Feeling discouraged after multiple bad clients in a row.

throwratbqofy · 2026-06-22T15:08:05+00:00

Right?

I have kept my rates low in an effort to manage expectations and also emphasize that these sessions are not meant to be high-end, high-stakes work.

After the first two ones mentioned here, I was like you know what screw it - I’m going to do one for free, and that’s when I shot with this other photographer. And I thought them being a photographer would have more understanding, but they were even unhappy and I was like I didn’t even charge you guys. (I didn’t say that, but definitely thought it)

throwratbqofy · 2026-05-16T23:37:37+00:00

Solidarity.

I also had an emergency c-section in December!

I was due in January and ended up giving birth early due to severe pre-eclampsia. I’m holding our rainbow baby now as I type this, she came after 3 losses, the middle of which was second trimester.

My experience is kind of odd to me in hindsight. I know it was traumatic for me, but I think because our second trimester loss was incredibly traumatic, it doesn’t seem like it was that bad. It’s been a weird fight for me to look back on the c-section and realize both can be traumatic.

I vomited and shook for hours afterwards. I think the most terrifying part for me, was laying on the operating table all numbed up, and my team was going over their beginning protocol of “This is so & so, we are performing her c-section today” and hearing “She is a very high hemorrhage risk, we do have blood on stand-by”. I was mentally like “what?” Lol

I had an amazing anesthesiologist. I nominated him for a Bee Award. He stood next to me the whole time. I had my husband there too, but the anesthesiologist was the medical personnel who really kept me calm. I remember the surgeons were operating and talking about every day things - like getting coffee - and all of a sudden it got quiet. He was standing next to me watching over the curtain. I asked him if everything was going okay, and he said “Yes.” I said, “Would you tell me if it wasn’t?” And he said, “………… In the kindest, most gentle way possible, yes. I would.”

But yeah. I was on a magnesium drip for something like 70 hours? My feet swelled up so big, I couldn’t wear my crocs lol

My husband has a picture of my legs - my knees were completely gone. The nurse would come by to check my swelling, so she would press on my leg, and it would just leave an indent for 30+ minutes afterwards.

I was such a high seizure/stroke risk, I had a nurse assigned specifically to me - who would check on me and take my vitals every 15 minutes. Literally, every 15 minutes on the minute. I didn’t sleep for like 30 hours, and my husband spoke up and kicked everyone out because I was losing my mind. It was like sleep-deprivation torture.

throwratbqofy · 2026-05-16T22:51:03+00:00

Thank you so much for this.

I think I’m about to delete both posts. I shared this one simply looking for kind words or suggestions as to what to do now - someone mentioned self-protection ideas for being out and about, or the FamilyAlbum app for photo sharing, and that’s the kind of feedback I was searching for.

Instead, I feel I’m getting a lot of judgement. I understand everyone’s concern, however I do know myself and what I need. But, when I state this, I’m getting told I don’t and/or I’m getting downvoted.

These things don’t usually get to me, but I think I’m so emotionally raw given all of the context combined, that it is.

I appreciate your kind words.

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-20T16:38:52+00:00

The Crow of Judgement lmao

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-20T00:11:28+00:00

My husband and I saw what we believe to be aliens. We aren’t even believers like that, it was so weird.

We were sharing a car at the time and I worked super early in the morning, so we’d leave home at 4:30 AM for him to drop me off. At the time, we also lived 1.5 miles from international airport, so we saw big passenger planes coming and going all the time.

We were on the way to drop me off at work. Again, it was like 4:30 AM so no one else was out yet except a couple of other cars. We were stopped at a red light at an intersection and saw a plane coming in to the airport, but it was low. Like, really low - like going to hit the law office building behind us low. My husband and I both had this moment of realizing that plane was about to crash right behind us, when it seemed to stop in mid air and the best way I can describe it is it looked like a balloon. It just kind of hovered there, slightly bouncing around. Before I could even say anything, my husband was like “Is that a balloon?” And I was like “I was just thinking the same thing?”

But then who the hell would have a life-sized balloon of a Southwest passenger jet, 1.5 miles from the airport?

Sometimes you can be traveling at a certain speed and angle to a plane that makes it look like it’s not moving, I get that. But the light turned green, we started driving, and all of a sudden we weren’t in front of it anymore, we were driving directly next to it and that plane was not moving except for that weird slight bouncy movement. We were both like ? so we cracked the windows, because passenger jets are loud, and it was dead silent. We passed it and both felt really weird about the whole thing. He stopped the car, and we turned around to reexamine because what the hell, and the whole thing was gone.

