‪never trust a person who uses the internet to talk about things “in the pipeline” with no detail, they are lying for attention and serotonin

had to get that off my chest

what’s going on here?

leaving for tour tomorrow morning

kinda excited, kinda scared, kinda annoyed, lot of feelings. mainly good. the bad ones come from the good ones so they aren’t inherently bad. I’m gonna miss my room. gonna miss cooking even though I barely cook. might miss working out? might be a hotel gym boy. I don’t know if I’ll thrive in this environment. I don’t know if it’ll eat me alive. there’s a lot of uncertainty but I lean more towards it working out in my favor. my rate is okay, not what I wanted. not that bad. I wonder about money a lot and I constantly feel like I’m not making enough, but also I’m not truly crushing it yet. I’m applying some pressure but not crushing. I’m not living at home or working at the grocery store anymore. I dealt with a pretty big declination from one of my favorite artists earlier this year. I think about the effect it’ll have on my brain in contrast to the effect from getting declined by vince staples’s manager in 2016. that one hurt a lot but it made sense. I was still in school and I don’t think I was very good in retrospect. I wouldn’t have been able to handle that tour mentally. a 22 year old dropping out of college and moving to LA while still using 63+ clarity on photos. now that I’ve finally scored a reasonable gig and was rejected from an even more reasonable gig, I wonder where that’ll lead me to next. it’s the perfect combination of “things are going pretty good” and “things could be better.” it’s not “things are awful” versus “things could be incredible” like what I’ve faced before, so we’ll see what the end result will be. I’m proud of myself but I got a lot more fucking work to do and I guess I’m excited to see that path unravel.

tour number 2

been working a lot with jpegmafia since getting fired, going on tour next month, things are good, I guess.

this is a good spot to rant about some dumb shit

got some unsolicited and random advice from a random person: danny brown. he said people who are doing well don’t sit on the internet talking about shit going on, that’s a cry for help. obviously there’s exceptions and here I am now but god, it legitimately feels like I got hit with a breakup but it’s just work

I developed an extremely unorthodox work relationship with spencer and heidi. yes for those randomly tuning in at this exact period of time and never before, I randomly got a job doing product photography for spencer pratt and heidi montag’s crystal jewelry company. how’d it happen? irrelevant, it’s simply the joy swimming through random hoops of LA.

I started working just about a year ago. I received 22 paychecks with an average of $2113. that’s a stupid amount of money for a job that was essentially part time. a job that got me extremely comfortable. stopped pursuing other interests that didn’t immediately float into my lap. barely shot anymore music stuff and would only shoot shows from people I’m friends with.

I started shooting in their den, knowing what I was doing, just not well. they were still impressed and I was immediately a breath of fresh air to their business’s presence, as the previous photos were just iphone photos of the products in hand. they were easily impressed at this point, but I was stoked because I seemed to secure myself for at least a few more shoots. a few ended up 2-3 shoots a week, until they decided to put me on payroll at $200 an hour (shooting time, edits were included).

that rate seemed to become a problem pretty quickly in. I got a concerned call from spencer saying that heidi found out my cost and was very alarmed and demanded that my coworker begin timing my work and making sure I wouldn’t stop to use my phone or goof off. I decided to switch my rate to $5 per item instead as it would allow me more time to shoot carefully without anyone breathing down my neck.

the business began to fail as we passed to holiday season as mtv was filming the hills and constantly pushing back the air date: all the way from februrary to just this past month. we were constantly talking about the air date as an imminent storm, barring an unknown outcome to our company. would anyone give a shit about the hills? would the show even focus on the business? what was going to happen?

the answer is: everything happened. our sales came back as the weather did so we weren’t in anymore trouble, but then they quadrupled from there. I went from shooting 150 pieces a week to 150 a day, making stupid fucking money doing something that I seemed to have mastered at this point. I had a preset and brush styles that made it so I could shoot those 150 pieces and edit them in under 3 hours. I was on absolute fire, but so were my bosses.

they spent so much money. they literally spent more money that I could ever wrap my head around. they spent $30,000 on gucci in a month, just one month. it was probably more during other months. they also put back a lot of money into the company, but most importantly to myself, myself.

