A Stressful Day

So far.

And it's thanks to a local store and their "one hour photo" idiots.

Last night I had done a test shoot with some new strobes for a wedding that I have to shoot this weekend. For a model I used a girl I know: went over to her house, set up the lights, etc.

So today I get the pictures back, and there's this 1/4 inch faded black stripe down the center of each image. What!?!?! That's all I need!! Two days from a wedding, and my main camera is broke! And I don't have a backup, since it's down for repair as well. I've got to check this out.

So I jump in the car and race downtown to the local pro lab, and roll out the negatives in the big light table. Under magnification, I can't see anything on the negatives. I ask Sasha – one of the people down there – to take a look, and she can’t see anything either. She goes and calls one of the techs down to look. While we’re waiting, Kevin comes out of the back and looks, but he can’t see anything. So what’s going on?

The lab tech arrives, and she takes the negatives upstairs and scans them in quick and prints off a couple of shots. In about 15 minutes she comes downstairs, and shows me their images.

Whew!!! Relieve sets in!! It’s nothing on the negatives – it’s the fault of the one-hour idiots. See, if you’ve ever taken your prints to a one-hour place, you will see black data on the back. It’s the codes for that picture, in case you need to have another copy made. Well, these idiots here have something wrong with the machine, and it bleeds through the whole picture, so it’s visible in the front – causing me MUCH stress as I thought my camera was broke.

But it’s not, and I can shoot this wedding on Saturday. More on that later. I need to go de-stress somehow. I could use a hug. Anyone? Anyone?