Things That Piss Me Off About The TFP Photo Community

About two years ago I decided that after years of being behind the camera I wanted to try being in front of it. So I joined a facebook group for tfp photographers and models and asked if anyone was interested in a shoot with me to which I got a very nice respond from a photographer whom I met a few days later and then did my first shoot with. So far, so good. He’s one of those people whom I am happy to have met because he’s a really nice, down to earth guy and I have since then worked with him several times and will continue to do so. I’ve met other really nice, interesting and amazing people, too, don’t get me wrong. I have, since the first, joined several of these groups, all of them are about tfp photo shoots in and around my area and they all feature pretty much the same members.

This isn’t a generalisation of the ‚community’, it’s only about a certain type of person that is unfortunately represented quite a lot in this so-called community.

And God, do they piss me off. There are two things especially, and they are the amount of bitching and gossip that is going on, and then there’s weird and creepy requests from self-proclaimed photographers that sound like they don’t actually want to take photos.

I have never actually met someone whom I found creepy, it usually becomes clear after they write a few sentences and I can sort them out right away. I have, however, heard stories from other models that weren’t so lucky. Nobody got locked in a cellar, but well, you get naked for a nude photo shoot and find out the photographer’s intention isn’t just taking photos.

I hardly ever do nude or lingerie photo shoots since my boyfriend doesn’t really like the idea of my naked body being all over the internet, which I obviously respect, but if I do those shoots, I only do it if I have either met the photographer before or have only heard good things about him from people I trust. If some weird guy who doesn’t even have a fanpage on facebook messages me and asks me to come over to his apartment – and under no circumstances bring anyone along with me! – it’s pretty obvious what the intention is. And maybe I'm wrong it’s really just taking photos, but considering the amout of creepy stories you hear, if he doesn’t understand my worries then he’s clearly not very empathetic. Those conversations go as follows

Photographer: Hey, I really love your photos and your style, want to come over and do a shoot with me?
Me: I like your photos, too. Do you have a specific idea what you want to do with me?
Photographer: Yeah, you come over and bring some clothes and lingerie and then we’ll see, I have my own studio at home. Are you coming alone or do you need mummy and daddy with you?
Me: I would like to bring my boyfriend if that’s okay.
Photographer: No, I don’t do that then. It’s interrupting my work. Nothing’s ever happened to any of my models at my place and they all trust me. No one has ever doubted my intentions before and I've even taken models abroad with me.
Me: Then I guess we have different ideas of this, I’m afraid it won’t work out.
Photographer: I don’t care, I have plenty of other models. I’ve already given your appointment to someone else.

This is just an example of how fast it gets from „love your style and photos“ to „I don't need you, I have plenty of other models“, it’s an actual conversation I had with a photographer except that I shortened it a little bit. The funny part is that this excact same photographer messaged me again about a year later and asked for a shoot, I didn’t respond this time though.

But it’s not just the „if you’re not coming over and getting naked you’re not worth it“ part, there’s also a huge problem with making appointments and sticking to them.
Judging from what I have experienced, a lot of the photographers (I can’t really talk about models because I don’t interact with them as much) expect you to make them your number one priority. I have a job, school, uni, friends or family? What?
If a photographer messages you, you NEED to respond right away, tell him when you’re free, tell him what you’re comfortable with doing so he can decide whether you’re worth it or not, and so on. Sometimes I open a pretty long message and I’m at work or out with friends so I don’t have the time to respond right away. I will get back to it later, maybe a few hours, maybe two days. It doesn’t mean I’m not interested, it just means that I have a life.
What we all need to take into consideration here is that this is a hobby. It’s nothing I get paid for and I need to make a living so it just cannot be my number one priority. If you pay me, okay, but if not, don’t expect me to drop everything and just come running to you. It doesn’t work that way. I’m under no obligation to respond to your messages five seconds later, in fact I’m under no obligation to respnd at all.
Don’t get me wrong, I do have a lot of respect for photographers. I take photos myself so I know the amount of work and money that goes into it. And getting beautiful photos of myself that I don’t have to pay for is a privilige. But for me it’s work, too, so don’t look down on me. I’d claim that we’re equally as important in this. You’re the artist and I’m pretty much the object, okay. I’m fine with that. But that doesn’t mean that you’re my boss.

