I’ll try to make this as brief as possible. I have been into photography for close to 10 years, but have only been working on doing it professionally (e.g. paid shoots) for the past two months by doing portrait shoots with couples. I recently posted on a local Facebook group that I would do a shoot for only the cost of film and development and that I was hoping to use the photos to build my portfolio. I set my price as $35 for 35mm film (portra 400) or $50 for 120mm film (portra 400).

A couple reached out to me and was interested. I did the photo shoot with them, but at the beginning of the shoot, I was using a new camera (Mamiya rb67) and couldn’t figure out how to advance the film, so I switched to my Nikon F5. I made it clear that the film I was using wasn’t my typical film - I only had a roll of fujifilm superia 400 which is budget film and not professional by any means.

At the end of the shoot, I told the client that it would only be $20, and that he’d get his photos in 8-10 days. Two days later, I realized it could take longer, so I messaged the client and said that a more accurate time would be up to two weeks, to which he responded with “okay, as long as we get them by x date”. I felt a little taken aback by this due to the fact that I was doing this shoot for not much money at all, but to try to keep this client happy, I paid for a rush order at the lab which cost $32, as well as priority usps shipping which was another $14. With all expenses totaled, I spent about $58 on this shoot.

After I delivered the photos to the client 8 days later, I asked if it would be okay to use them in my portfolio, but they said no, that they were private people and didn’t want their photos to be seen publicly. I responded somewhat angrily, explaining that this is not what the implied deal was and that I wished they had read my original post closer about using the photos in my portfolio. I later sent another message which I will post below.

My message to the client:

“Last time I’ll say anything about this. Just an fyi - the roll of film was close to $12, the development was $16 but I paid for it to be rushed by the lab because you wanted it by the 12th, so times that by two (so $32), along with priority shipping which was $14. So $58 total. That’s why I was frustrated. I thought I was doing you a favor by providing pictures at a very low cost in exchange for me getting to use them in my portfolio. And if you would have read my original post, you would have known this to be the case.

Maybe you shouldn’t expect something for nothing next time you seek services from someone. Why not just take photos on your phone if you aren’t willing to hire a professional”

Am I the asshole for responding how I did and being frustrated by this? I’m irked by the situation and feel like I was taken advantage of. At the end of the day, $58 dollars isn’t much money, but I don’t want this to happen in the future when I’m actually doing photoshoots where I am charging a large fee. However, one positive thing about the situation is that I realized I should start having clients sign a contract to prevent something like this from happening again.

TLDR; Client got photos for free basically and didn’t hold up their end of the deal.