Photographer Related Scams . . .

The older I get, and the more things I do in life, the more scams I see, and the less I am surprised.

It doesn’t matter what you are doing, there seems to be some scam or other for it, loosely based around the famous Nigerian Scams. When I wanted to buy a laptop on eBay suddenly all the laptop adverts seemed to be full of too-good-to-be-true bargains. When you are thinking about buying an unusual breed of puppy suddenly you see the same phone number advertising very many breeds of puppies and if you believed them all, the breeder would have to have the largest kennels in the world!

And so it is in the photography world too.It is quite normal for me to receive at least 3 or 4 of these in a month via email. The person is trying to organise their wedding / their daughter’s wedding from afar, usually America. They are able to quote dates and hotels that they have already booked and want you to quote for the job, including a particular number of photos and a certain size of album, your travel expenses and any other extras you think appropriate. The wedding is always in a country you don’t usually work in. If you are in Northern Ireland the wedding will be in Scotland etc. It all sounds very plausible and even though you think to yourself that there are equally wonderful photographers in that area and why were you picked over them . . . ?  you still react with pride to the implied compliment. Everything looks very normal until you start to listen to to the grammar. There is something not quite right about it. They use phrases that are just a little foreign sounding for an English speaker but you put that down to them not being “from round here”.

Until you have either already fallen for this, heard about it through industry grape-vines, or used your common sense and contacted the hotel to confirm the gig, you will spend a pile of time working out your costings, including ferries or flights, looking up the album they want etc. It might take up half a day working it all out, getting your hopes up that you are going to be booked for a wedding and spending time away from your important studio customers and actual paying work.

You will only fall for it once though. After that you will smell the scam a mile off and wont even get as far as the first spelling mistake before hitting the Report Spam button.

How does it work? If the scammer is lucky you will reply giving your details and costing for the job. They will then come back to tell you that someone else is paying for the affair and rather than waiting to pay you after their father-in-law’s cheque clears, can they send the cheque to you and you pay them back the difference?

You receive a lovely cheque for say £5,000, you write them a cheque for £3,000 and they laugh all the way to the bank. Some weeks later the original £5,000 cheque bounces and you are down an awful lot of time, effort and money. And have a very red face.

Believe it or not, the forums are full of poor souls who have been caught out by this one, one way or another.Hardly a week goes by without you reading about this wonderful email someone has received and how excited they are about the wedding they are going to be doing in a famous hotel or castle. . . you smile at them, roll your eyes, and call them a N00B and wait for someone to point out the error of their ways.

I’m going to take the opportunity to bore you with one more “scam” that I have been experiencing over the past 4 or 5 years. Every now and then I receive a phone call from a man asking about whether I will photograph him. The story goes that he has to produce either studio based or on location photos for a (gay) agency/ suitable for entering a (cross-dressing) competition/ wants him and his girlfriend photographed/ needs photos for a certain type of (usually a naturist) web-site. . .  always wanting to be photographed in the nude and always pushing the conversation to the boundaries of my comfort. The first couple of times I had this the guy rang back many times over the month elaborating the story each time. He then moved on to another female photographer in Northern Ireland, not realising that we were friends and that we talk to each other on a regular basis.

I am not sure if there is a group of men doing the same thing or if it is the same man each time. The latest story has been (the past 4 phone calls) that he is embarrassed to talk about it, but he is a cross-dresser and needs photos of himself to submit to a competition he is entering in England.I could almost write his script for him now! I am fairly sure that if a guy is a cross-dresser and is secure enough with his life-choices that he wouldn’t be one bit embarrassed chatting to a girl on the phone though. What do you think?

I don’t care what the photos are for. I don’t really care whether he is clothed or un-clothed. I am a photographer and as long as the photos I produce are tasteful I WILL photograph you. But will you please pass it along among you and your mates, I will not ever discuss this with you over the phone. I will only chat to you (in complete confidence) when you appear at my studio door and actually turn up in person. Once you brave it past both my husband and my dog I will talk to you about your (photographic) needs.

Until then . . . .