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PHOTOGRAPHER NEEDED…Flag this message

Sent last night around midnight Hawaii time….

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PHOTOGRAPHER NEEDED
Thursday, July 7, 2011 6:41 AM
From:
“Sonia Ramirez”
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To:
undisclosed-recipients
Hello,

How is Business today?

My name is Sonia Ramirez. I am an handicap and i reside in U.K.
The reason i am contacting you is that my Son is having his birthday soon in your Location,United States on the 19th of August 2011 and I will like you to take care of the Photographs.

I came across your advert on the Internet and am impressed with your services.
All expenses would be taken care of,Please I want the best service from you, because this is my only son so i want the best for him. So your best effort is needed at this occasion.

Pls Let me know your price to work for 3 Hours on that day,12 noon to 3 pm in the afternoon.We want about 25 copies of different photos in coloured form.We want you to work for at least 3 Hours at the occasion.

Also,we will have the photographs snapped at the Birthday forwarded to the Publisher of a Magazine Company in United Kingdom so they could feature it in their celebrity journal.

I look forward to your response

Best Regards
Sonia Ramirez

Are you kidding me? Really? Do you think I’m gonna fall for this?

My mistake…Don’t answer back to any spammers. As I engaged in chat with Mack Carthy, I realized I confirmed my email as a working email and I am a photographer. With confirmation, the boys from Brazil…no Nigeria, no Russia, no…uh…Senegal…no immigrant Africans in Essex…uh…Houston…?…now can spread my email around like a bottle of booze in a cheap Thai bar.

It could be my nephew (in law?) Issei (pronouned Ee say) who is about 10 and has a Japanese cell phone that is about as powerful as my MacBook Pro. The camera quality on that phone was better than my Panasonic point and shoot and even had a type of flash. It could be my 10-year-old Japanese nephew and his buddies running Japanese text into some Engrish translator and Binging photographers off Photoserve and sending scams out to us fools around the world. All on some plasticy kids phone, just like the one Issei has in the above picture. Plasticy…now thats a word…or is it?

The point is…DON’T RESPOND. No matter how angry you might feel.

You are just confirming you are a real live @. You’ll have your email past along to all the kids at the internet cafe, street corner, bar, or, well you get the point.

Again, if its too good to be true, and if the English is written poorly, then it must be.

But don’t blame me when Conde Nast Italia emails asking for something and you blow them off…just realize many foreign editors may not grasp perfect writing in English skills and will probably write you from their business emails…not gmail or yahoo.

Oi!!! Issei, nani shiterundayo?

A PHOTO SCAM

And a unique one at that!

On Friday, I got an email, to my surprise, asking me if I would be available to shoot a wedding in DENVER. Ho…an overseas wedding?

Wait…why me?

First off, I rarely if ever shoot weddings. I’ve shot society weddings for the New York Times but I hardly ever take on weddings.

Second, because I’m not known for weddings, no one hires me as their wedding photographer. If you asked me to shoot a location, portrait, or travel to some destination…sure, I know I advertise for that work. But a wedding?

Third, I am not a wedding guy, but there are numerous wedding guys all over California and Colorado. And many are pretty good. Am I that good that someone that doesn’t speak English as a first language would fly me to Denver to a wedding?

Hmmm….so the email starts as such:

From: mack carthy
Subject: Wedding
To:
Date: Friday, June 24, 2011, 6:06 PM

Hello
I will like to know if you can shoot a wedding of about 100 guest. Please let me know so that I can give you details.

Regarda

Regarda? The name Mack Cathy sounds strange but it doesn’t sound like someone who would say “regarda,” and after searching the ‘net, I don’t see any definition of said word other than something on Wiktonary which said:

third-person singular past historic form of regarder

Clue #1. This person either is a scam or they really can’t speak English. After all, “I will like…” is not correct but I figure they must be a foreigner, saw my work on line and figured I’d respond. It wasn’t as if someone was trying to let me shoot their uncle’s wedding, who happens to be a political prisoner of the Kingdom of Samarakand AND needs to move $8 million US to my bank and needs my help.

So I respond:

Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2011 15:39:11 -0700
From: marcoinhawaii
Subject: Re: Wedding
To: mccarthy

Hello,

Who recommended me to shoot your wedding? How did you find me?

What and when are the details?

