Is it reasonable to ask him to the tweak the photo?
March 16, 2015 11:35 AM   Subscribe

It's relatively early days in my acting 'career'. I had a chance to get some headshots done by a 'big-shot' photographer. I paid for them, then his computer blow up and he lost them all. I repeatedly asked for my money back and it took months for him to even reply. He reimbursed me and said he'd give me some complimentary shots.

The second time I got them done, I found it quite uncomfortable and feel this kind of shows in the pics. One or two I can use. But worse than that is he didn't say anything about me having a strap hanging out. It is a 'glamourous' photo (small g.. I don't mean tits and bum).. I have a nice dress on etc and my hair done.. but this strap hanging down my arm looks like a bra strap :( (it's actually the one to hang my dress up with.. but either way, not a great look).

Given that I have these for 'free' can I ask him to photoshop them or whatever? I don't know if that's unreasonable and/or just British reserve talking! I also thought they'd be in black and white like my classmates, is it a big deal to put a photo in black and white? Or is like a minute?
posted by tanktop to Work & Money (8 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
No. You were planning to pay for headshots; go get some you really like from someone else.
posted by metasarah at 11:40 AM on March 16, 2015 [6 favorites]


I'm a photographer. I'm not your photographer. I shoot headshots for actors fairly regularly.

Usually, retouching — though minor, because you don't want an actor to look like they have plastic for skin — is part of the deal. A loose strap is definitely something I'd be correcting in post (actually, I'd like to think I'd never let it happen in the first place, but sometimes you miss things…).

Black and white conversion is maybe 30 seconds' work, tops, with digital images. And headshots are still mostly B&W these days, except for in certain markets.

Anyway, you can totally ask him to photoshop them. He can say no if he wants to, but there's no harm in asking. Just because something was free as in price doesn't mean it had zero value and wasn't worth doing a proper job of.
posted by gmb at 11:41 AM on March 16, 2015 [5 favorites]


After posting: seconding what metasarah said. If you don't like them, and you have the money, go elsewhere (I don't know where you are in the world, but good headshot photographers are not hard to find in most cities).
posted by gmb at 11:43 AM on March 16, 2015 [1 favorite]


This guy seems to give you lots of bad feelings. You could also just pay another graphic designer to touch up the photo for you. I don't know anything about Photoshop really, but my gut says that editing out an errant strap is pretty simple work. Look on one of those sites like Fiverr or Gigbucks, and it'll be cheap.

Changing a digital photo to B&W can be done with the click of a button in Picasa or other photo editing software. You could do that yourself.
posted by Leontine at 12:01 PM on March 16, 2015 [1 favorite]


He took months to respond about paying your money back; I doubt he'd be much quicker about requests for touch-ups. Hire a freelancer to fix whatever's wrong.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:14 PM on March 16, 2015 [4 favorites]


Is it reasonable? Yes. They offered a service and when they lost your headshots they offered to replace them for free.

Is it going to get you the outcome you want? No. This person has clearly demonstrated that they don't honor their commitments or communicate well.

Feel free to ask for retouching, but you should prepare yourself to get nothing and have to pay someone else for better service.
posted by Tehhund at 12:21 PM on March 16, 2015 [3 favorites]


So you have the image files?

A lot of people know how to use Photoshop these days - you might get faster results asking a friend. Maybe buy them dinner; personally, I'd do this for a friend for no charge. The B&W conversion is no brainer. Hiding an exposed strap requires a tiny bit of skill, but it's probably 5 minutes or less unless it's some odd pathological case. Assuming you've got uncompressed RAW file images, transferring the files via the 'net might take longer than fixing the images.

In short: put the images on a USB stick, find a Photoshop-enabled friend.
posted by doctor tough love at 3:46 PM on March 16, 2015


If you don't do Photoshop, you can probably find someone to fix it for you on Fiverr.

For 5 bucks.
posted by bricksNmortar at 5:19 PM on March 16, 2015 [1 favorite]


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