On my way to London and what should have been the last photography needed to put Volume 1 to bed. I said should, because until yesterday it would have been. That’s when I had an email back from a museum which shall remain nameless, regarding publishing photos of their exhibits. I’m one bloke with a camera and I want to come and wander round like your average tourist and take a few photos. Yes I would like access to your reserve collection, you used to do tours on a regular basis. I asked nicely, what did I get back?
£50 admin fee and £150 per hour! You cannot be serious! I only needed about 5-6 photos, mainly in the reserve collection. But because I asked, I now can’t use all the ones I already have and that means doing about 30 photos across two places at the same site. That I would have happily paid maybe half that just to get access to the reserve collection again is immaterial, nor is the fact that the new photos will look better using the new camera, mainly because the lighting in the place is crap, especially the reserve collection.
So now, publishing is back at least a month, I’ve an urgent trip to sort out to take the photos needed for Vol 1, again. Needless to say I’ve also emailed all the other places to make sure they wouldn’t like a cut of money I’m not even guaranteed to get back in book sales and give them free publicity in the process. Because it would still be cheaper than a writ afterwards. Trouble is I emailed a few months ago, even direct off their webpage forms for that very purpose and have I had a reply? Na.
Not happy? Damn right.