Lizard lady remembered

[Steve83]

Quite a number of years ago I worked in a camera shop/photo lab. I was there for 11 long years. I was remembering some of the customers we had, most were just regular nice people, but of course you tend to remember the strange ones better. I added some colorful names and a little exaggeration here and there but for the most part these were real people. Anyone else work in a camera shop or something similar having to deal with characters like these? Hope you didn't know any of these people.


“I want it all Alice” Puts every photo in an album, even accidental shots of the ground, sky, etc. I would actually have to go back and print stuff that I intentionally skipped, because we charged per print. Who knew someone would want the out of focus shot of dirt? I guess that’s a memory too. “Honey, you remember that great dirt we saw on vacation.”


“Saturated Sally” Wants everything printed very dark, says she loves deep saturated colors, too bad the family is a bunch of redheads. Dark prints of the baby made his hair a nice florescent orange and his skin like one big freckle.



“Warning, just the messenger on this next one, this is an almost verbatim quote, I was a bit surprised when it came out of her mouth too.”

“Light Lula” needs everything printed extremely light, “I don’t want the people to look like ____ “. Well, you have to insert, “the N word” here. Yes, this is a direct quote believe it or not.



“Slick” Brings in his shots of “models”, scantily clad women that don't really need to be scantily clad, "could she cover that up some", “nobody wants to see that”. They’re posed in front of a bed sheet hung on the wall with a green background light pointed at the model. We guessed he was going for the “Martian look” because of the lovely green skin tones. We don’t really want to know what he does with the pictures. Surely people weren’t actually paying him for this.



“JoeBob” Has way more money than sense, buys a $2000 SLR and has no idea what he’s doing, other than upgrading from a point and shoot. At some point accuses the camera of being broken, doesn’t want to take one bit of time to read a book, manual, or magazine much less listen to anyone and learn how to use the thing. Just keeps on shooting, badly. Yep, that $2000 camera can shoot bad pictures just as well as the point and shoot, but I guess ignorance is bliss.



“Bubba” Needs to buy a camera to shoot Becky Sue’s weddin tomorrow. Nuff said.



“Uncle Bob” Is going to shoot Becky Sue’s wedding because he can save them some money. Digs out the Canon AE1 from 1984 and needs it “cleaned” before the nuptials. As we open the back pieces of light tight foam crumble and fall out and the smell of mold wafts through the air. We see him a day or so after the wedding to develop his wonderful “half frame” 35mm pictures. (shutter no where near in sync with the flash) “How come there’s only half a picture?” "We told you to leave the buttons alone......."



“110 Willie” Sureley you remember 110 film and cameras, those skinny little cameras that used the cartridge film the size of half a postage stamp. Yea, it’s a good idea to bring this to a camera shop’s lab to develop the film, it will only cost 4 times as much as it would at wal-mart. I can’t believe one of the machines we had would actually develop this crap. It usually had about a fifty fifty chance of actually having pictures on it.



“Bluebonnet Bill” For some unknown reason “Bill” would bring the annual pictures of the wife naked in the bluebonnets. Of course Bill and his bride were somewhere in their fifties and not all that skinny, why, why, why....? Yes, I had to go cover up the end of the printer where the photos come out so some poor unsuspecting 8 year old wouldn’t walk by and be scarred for life. Please, can’t they use a Polaroid. Wish there was digital back then……….



And last but not least………

“The Lizard Lady” Took a picture of bark on a tree and said there was the ghost of a lizard there. Don’t ask, I’m only repeating what she said. I really can’t think of anything else to say about this………

[Spec A!]

HAha! I worked/ran one for a handful of years, and yes we certainly had customers like that. Luckily for me we were more high end and all the local pros and businesses used us so for the most part the people weren't all that crazy. But trust me, we had a few of those eccentrics too! That sometimes made it worse- the clueless or crazy pro that must have their color neg film printed 1 stop under with +2magenta and -1yellow. Extremely demanding and then when you printed according to their instructions it looked like crap and they wondered why.

I always loved the people that not only had the ancient equipment, but the ancient film still in it, expecting there to be masterpieces on that 20 year old roll that's been sitting in your attic.

[Digital Prophet]

I love it all!!!!!!

Prophet out.