempted scams I've received this year.
#1 Florida-Based Magazine Scams
As a one-person small business I personally handle a lot of scams. A lot of them are obvious and are easily blocked and flagged without much thought. But early this year I got a request from Sarasota Magazine, which is a real magazine, from a woman named Susan Burns, who is a real person who works at Sarasota magazine. It all seemed weird that a magazine in Florida wanted to hire me since I live in Maine but there was that one, tiny, little bit of ego-driven hope that someone at Sarasota Magazine was just so enamored by my work that they HAD to reach out. I dug a little deeper and saw a few more red flags. The Susan Burns who wrote the email wrote from a Gmail account instead of from an @sarasotamagazine.com address. The real magazine's website has a staff page that lists everyone who works there and all of the people have domain-affiliated addresses. It also lists Susan Burns as a writer in a specific department, not as editor-in-chief of the whole magazine like she said in the email. I emailed the real editor and they confirmed that it was a scam, and that it had been an on-going problem for them for months. I researched more about the scam, like how the scammers actually make money if they are promising to pay me a bunch of money up-front as a deposit. Basically with scams like this they say "We trust you and we want to pay you your deposit, plus all the money for the other people we are hiring, like models, make-up people, etc." They would send a fake check and say "please pay the vendors now, here is their information, we are short on time so do it quickly," hoping that I would pay these fake vendors, who are actually the scammers, before I realize that they have sent me a fake check.
I got another request like this later in the year for Miami Vibes Magazine, which again, is a real magazine.
So yeah, if you are a professional who provides a service and someone requests that you pay other vendors it is probably a scam. If they want to hire you without a meeting of any kind it is DEFINITELY a scam.
#2 Wedding Wire Scam
This is a message I received on the popular wedding vendor platform Wedding Wire. I've heard a lot of people mention scams on WW but I had never experienced it until now. This one follows some of the same points as the magazine scam, but it is a little bit harder to detect because it's on a supposedly trusted platform, not just a random email. The first message is normal enough, other than that people don't usually book weddings with only a month in advance.
Like with the Florida magazines, there's no reason for this person to book a Maine-based photographer for a wedding in DC. If they wrote to me praising my work saying "We are so in love with your work that we will fly you to DC for our wedding" it might make sense. This is simply too casual. I was very suspicious. Since this is on a vendor platform there is always the risk of upsetting someone and getting a bad review. I've only received one bad review ever and it was from someone I didn't even work with. She no-showed for two meetings so I told her I wasn't going to work with her and she left me 1-star rating and said "Stuck up, disrespectful, and doesn't care about other people's schedules."
Anyway, I responded to this message respectfully but with a high level of suspicion. I wrote back with my rates and realistic fees for travel and lodging. I also tried to get more out of her by asking why she wanted to book me, and asked for a meeting over zoom or a phone call and This was her response:
More red flags. These scams always want to offer a lot of money, and specifically always offer a 50% deposit. I'm fairly confident that this would follow the same structure as the magazine scam. They would offer to pay a high deposit but then ask me to pay the other vendors, who are actually just them. The other, more glaring red flag is that they are unable to communicate over the phone. It's always text.
Again, because this is on a platform that I rely on for my livelihood I don't want to come out and accuse them of being a scammer I said that it was my policy not to accept any work without having a meeting first. They pushed back about it and I just blocked them.
#3 Harley Helm's 60th birthday party.
Okay, I should have known better and I should have just deleted this one straight away because there are red flags, BUT a 60 year old's birthday sounds fun and too quirky to be a scam, right? WRONG. This request came just last week and I was trying to get my 100 shoots in! I had just had 4 cancellations. I was desperate. Note that he says "My private residence in the state." Hilarious.
There it is. "I can't pay the band for some reason, so I will send you the money and you can pay them!" Also, I'm not a grammar snob by any means, and I don't want to make fun of non-native English speakers but most of these scams come from outside of the US (or Florida). There are noticeable patterns and phrases that non-native English speakers use that is present in most of the scam offers I receive.
Ugh. This was supposed to be funny but it's just kind of depressing. If you are a professional who offers services to the general public you will definitely get people trying to rip you off. I think the biggest pieces of advice I can give is to trust your gut and to hold on to your standards. I have a pretty tight workflow that I maintain with 99% of all of my business and all of these scams are asking me to stray from this workflow with the promise of extra money. Simply having the rule that I don't accept any work without a meeting first filtered out all of these scams. They all refused phone calls or in-person meetings. They can only text for whatever stupid reason. Be firm with your processes and don't make concessions if it doesn't feel right. This goes beyond full-on scams. Even with legitimate work assignments I will usually end up regretting it if am asked to break my own rules. Sometimes a client will ask me to make small concessions that snowball into big concessions and I end up being fully taken advantage of. Sometimes the concession just makes more work or headaches and feels crummy. I've said it before but my personal definition of success is having enough demand to be able to say NO to clients. I call it the "Asshole Cushion." If I turn down a job then another one will pop up to replace it. When I first started I had to chase every lead I got. I was desperate. I probably would have fallen for some of these scams. Now, I am confident that if I turn down a client because it seems like a scam, or it seems like they are legitimate but difficult then I will be okay. I'll book something else. Abondanza!
Anyway, please don't get ripped off in 2023.
Happy holidays and happy solstice. I might end up doing an end of the year wrap up next week. I promise it won't be too cringey.