Marco

They:

— On Fri, 6/24/11, mack carthy wrote:

From: mack carthy
Subject: Details
To: marco
Date: Friday, June 24, 2011, 7:13 PM

Hello,
Thanks for the mail,Here is a little about the wedding.The wedding is taking place in Denver, Colorado. It is an 7 hours event starting from 9am till 4 pm. It is an indoor event which consist of 100 guest at most, I will like you to cover the reception as well which will start from 2 Pm till 4 pm on that day. The wedding date is 1st of September 2011. I will like the picture to be on a CD, and I don’t have a wedding planner, I plan it by myself.
You may think about the flight and hotel accommodation, there is provision for that , my flight agent will make arrangement for that. I think with all the details have given to you now, you should be able to calculate and let me know how much it will cost. Please get back to me as soon as possible .I got you from Photoserve

Best Regards

So Best Regards…my idiot brother in law who learned the King’s English in London when he was a kid will email us with stupid, slightly archaic closings as such but there are too many grammatical mistakes and promises that seem too good to be true. Even though he’s an idiot, his Engrish is near perfect and wouldn’t make stupid grammatical mistakes. Notice…the writer still has not stated his name. Who is this person? I figure this must be a scam but its a pretty good one. I googled his/her name hoping they’d be some CEO of Samarkand but no luck.

Clue #2 and that’s sort of where the trail ends…

They found me on Photoserve but don’t advertise on there as a wedding guy. Why would they be searching for a wedding guy there? They are trying to lure me into a web and it seems way too simple and too easy to believe. And a guy who is spending big money (think: flight, hotel, car, travel days, meals, assistant, etc……at least $4000, my fee…$$$$$….) and all they want is a CD. No way. This person is an idiot but being very crafty. This totally is a new scam to catch the unsuspecting.

So…

Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2011 11:35:49 -0700
From: marco
Subject: RE: Details
To: mccarthy02@

Hello,

thanks so much for considering to shoot your wedding.

With so much anonymity on the internet, can you tell me about yourself? I don’t know your full name or anything about you.

Who is getting married?
Where exactly is the wedding?
What is the name of the place where the wedding is taking place?
What is your full name?
What do you do for a living?
How do you plan to pay for the wedding?
Where are you from?
Why do you want to hire me for your wedding?
What is your budget?

I primarily don’t shoot weddings so why do you want to fly me to Denver to shoot your wedding?

I would appreciate any references you can give me as well.

Thank you,

Marco

I surely asked the right questions. I should have just blew it off but the way the scam works the ego is fairly unique. I started to feel a sense of importance. I am an international photographer and someone with funds is choosing me to shoot one of their most important days of their life. That’s a pretty good sense of importance created in their email.

Yet, the glaring mistakes in their grammar, punctuation, and promises were all to hard to miss and believe.

and sure enough:

From: mack carthy
Subject: RE: Details
To: marco
Date: Monday, June 27, 2011, 9:54 AM

Thanks so much, since you cant shoot wedding, no problem.

Regards

They caved. They realized the scam was spotted and moved on. Notice they did not answer all weekend meaning they must have been in a time zone so different than Hawaii that they either slept through the response or the internet cafe might have been closed on Sundays.

Advice to photographers: If its too good to be true…well, you know. I feel this way all the time with mag editors and the likes. I’ve gone as far as to even ask small magazines who call me up for jobs how their finances are. I got burned by Ode Magazine. I shot a cover of Jack Johnson for them and they stiffed me for $1500. Scum bags. Who cares. Its a long time ago and I got my expenses paid which was important. These days, I’d be weary of just about anyone asking me to shoot something where money is coming out of my pocket.

Advise to scammers: Learn better English. Learn how to punctuate. Study how to write properly and use a little slang. If its too formal, which I’ve seen, we won’t buy it. Learn to write like a native…which you probably can’t and that’s why you can’t fool us all. Make your promises a bit more softer and don’t be so obvious. Not all of us are pure idiots. It might have worked once in the very beginning but we know most of the internet scams. However, your scam ideas are getting very good. Targeting a new segment in the market is great. Brilliant by my standards. Its a great way to reach into an untapped market. I mean its almost believable. I was thinking I was going to Denver in September. Its a pretty good ploy…fantastic as a matter of fact.

Bravo, you bored Kenyan, Russian, or Chinese hacker. Bravo.

By the way, the last wedding I shot was last year for my pals DC and SK. I guess its now DC and SKC. I don’t know…SK, did you change your name?

Outside

I’m updating my website and found myself searching for images on discs from a few years ago. I actually came across a set of images from Tokyo that I have not edited or looked at in some time. I hadn’t forgotten about these images but I found myself looking at the pictures with a different perspective, another person’s eyes. The images were from around May of 2005. I was different. I had left New York already. We were living in Honolulu. My career was just blooming. I saw things differently. I felt things differently. But essentially, its still me. The images retain that feel from my perspective.

Watching, wishing. Outside.

In case you didn’t see it…

you can see the opening scenes of Hawaii Five O at the TV Guide link.

I must admit it was a fun evening watching all the hard work play out on national TV. What surprised me more the response from friends, colleagues, and the likes and the biggest of them all, a write up on the Profoto USA’s blog.

The only sad note was hearing Springfield was arrested that day for DUI in California. Hey, publicity is never bad.

Thanks all that watched and for all the great comments.

See my name? HA!

HAWAII FIVE (MARC)0!!!!!