Another funny anecdote. A photographer messaged me and I thought his photos were alright so I agreed to plan a shoot. Then he asked me to call him on the phone which was rather difficult because we were working at different hours. So I messaged him and to tell him I was working late one day – which I was – and then didn’t call the next two days because I was still busy. Then I was on my way to an appointment, waiting for my train, and got a message stating the time and the place I was at the moment and „you don’t look too busy or stressed out“. Like, what the fuck? How do you know if I’m busy? I’m on my way to an appointment, so OBVIOUSLY I’m busy? And sorry I forgot to write „stressed out“ on my forehead today. I replied that if he wrote messages like that one I didn’t want to shoot with him anyway to which he replied „I wrote you off days ago, you’re ’ambitions’ make me sick.“ I wonder why he felt the need to message me in that case, but whatever.

Getting rude private messages is one thing, but a whole different thing are public posts about people, with names and all. Public. Posts. Let me remind you there are mostly adult men in these facebook groups. And I’ve seriously seen posts like

„Don’t shoot with (insert name of model), I met her for a shoot yesterday and she was not only half an hour late but also didn’t bring the clothes we needed for the planned shoot. I won’t post any pictures from that shoot because I’m not at all content and can’t stand looking at them.“ 

And I get that people get pissed if someone is late or not dressed the way it was planned or forgets about the appointment all along, and so on. I get it. It’s shit behaviour and you just don’t do that, you’re wasting other people’s time. BUT! As grown ups, do we really need to make public posts calling those people out? Can’t we just tell the person in a private message or on the phone that we’re dissappointed, mad, whatever. And then forget about it, maybe warn our friends that that person is not very reliable, but not tell everyone in a public post. That’s something 12 year olds would do but when 40+ year old men do it, I just don’t know what to say. I get pissed in these situations, too. Somebody stands you up, somebody fails to message back, somebody is late, whatever. Unreliable people aren’t fun to work with. But I would never ever make this a public thing, that’s character assassination and something that’s shit when 12 year olds do it but even worse when grown ups do it. And the last time I checked, we were all grown ups. So let’s act that way and argue out our conflicts in private.

There’s talking anyway, when someone’s had a bad experience with someone else, they’re going to spread it around. And to a certain extend that might be human nature and we all gossip sometimes, me included. But the amount of bad things I’ve read about people in these groups is huge, and I know that there’s a lot of talking that I don’t even know about. Sometimes I wonder if anyone talks about me in that way, too, but then again, I don’t really care. I try to keep in touch with the nice people, the reasonably thinking people and the people who understand that there is always two sides to a story and you should really think about both sides in depth before making a public post about someone on social media.
And those who let their „success“ get to their heads and think it’s okay to treat others like shit now will eventually get what they deserve.

I just wanted to get this off my chest since all this bitching and hating on each other amazes me again and again. I get it, artists tend to be excentric and sometimes conceited, but deciding you’re an artist now doesn’t give you the right to treat people like shit.

 So what about you? Are you a model, are you a photographer? Have you ever experienced any of this stuff? Do you think I’m overreacting? I’m really curious about your experiences and opinions, so make sure to leave me a comment!

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My Tongue Piercing Experience so far (one week)

It’s one week ago today that I got my tongue pierced, so I thought I’d just let you know how it’s going so far. Might be useful to those of you who are planning on getting their tongue pierced and maybe those who already have their tongue pierced and want to laugh at me for some reason or another, feel free. All I know is, before I get a new piercing I usually do lots of research on blogs and youtube to read/hear about other people’s experiences. 

So let’s get right into it.

I have to admit that I was a little scared before I got it, which is probably due to the fact that when I was a child I watched a movie (can’t remember the title) in which there was a guy with a pierced tongue who had a permanet speech impediment and up until a few weeks ago I believed that this was something that could happen.  I googled it though and found absolutely nothing about anything like that, so I guess that is highly unlikely to happen. It is, however, why I used to say that I loved tongue piercings but would never get one.
I also remember getting my wisdom teeth taken out being a rather bad experience, not because it hurt but because I couldn’t eat properly and also couldn’t smoke. Those two things combined were stressful for me the say the least. And there are similarities in the healing process, obviously.

