Same bullshit. We made the portraits "on spec" (speculation) and when the potential customer did not want to buy them at first, we were instructed to crumple the rejected portraits up in front of the customer and then the customer would presumably want to "save" the others by buying them.
It just felt dirty to me. I could not continue in that job.
I am a better portrait photographer than that. Even then, when I barely knew what I was doing, I could capture images that were not the norm and people usually liked them. I have always had an unusual eye for people's facials. I am able to look more deeply into people, without really being distracted by the outer facades, somehow. I have done some tear-jerking work over the years. In fact, it was mostly the emotional responses and even tears from loved ones that kept me going in that cut-throat business for as long as I stayed. If I could just do it my way, I would still be there, creating unusual, moving and emotionally engaging views of other people's loved ones, done very differently from what is normally seen in an Olan Mills studio portrait.
My view is not the regular view and I was often allowed freedom to explore this in my last job and, in fact challenged to be different, but change of management ended my position. I was offered a part time job, but no control. I had to leave.
The funny thing was that, in my last job, all four studios that I worked at (there were seven photographers, myself included, who knew a lot about photography, we all shared ideas, and three who were quite bland, but very consistent and nice to people), on a weekly basis, were quite profitable. It was the "underclass" school photography (a slightly different division) that was taking a beating by our competition. The new manager was a specialist in school photography and had no clues about in-home family, location, environmental or senior portrait work, but he was given carte blanche to re-work the territory in "his own image." None of the studios which did location work or environmental work had ""REAL"" full time (let alone salaried with benefits and profit sharing bonuses), photographers where he had come from, but he was allowed to do what ever he wanted because of his successes in the school areas. He got rid of ALL full time positions and hired school kids to work the studios on the premise that peers could do a better job of photographing young adults. The location shoots were of no concern to him at all, but family re-unions and parties were extremely profitable when photographed by someone who knew what to do.
GAAAHH!
Depression, like I had never known, set in and took root around that time.