Yes the secret is OUT. I’m going to be on this week’s episode of the new HAWAII FIVE O!!!!!

I actually pulled in by the local coordinator, Angie, to coordinate a “beach photo shoot” as the episode was about a famous fashion photographer killed while on assignment in Hawaii.

Here is the synopsis of the show: HAWAII FIVE-0 “Ho’ ohuli Na’ au” Season 1 Episode 22 – Five-0 focuses on several key suspects when world-renowned photographer Renny Sinclair is murdered while on assignment in Hawaii shooting the annual swimsuit edition of a top sports magazine, on HAWAII FIVE-0, Monday, May 2 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

I was tasked to coordinate all photographic lighting and grip equipment for “made for TV photo shoot.” Production relied on my skills to make it look believable as well as functional as I also had to assist Hawaii Five O director Brad Turner (Alias, Smallville, 24, and many others) during his real photo shoot.

Brad wanted to try his hand at actually taking still photos and the production again relied on my skill to make sure Brad’s photo shoots were perfect. I sadly was not hired to push a button but all the work put in definitely gave the imagery my signature. Brad did a great job and the images we shot on the beach and inside a studio were phenomenal. Really nice work and, I must say, fantastic lighting.

But the best part of this job was actually playing a photo assistant on TV! With all the hard work put in, production decided that they couldn’t rely on an extra to act like a real photographer/photo assistant so they had me be the on-screen assistant to the actor. Sadly, no lines. (Damn…I could hear myself screaming CARRY YOUR OWN *&^%! LUGGAGE, NATHANIEL! And if any of you photographers I worked back in NYC and abroad read this, just substitute your name and your demands, you ^%#$!!!!)

And the actor, no less, was RICK SPRINGFIELD. Yes, Jessie’s Girl, yes General Hospital, yes mega 80’s great. How fun. Yes only being a young lad back in 1981 when Jessie’s Girl became the #1 single, I sremember the song as a kid and more so now due to the recent 80’s revival and subsequent playing of that song on lite rock radio and being a staple on classic 80’s music cds. I found myself recalling lyrics throughout the long waits between filming to fill the void.

…Where can I find a woman like that…

The episode’s set was out on the North Shore and filmed for three days. The early call times had us out in the chilly Hawaiian dawn setting up the photographic lights for the show. For the first part of the job, my task was to dress a beach setting creating the feel of a real magazine photo shoot in Hawaii. The directors wanted more flash than what I would call functionality but the key phrase was the “bigger, the flashier, the better.” I set up my Profoto 7Bs and one Profoto 7A pack, an Elinchrome Octabank, a few umbrellas, and used several California Sun Bounce reflectors. All the lights were synced to the set camera Springfield, who plays famed photographer Renny Sinclair, to fire when he faked his pictures.

I was surprised to also find that I actually had to coach Springfield in the art of photography. He had very little experience knowing how to act like a professional so I coached him on how to properly hold a large DLSR camera, how focus and zoom in/out with the lens, how to properly stand when taking the pictures, and even what dialogue to use as he interacted with the actress Serinda Swan, who played the bikini wearing fashion model. With the dialogue, I had to channel my inner Austin Powers and gave Springfield such key phrases as “right in the lens, baby” and “give it to me, baby” and other over-the-top phrases that make for good TV. I kept quiet but I really wanted to teach him how to be a super fashion ass but it never came to be. I did ask him if he was an ass in the show but he thought I called him an ass. Funny.

During the filming, I basically just held a Profoto Ring Flash above his head during the scene and acted as if I knew what I was doing. I think I frowned most of the time feigning super interest in the lighting, exposure, etc…I had no dialogue and was loutishly dressed by wardrobe in a loud Hawaiian printed shirt along with a black muscle shirt. I felt more LA than HNL, but I figured people would be looking at Springfield and not me.

Rick was sort of a cool dude. As I’ve worked and photographed other celebrities, its really no big deal to be around people with fame. We chattered about this and that, the models tiny bikinis and the likes. He actually joked around with me as he thought I was surely just an extra but was surprised to see me actually taking test shots of him and testing the lights in several instances. I think most of the crew were surprised to see that extra jump out and work grip and lighting.

With Brad’s photo shoots, we shot on the beach and inside a studio. The show needed several still shots that would be published in a book of Renny Sinclair’s photographic work. The book’s photographs held clues leading the detectives to Renny’s murderer. I, along with several union assistants, set up several 9′ seamless backgrounds, numerous lights, and allowed the director snap fashion photographs of several of the actresses on the show including famed model and actress Angela Lindvall. Brad actually threw me the camera in one of his shots to let me photograph Angela as he knew I could make her shine a bit more than he. I can’t say any of the images they used for the show/book are mine but if you are keen you might spot a bit of my signature in the show as well.

On a side note, its no secret Renny is killed in the show as CBS released the show synopsis. Without watching the show, can any of you 80’s kids guess who kills him?