I have always struggled to say no. At work, there are some exceptional times when saying no can be an option. At the beginning of my internship, I offered my internship company my photography services without any charge. I had been stuck at home for a while due to the pandemic and the opportunity to go out to LMCC’s Arts Center in Governors Island, play with my camera and photograph artists sounded exciting. I spent two full days photographing 12 artists, then I went through all the images and following the company’s file naming process, renamed and coded all those files. This turned out to be a lot more work than I originally expected. Nevertheless, I was happy that photographs turned out beautiful and that my work was all over the Instagram pages of the New York City art scene as well as our social media pages and the website.
About three months later, I was asked If I could photograph new members of the artist-in-residence program again. I agreed but due to the delays in my flight from Georgia to the US, I was unable to do it and instead, my company hired a photographer. While sharing images that I was going to use for later social media and news posts, I was copied on the emails between the photographer and my supervisor. One of those emails being the invoice the photographer had sent to my supervisor requesting $600.00 ($300/day). Although, financial gains never being my number one career motivator, I still found this worth noting.
Last week, my supervisor asked me to photograph a new group of artists-in-residence on a day that I’m not scheduled to work. In addition, she does know that now I live in Connecticut and commuting from here all the way to Governors Island for two full days would be very exhausting. I also thought to myself that if the photoshoot is so important, instead of asking me to go out of my way and provide my services for free, she could hire the same photographer as the last time.
This time, I could not say yes and explained to her that my commute from Connecticut to Governors Island and photographing artists for two full days would be very exhausting for me and that was something that I was not willing to do. I think that saying no at times takes courage but it is very important to set the boundaries and protect your own time especially when it’s something that’s not required of you.