I’ve been able to pay off all my credit card debt, buy myself dumb shit on the regular, eat out nonstop, and start a high yield savings account. I was in a weird depressive haze for the month prior to this, but it suddenly seemed like I reached the light again when I realized that things were going pretty fucking good financially and that quarter point in life was not as bad as I thought.

I got a text on the morning of the 22nd exclaiming that the hills reboot has been picked up for a second season. it was filled with unknown numbers and my few revolving coworkers all exclaiming back. a few hours later, I got a text saying that my pay has to be renegotiated lower because I’m making an unfair amount of money in comparison to the others. I was faced with an ultimatum: either another photographer was going to replace me for cheaper or I was going to be let go from the company. I said that we have to talk on the phone before I confirm since I need more detail before I take an unknown cut with no terms.

I went to lunch with a newer friend of mine who shoots many music festivals and is the go-to photographer for odesza. they were playing in town and I figured it’d be a good little hang and I was going to ask if I could shoot the show. we went to the deli from curb your enthusiasm that funkman claimed was his father’s favorite when he was alive. we were eating away as I got a call from heidi that I declined and replied with a text stating “hey I’m at lunch right now, I’ll call you right when I’m done.”

I called back when I dropped my friend off and got halfway into a ring when the call went to voicemail. I called spencer, same thing. I shot a text that said “I’m available to talk now” and received one back that said “we’re not available anymore.”

those were the last words ever uttered to me by the pratts. when I got home, I received an email saying that I was removed from the company dropbox. five minutes later, I received a text from a coworker sad that I didn’t take their deal and wishing me well on my future endeavors. a decision that I did not make myself. a decision that was forced into my hand.

I worked for three hours on july 21st, 25% more efficiently than I did on any other day. I worked 7 out of 8 days in a row leading up to my final day. I remember my coworker gave me the heads up that spencer talked to his product photographer friend about how he wanted to replace me, but was turned away when the photographer told him that it would not be possible to find a photographer as productive as I am, as skilled as I am, and and as familiar as I am for the rate that I’m working. everyone at that rate is either bad, or knows that they’re worth more than it, but that didn’t stop him.

I’m sitting here, feeling like I got broken up with in high school again. it’s such a weird specific feeling having a boss who was always stoked to see me. seeing his baby and goofing around in the office with him. watching him begin walking. getting replies to all my stories about random things. concerts, the tomato sauce I cook, t-shirts, whatever. I know way too fucking much about these people and developed such a weirdly close relationship to them. we started in their den until we couldn’t fit anymore and had to sign a lease on an office when we had no money.

and here I am now, still sitting here. without a job for the first time since last august. thinking about what I’m doing with my life here on out. still getting ignored by music managers. still getting ignored by promoters. still wondering if I’m doing the right thing or if I should give up and work in an office. still wondering if my college degree was worth it. still trying to prove to my parents that it wasn’t and that my own developed skillset is more important.

but on the other side, those are just questions and questions are not reality. my reality is formed by the words that come out of my mouth and the words that I type to be read by the eyes of people who I want to read them. it’s me having the balls to actually talk to important people, not be weird, and try to make a good impression. not pushing a camera in their faces, not putting a business card in their hands. treating them like humans. shout out to zack fox and jpegmafia for somehow being the two random people to truly feel what I’m doing in the past few months.

in conclusion, I fall into a fucking pit of despair when I think about spencer and heidi, as I stare at my replacement’s photography. trying not to be critical as if anybody is agreeing with me. like I’m at a war with two people that are going to pretend like I don’t know a year worth of their memories. like we didn’t fucking cry in an office together about being broke, as if the people I ever dealt with were every truly broke. with that said, that leads to my major takeaway:

daytonastatecollege

low key life update

I think I’m going on tour with vampire weekend.

I’ll shamefully delete this quietly if it doesn’t work out but it’s looking very very very good.

you heard it here first baby

daytonastatecollege

it didn’t work out lol

and then I was like okay I’m gonna shoot this music festival and feel better

only to end up getting rejected from a pass and crying in public after getting laughed at from a room full of other photographers

slowly learning my place in this world as not wanting to deal with a single person who does not give a shit about me, which is really low hanging advice but it’s true.

I’m working on new opportunity shit and I’m not sad about any of this shit anymore (for the most part)

I will get through this fucking bullshit