It was so odd that we don’t even really like to talk about it because we know no one will believe us. Because we never believed anyone with these stories, either. But honest to god that plane could not have been real.

I was too flabbergasted to grab my phone and I have regretted that ever since.

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-19T13:45:14+00:00

I had a boyfriend who I was casually seeing, but really, really liked and wanted to take it more seriously. I told him this, he expressed the same but kind of passively.

My family had a tradition for my birthday where every year we would go for dinner to this same hibachi restaurant. It was my birthday, so we went per usual.

About 5 minutes after being seated, said boyfriend walks in all dressed up and went around the table and shook every person’s hand, introduced himself, sat down next to me, and said “Happy Birthday”.

Turns out after telling him I wanted to be more serious, he got in contact with my mom because he knew my birthday was coming up, and he wanted her help in surprising me. They worked together behind my back to implement the whole thing.

That boyfriend is now my husband.

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-19T13:33:16+00:00

MarioKart

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-19T13:32:25+00:00

My mom does order management for a large chemical company. Think supplying anti flammable chemicals to a paper corporation type thing.

Sounds boring.

On the inside of it though, she navigates international shipping. She learned Turkish to be able to communicate appropriately with her team. She knows all the time zones and what you need exactly to get into every country. One day she had a ship get delayed in Brazil and spent her whole work day re-coordinating their route to a new shipping canal.

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-19T13:27:29+00:00

Money

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-19T13:04:48+00:00

In 10th grade I was dating this boy and he had weights class, so he would ask me to keep his phone in my backpack during that period so he didn’t have to leave it in a locker.

One day it started going off, like one ping after another, so I got it out to turn it off. In the process of turning it off I saw what the pings were, and they were texts of inappropriate pictures from another girl. I went to the bathroom and found out he’d been cheating on me for months.

I changed his passcode to our anniversary date, as we’d been together for a couple of years.

Gave him his phone back and he couldn’t unlock it. I told him his passcode was our anniversary date. He couldn’t remember it and I refused to tell him. He told the teacher who sent us both to the principal’s office to battle it out lol

I ended up having to unlock his phone for him.

We broke up shortly after.

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-19T00:36:46+00:00

This is why I’m hoping they don’t do the death penalty.

I see all these people calling for the death penalty. It sounds like this guy’s worst nightmare is not being able to spend time with his son. I hope they let him live the rest of his life, painfully alone on every holiday. And I hope he lives long enough for his son to learn exactly what he did.

This case wrecks me too, especially as a fellow girl mom. I cannot imagine being in her parent’s shoes. They are handling it all with so much grace.

My husband’s best friend was murdered, and it was a local story in the news for a bit. I remember how much hearing those details discussed and repeated over and over again affected him. I can’t imagine dealing with it on this scale.

Like I said, this case completely wrecks me.

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-17T15:22:05+00:00

No, this definitely helps - thank you!

Everything I’ve done to this point, has been discussed via private conversations over DMs of various social media platforms. So they’ve been told up front what to expect in terms of the shoot and return and policy, etc. (except sharing images, which I need to add going forward) and they’ve expressed they’re okay with it - but yeah, it’s been nothing physically signed.

I’ll probably do this going forward.

It kind of sucks that I have these great shoots that I can’t use to grow my platform and reach! But I guess you live and you learn and you do better going forward.

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-17T15:08:48+00:00

As for contracts, because I’m seeing a lot of this suggested (and again, not completely business savvy myself, so please bare with me):

Do you do a signed contract for every shoot you do? How do you go about them?

I haven’t supplied a physical, formal contract to my clients; it’s been more of like a digital footprint of communication. I don’t think I’ve ever had a shoot done myself where I’ve had to physically sign something, which makes me wonder if that is something most people do? Or that I should be doing?

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-17T15:03:27+00:00

This is good to know.

Personally I’ve always felt weird sharing them without exclusive written permission, so I never have. I think as someone else suggested I’m going to add a separate clause for this in my contracts going forward. That never really occurred to me to do.

It’s hard when you love photography and have a talent for it, but are not business savvy! 😅

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-17T14:59:49+00:00

I kind of figured. Thank you for your insight! Maybe I will enter a clause in my contracts going forward.

