I met my neighbor yesterday. It turns out that his kids play in a small band (kids are about 10-14 years old). I had a stroke of inspiration, and told him I lived over a garage and it would be the perfect place to shoot a band photo of his kids--I offered to do it for free. I suggested doing it the next day, as my schedule was pretty clear. "Sounds great! How about noon?," he said. I agreed.

So, today (the day of the shoot), I started getting things ready. What did that involve?

- Sweeping out the garage. Moving items that would be in the shot to another location so as to be unseen to the camera.
- Setting up 3 monolights with power cords and wireless triggers
- Setting up 3 shoe-mount flashes
- Setting up a 64" PLM (with PCB mount), a 48" octabox, and a stripbox.

Setting up the camera equipment took me about 40 minutes (not counting the sweeping and moving things in the garage). I assumed the kids would need some time to set up their band equipment, so I went over to my neighbor's house around 11:40am.

That's when I get, "Oh, hey. Yeah, the kids aren't going to be able to do the shoot today. Their friend (one of the band members) couldn't make it. Sorry. Maybe next week?"

The man had my card (with my phone number on it), and he lives NEXT DOOR. For some odd reason, he didn't think it was necessary to let me know the shoot wouldn't be happening before I contacted him 20 minutes ahead of the session time.

The problem is simple--no one around here knows how I work. They have no idea the complexity involved in getting the shots that I get. They have no idea that I'm working 2-3 longer than some guy with nothing but a camera. I put in about 2 hours into a shoot that never happened. Plus I turned down lunch with my dad because of the shoot. I practically wasted an entire day of my holiday from work.

But the root of the problem is this--if people aren't paying for it, they don't value your time and effort. It is irrelevant to them. Working for free is only beneficial if you're 100% certain you're getting something out of it. Otherwise, more often than not, you're just wasting your time.