So you can imagine I was a little worried before getting pierced. I’d even thought about bringing a friend with me which I haven’t done since my second piercing but in the end I was too impatient to wait until somebody had the time to go with me so I went on my own.

Now let’s get to the pain. The actual piercing itself didn’t hurt too bad, I had to keep a pretty strong mouthwash in my mouth for 30 seconds before it was done and it felt like my mouth was a little bit numb from that. On a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the worst, I would say the piercing was a 2 or a 3.
It also didn’t swell right away so in the beginning the only thing that was kind of  irritating was the huge bar in my mouth that you get for the first two to three weeks. 

right after getting pierced (excuse my weird facial expression haha)

  However, when I woke up the next day it was swollen quite a bit. My piercer had given me an information sheet that said I shouldn’t be smoking, drinking alcohol and eating spicy or too hot food and dairy products for the first few weeks. On the internet you get various information about all that though, some people say you can do whatever you want right after getting pierced and nothing happens, some say you shouldn’t do any of it for a few hours, days, or weeks.

The dairy free milk substitutes I bought - personally I don't really like the taste of soy milk (0,99€) but it's okay in coffee and stuff like that and much cheaper than the almond drink (2,69€) which, in my opinion, really tastes pretty awesome! 

 Going out with my sister on day 5 after getting pierced - we shared a vegan pizza and I had a soy latte. You see the happy expression on my face, haha. I'm really not that much into soy milk but I think it's cool that many restaurants offer vegan options of food and drinks. The pizza was actually okay but really looks like cheap frozen pizza because of the weird "cheese" on it...

I managed not to smoke for 24 hours and after that tried to keep it at a minimum, I’m starting to fall back into my old patterns though, unfortunately. Trying to cut that back down. I’m also rinsing my mouth every time I smoke, at least with water but most of the time with mouthwash or a sodium chloride solution.
In the beginning I only bought mouthwash but after a few days it actually starts to hurt if you keep it in your mouth for some time (you need to keep it there for at least a minute, so I was told) and it feels like after using it a few times a day for a few days it gets really damaging to the mucosa of the mouth. So I went to the pharmacy and got sodium chloride solution. It’s a little more expensive than the mouthwash (3€ for 10 x 10ml) but it’s much more comfortable to use. I use mouthwash twice a day now and on the other occasions – after eating or smoking – I use the sodium chloride solution. The first few days I also sucked icecubes and camomile icecubes and drank some camomile tea (which I actually really dislike) because it's supposed to have a disinfecting effect as well, I don't really know if that's true but the ice feels pretty good the first few days when your tongue is still swollen. 

 The mouthwash I bought (you see how much of it I had already used after 4 days) and the sodium chloride solution

It still hasn’t healed obviously, the information sheet I got from my piercer says it takes about 6-8 weeks and I need to come back after 2-3 weeks to get the bar changed to a shorter one which I’m really looking forward to!
I didn’t have big trouble talking at any time, you can hear it though if you pay a little attention. Some people say they don’t hear it at all but I do notice that my pronounciation is a little slurred right now. However, this will change when the bar gets changed which is in one or two weeks!

All in all, I’m really happy I got it done, I love the way it looks and the swelling has already gone down to almost nothing. It still hurts a little when I flex my tongue, I can’t really run it over the outside of my teeth yet but then again, it’s only a week ago that it was done.
The first few days I was in a pretty bad mood a lot of the time because I was hungry and craving a cigarette but it was totally worth it and it’s all fine now. I can eat normally again, a little bit slower that usually but that’s fine.

Let’s see how it goes on! 

What about you, do you have a tongue piercing? What’s your expirience, what did you do for after care? And how long did it take to heal?
Or are you planning on getting one? I’d love to hear your opinions!
I hope this was helpful or at least entertaining for some of you, it’s a bit longer than I had planned but I wanted to get all the information in. 

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I hope to hear from you soon! 
xx