So I got paid to take some photos

Remember a while ago I took some photos at a friend’s nephew’s birthday party as a favour to her? It turned out that the boy’s parents were very happy with the photos and asked me to come to their twin daughters first birthday party to take photos and of course they’d pay me.

Here’s one of the twins after she’d fallen over and her grandfather is consoling her.

A short while later everything was fine.

I ummed and aahhed over how much to charge them and came up with a pretty reasonable quote for my first job and they accepted it.

About 15 minutes before I was due to leave I couldn’t find the email with their home address where the party was being held. I looked in vain for this email which I knew I’d read but for the life of me couldn’t find. I didn’t have their phone number either. I rang my friend three times and she didn’t answer. I got into my car and thought I’d at least drive to the suburb where I knew it was and drive around if I had to but then my friend rang me with the address. Phew! Lesson learned. Get phone numbers and addresses and WRITE them down in my diary.

This kid below didn’t like having his photo taken so I made it my mission to get some of him, for his mum if nothing else.

Like the other party when I first got there I didn’t really know anyone so I felt a bit weird just taking photos of people I didn’t really know but you soon get over that. One person who’d been at the last party and must have seen my photos said that they were ‘real’ which I took as a great compliment as I’m sure it was intended.

A couple of families asked me to take family shots so I gather they’d been briefed by the hostess that I was going to be there and that this was perfectly fine for me to do.

There was face painting to be had and I was a bit naughty when taking this photo because they were lined up for the girl’s mum to take her photo. I shot it and took off so she could get her daughter’s attention.

You can see JJ in the background. He had a fine old time eating icecream, getting some prizes from the prize bag, and embarrassing me by asking for a lolly bag. If there’s a next time I’m going to have to explain to him that this is a paid gig for me and not a party for him and I might have to pay him something also.

I took around 350 photos and ended up giving them a third of these on CD as I’d been asked. All up I was at the party for three hours and it took nearly that again to go through them all, process them slightly and burn them to CD.

I wouldn’t want to do this all the time I don’t think because it would become too much of a chore. As it was I really enjoyed going through the photos when selecting them for the family because I relived the moments of the party even though they aren’t my family.

This is JJ’s friend and cousin to the twin girls. He’s as cheeky as he looks.

I love getting these candid shots like the one below. He obviously had no idea that I was taking it and that’s what makes a lot of my photos ‘real’ I guess.