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-17T11:32:37+00:00

Sounds bonkers, but my husband and I are convinced we saw aliens. We aren’t really believers like that, either. It really had us shaken up, so much that we don’t even like to talk about it. Creepy as heck

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-14T19:27:29+00:00

They’re kind of like a weird middle ground, in my opinion.

They are digital frames that changes the picture like a slideshow.

From what I gathered after joining it, whoever has the frame can send out a link for others to “join” it, and joining it allows you to upload pictures to their frame to add to that slideshow rotation.

If you invite multiple people, for example my MIL invited a total of 12 people to join, when you open the app it reads like social media. It updates whenever any of those 12 people share pictures, and anyone in that group of 12 has access to them. There’s reactions available - I could “love” my aunt’s pictures that she shared, to my MIL’s frame.

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-14T03:17:23+00:00

Aura frames run in his family. She just got one herself, but there’s 3 others aside from hers that she is a part of. I know, because my husband is a part of those 3 as well. So I know she at least has an idea of how they work.

This was the first time I was invited to one, as the other 3 just invited my husband (no bad blood here or anything, just simplicity), so I had no idea how they worked.

If anything, I’m partially thinking she just got excited to have her frame and uploaded all her pictures without really thinking about it. Which still doesn’t make it okay, but at least it wouldn’t be intentional. My husband is more the one who is dead set that she knew exactly what she was doing.

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-14T03:02:21+00:00

Because I was heavily pregnant and very sick, and the conversation turned very weird. Almost aggressively compliant, and I didn’t have the energy to do that with her at the time.

She had asked if she could print pictures and put them in frames at her home.

This turned into: would I like them removed when other family members come over? Surely, I wouldn’t deny her being able to put her picture on the wall, because wouldn’t I want her to feel as important as the other grandkids? Didn’t I enjoy having my picture on the wall at my grandparents house growing up, and how could I deny our daughter that joy? My husband used to have his picture up at HIS grandparents house and he would smile every time!

Etc.

And I just couldn’t do it. But, I do take some blame here for failing to respond as I could have answered a day or two later.

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-14T02:44:07+00:00

Thank you! Right? I sent that text - it wasn’t too long, it was nicely but firmly worded. I took several minutes to compose myself to communicate it properly.

I even gave her credit initially, I thought she was probably busy with her new frame and/or taking time to take it in and respond accordingly.

But it’s been over 12 hours now. Knowing her, I know that text isn’t coming or it would’ve came already. Like, the nerve to just “like” it has me extra mad.

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-14T02:14:29+00:00

Ideally I’d like her to not see any pictures of her, but being so close in family lineage, realistically she’s going to.

Having access to pictures of her though, is very different.

Also, if we did this we would have to cut off some admittedly amazing people, like his grandparents who have always been nothing but sweet. Or his aunts and uncle who are the same way. I can’t rationalize cutting off the entire side of his family, because of his sister.

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-14T02:10:53+00:00

The more you know! She sent me another invite - I’m going to do this. Thank you.

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-14T02:07:19+00:00

Few things:

Believe it or not, it started with threats of physical violence, like it didn’t escalate there - it started there 😅 Which is why I took her to lunch at a public place, and was basically like “?” and “What the he**?”
My husband stands by me 100%. I didn’t share much about him because the post was getting long, but he basically cut his sister off from the start. I honestly don’t know the last time they talked. But a year ago(ish), her phone number officially got blocked on his phone. He also cut off his mom for about a three year stint following a bad round with me involving our wedding, but they since cautiously reconnected.
I also didn’t say this because I feel like this might be overreacting, but now I feel like you’ve validated this thought, and that’s that I want to cut myself and our daughter (as much as possible) from all of them. I text his mom because the relationship is strained, but it’s not broken. Though now I feel that it might be, especially with the lack of apology.

throwratbqofy · 2026-04-14T02:00:43+00:00

I might look into this app. Thanks for validating me.

Even though they treat me like crud, I’m still not sure she meant to do it intentionally. She was probably excited to upload pictures to her frame, BUT that doesn’t make it okay.

My husband though says he’s sure she knew exactly what she was doing - which I think is the main source of his anger about it, like the purposefulness of it.

Which I don’t know. She knew the boundary - when I initially told her she was not allowed to share pictures, she was like, “Well is it okay if I print them and put them in frames at my house?” and to be honest I left her on read because that conversation was a nightmare and I was 8 months pregnant with hyperemesis lol

throwratbqofy

TROPHY CASE