[Leica] S2 - not the best apparently

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (tedgrant at shaw.ca)]

OK OK HOLD IT GUYS. News from the wedding battlefields circa 1964 -5 - 6 up 
to today!!! :-)

When I started my own company June 1, 1964 I swore I wouldn't do weddings as 
I hated them with great distain! However I kept getting all kinds of calls 
because.... "We saw the wedding pictures you did of Mary & Bill when you 
worked for Newtons they were just beautiful! "PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE do 
mine!"

"AAaaaaaahhhh how could you turn down the smiling pleas of a gorgeous young 
lady? :-)

Now if you are going to do something you hate doing you might as well be 
reasonably compensated for your efforts with the least amount of work and 
effort! ERGO?  Higher profit margin! :-)

Besides  I wanted to scare the "Mother's to be" with the price! ERGO? They'd 
go away and not bother me! Didn't happen! Even with the following plan... 
regardless what some of you may think negatively, I really don't care! :-)

Plan "A:"  My fee was $1000! I thought that should get rid of a bunch of 
them! NOPE!  " all film of course in those days on 35mm!!" I shoot the 
wedding start to finish and at the end of the day I give all the film to the 
best man along with instructions which lab to take the film to for 
processing, contacts and finished prints!

He in turn would hand me $1000.oo cash! And I didn't need to bother with it 
anymore! However at $1000.oo it did not deter them one iota and they kept 
coming! DAMN gotta be away to get rid of them!

Plan "B:" DOUBLE  the price to $2000.oo and same routine. I give them film, 
they give me $2000. cash and I never see them again! It worked with a few 
and it allowed me to do a more interesting assignment documentary on mining!

HOWEVER! The $2000.00 wasn't a complete detriment to get rid of these drop 
dead gorgeous ladies about to make one man's life miserable, when they could 
keep a half dozen happy without marrying them! :-)

So $ 2000. didn't slow the demand very much! So this will stop it! Double it 
to $4000.oo same routine and hand over film, I never see them again!

The really neat thing with this was..... I never ever had one single 
complaint and the results of this system got more brides to be! So I was 
doing something right, making money! But couldn't get rid of the requests. 
Most later old me they thought it was really neat looking at the contact 
sheets and selecting "what they liked!"

Plan "C"  As I said I doubled it to $4000.oo, same routine hand over film 
and hosta lavista baby! They hand me $4000.oo cash! Now I thought, the very 
first request would finally get rid of these smiling squealing about to get 
married females!  DAMN! The very first one happened to be a lady I knew who 
was about to marry one of the star football players in the Canadian football 
League whom I knew as an acquaintance! Damn again! :-(

It turned out to be a great fun wedding all round. As I knew many of the 
ball players and their wives or girl friends attending. This one was 
porbably the greatest fun wedding I ever attended! I had a few requests 
after that who did the $4000.oo gig. Finally the money became meaningless as 
it just wasn't me totally enjoying myself doing an assignment! So I started 
to say.... " I DON'T DO WEDDINGS!" And brought it to a halt.

Even though I've had requests over the years. Turned them all down simply 
because money isn't everything if you hate the assignment!

And quite frankly I've loved my assignments for 61 years! Well Ok 99.9% of 
them, even the weekly series I'm working on today published during the past 
18 weeks. Great viewing every Saturday morning while having a wonderful fun 
time working with a great writer and no hassle folks to deal with.

As I've always said.... If you re not having fun in your world of 
photography why waste your time being miserable doing something you don't 
like! Regardless of the money!

So I don't like doing weddings..... so I don't do them! Even if the money 
could be great working the elite of society where the big dollars are. If it 
ain't fun why do it?

So there you go a sort of lifetime experinces of weddings! Oh yeah and the 
equipment? Never came up once! ;-)

cheers,
Dr. ted