Red flag photographers and people I will not work with another time

Some time ago I posted about good features of photographers, features that could be detected both online and on set

Today I want to share the other side of the coin:) Some of those traits are a total no-go; others are just uncomfortable but not dangerous.

ph Fritz Werner Oehlers

Let's start

• When a photographer lies to you in email, and you can easily detect that. Fake agency, fake "client", fake honorarium that is suspiciously high, the name that you can not verify etc

• When they are manipulative in email or (god forbid) in person. When a photographer tries to push your rates "in a name of art" or tries to make you feel guilty that you want to pay your bills. When they try to push your boundaries and convince you to pose for more explicit stuff.

• When they touch you on set, without your permission

• when they want to take selfies with you when you are naked

• When they mistake friendly professional behavior for an invitation to flirt.

• when they dump on you their personal issues, sex issues, issues with the law, and family conflicts, basically using your presence as free therapy.

• When they bargain with you about the model rates, but then show up to a set on a fancy car, with fancy equipment and keep bragging about their purchases while paying you a reduced price

• when they show up drunk or on drugs

• when a photographer hides from you the information about how they plan to use the photos untill the end of the shoot and manipulates you into signing a commercial contract instead of a non-commercial release (while they paid the non-commercial rate, obviously)

• when they make you risk your life/reputation or hide the information about the possible risks. Posing nude in places where it is not allowed (that is a photographer's job to check that), abandoned locations where the roof can fall on your head, violating cultural norms (like offering me to pose naked at the holocaust memorial), and all other kinds of mindless ideas (like when I was posing nude in the city center in the rush hour (that i didn't know in advance) and when people started to approach me, the photographer just pretended he doesn't know me) etc. All of it can be done for the purpose of art, but it all should be discussed in advance, and the model should be aware of what she is doing and what she is risking.

• when they have childish opinions about how someone should live their life (including sour talk about models who got pregnant, who decided to stop posing nude, who changed their look without consulting it with each photographer, who changed career, retired from modeling, moved out of the country etc)

• when they try to use too much of the model's personal time, when they try to shoot longer than the booked time, at the extreme cases when they extract bathroom breaks from a photoshoot time

• when they booked a shooting alone, but they show up "with a friend" without informing a model about it. Or when they booked for a private shooting, but it turns out on a set that it is a workshop/ model sharing etc

• when they ask too many questions about your personal life. When they insist on calling you by your government name, not your stage name.

• when they make jokes about marrying the model, about "if they were 20 years younger" about sexual excitement, etc etc

• did I already mention "when they put you in dangerous situations"?

• When they take offense by the way a model uses her social media, what content and whose photos she decides to post etc

  To be continued, cause the list is endless :)