Kinda been there and done that with the studio thing, but with a totally different type of photography. My primary focus has always been stock, and while I was enjoying the fabulous income from it in the nineties, I got so tired of being asked to take portraits that I decided to plow some of my hard earned stock money into a portrait studio in a wealthy are catering to those who had money to spend!

Wrong move! Although I did have some very nice clients who would easily spend $5,000 for their portraits, I had a few I had to "fire" because they wanted everything for nothing! They didn't like what I offered, and demanded packaging as with school photography etc. that I didn't offer. My pricing brochures showed clearly how the pricing was set up, but they always wanted to haggle as if at a street market. The richer they were, the more they demanded.

One well known local celebrity after "buying" my services at a local charity auction for one particular service, even asked me if I knew who she was a year after the offer had expired! She demanded that I give her something completely different that was not my style. Maybe I could have made some money there, but I had no desire to work with her with her demanding attitude.

It was a great day when the lease on the studio was up, and I was back to shooting only stock again! So, as a portrait photographer, I sort of failed too, but I wanted to in many ways. It was not my thing, although I did some great beach shoots!