You know, sometimes you stumble into these things. Projects, favors, whatever you wanna call ’em. They look like a quick in-and-out, a piece of cake. That’s what I call a “Jonah’s Bait & Tackle” situation. The bait looks tasty, but then you’re wrestling with the tackle for longer than you ever thought.
I got roped into one of these a while back. A friend of a friend, let’s call him Al, knew this guy, we’ll name him Jonah for the sake of the story. Jonah was running a tiny online shop from his garage. Sold handcrafted wooden whatnots. Really intricate, tiny things. Al calls me up, says, “Hey, Jonah needs some better pictures for his website. Just a quick job, snap a few photos, make ’em look decent. He can pay a little.” Easy money, right? That was the bait.
So, I drove over to Jonah’s place. The “workshop” was his garage, alright. And I mean, it was packed. Boxes piled high, tools everywhere, wood shavings like a carpet. Jonah himself was a nice enough old fella, passionate about his craft. But organized? Not so much. That’s when I first saw the “tackle” I was up against.
The Mess I Stepped Into
First off, the “few photos” turned into “cataloging his entire inventory.” He had hundreds of these little wooden things. And each one was unique. No two carvings were exactly alike. So, no batch shooting here.
Then there was the setup. Or lack thereof.
- He had no dedicated space for photography. We’re talking about clearing a corner of a dusty workbench.
- Lighting? A single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and whatever daylight struggled through a grimy window.
- His idea of “decent” photos was, let’s just say, very different from mine. He’d point to blurry phone pics and say, “Something like this, but, you know, better.”
I figured, okay, I can work with this. I brought some of my own gear – a couple of small lights, a plain backdrop cloth. My practice here really became about improvisation. I spent the first hour just trying to create a tiny, clean space. I remember rigging up my backdrop with clamps on a wobbly shelf.
The actual shooting was slow. Jonah would bring me items one by one. He’d hover. “Can you get that little detail there? Make sure the grain shows just so.” Bless his heart, he loved his work, but it meant every shot was a negotiation. I’d take a few, show him on the camera screen. “Hmm, maybe from this angle?” Back and forth.
I ended up spending a whole weekend there, not the “few hours” Al had suggested. My back was aching from crouching, my eyes were tired. I cleaned up each photo later, adjusting brightness, trying to make these little wooden figures pop. It was painstaking.
In the end, Jonah was happy. He got his pictures. He paid me what we agreed, though it felt like I’d worked for way less given the time. But you know what? It wasn’t about the money by then. It was about seeing it through. That’s the thing with these “Jonah’s Bait & Tackle” gigs. They suck you in. You tell yourself you’re just gonna do the bare minimum, but then your own standards kick in, or you just get invested in trying to make it work despite the chaos.
So yeah, that was my little dance with that particular bait and tackle. Learned a lot about patience, that’s for sure. And about how “a quick job” is often famous last words. You just gotta roll with it sometimes, try to make the best of it, and then tell the story later, right?