When Being Right Doesn’t Matter

Many people have commented on the disappearance of my photos of Kayla from my Patreon account, and rightly so. She is a stunning, young, fresh face who is both beautiful and alluring, and I’ll humbly admit, my  photos of her are pretty darn good, also. However, until today, I’ve been mostly silent about why I deleted them.

I met Kayla back in April after I had posted that I was searching for local models around my hometown area who would be comfortable with nudity. Kayla responded right away, and only minutes into our first meeting, she was naked and confident and fairly open with me about her life. At 18, she was sweet and smart and very mature for her age, and it would be more than fair to say I liked her almost immediately.

Over roughly the next two months we completed three shoots  together, and in-between we messaged each other often. We usually shared ideas for future shoots, but many times she would ask questions about modeling and the business side of it, which I always tried to help with, explain things as best I could using my vast personal experiences as examples. I tried to arrange paid jobs for her with other photographers I trusted, made plans to get her published in places I had connections, and generally believed in her talent and future abilities.

I've always made it a point in life to be as open and honest with people as I can. Life is too short for anything less, and keeping track of lies and omissions is simply too exhausting. She always told me that she loved the time we spent together. She said took pleasure and pride in both being comfortable within herself and with her nude form in order to create beautiful images that she could share with the world. Even when her longtime boyfriend, who she is deeply in love with, protested the nudes we were shooting, she would openly defend both me and our work together, trying to convince him how great I was being with  her and how much she believed in what we were creating. I felt that we had quickly created the foundation of a solid friendship, and I selfishly and pridefully took screen captures of the long, praising text messages she sent thanking me for my help in this new world she was entering. It was nice to hear so many kind words, confirming for me that I was the inspiring and nurturing voice I strived to be in a world made up of so many dark and selfish personalities.

Then sometime in late May, completely out of the blue, Kayla informed me that she had hired “a manager.” The news was that not only would she no longer be posing for any nudes, but most importantly, that she would no longer be posing for me for  free. It was a disappointment, of course, but as a friend and supporter of her work, I encouraged her to pursue the direction in life she thought was best for her. But then a week later, the accusations started. With what I knew was her manager whispering in her ear, she was all of a sudden accusing me of not being completely honest about where I had been posting her photos. I pointed out to her that I had explained repeatedly after every shoot that I would be sharing the photos online, which she had always verbally agreed to, and that I was posting them on my Patreon account, which was a subscriber-based system. “Well, I didn’t fully understand,” she finally concluded, demanding a small amount of compensation for the amount of money she assumed I was making from her photos.

I immediately faulted myself, even though I knew I had done nothing wrong. Sure,  maybe I could have been clearer with her about how these sites worked, but I never hid from her the public nature of these sites. And I knew we had  shared at least one conversation about how, after fifteen years of being a photographer, I was finally making some money with my model photos on this site. I had been clear and upfront with her from the beginning, but now she was accusing me of the opposite. To be perfectly candid, even though I eventually concluded that I had not misled her in any way, I still felt horrible. I had an ache in my chest that wouldn’t go away, and no amount of qualifiers or kind words from my closest supporters made the pain go away.

For as calm and professional and mature as I act in my daily life, I do secretly feel things deeply. I’ve always been an emotional person and have spent a lifetime muting my sensitivity, or at the very least stifling the appearance of my intense emotions. But the tone of her frustration and disappointment in me, which I knew was being fueled by this new “manager,” hurt me in a way that I hadn’t felt in a long while. Then the emails started.

This supposed “manager” began accusing me of “manipulating this young, innocent girl,” of “taking advantage of her inexperience” and “reaping the rewards off her naivete.” Then he demanded a large sum of money to resolve the matter. This was the point that my sadness and hurt turned to anger. Based on the monthly amount he saw publicly displayed on my Patreon account, he had assumed how many photos I’d taken of her, added up what he assumed each of those images should be valued at, multiplied it all by several months, and probably tacked on a healthy fee for himself, since these images were taken before he was ever in her life. After a week of returning carefully- worded, polite responses to defend myself against his repeatedly angry, accusatory, and unprofessional emails, I decided to relent a bit. I decided to give in only slightly, if only to resolve the matter so I could finally start allowing the deep wound in my chest to begin to heal.

Yes, I admitted, I had not paid her for her images, even though that was something she had agreed on in the first place. To be as fair as possible, I calculated that I had posted roughly 35 photos of her on my Patreon since we had begun working together. However, considering that my archives on this site now currently number in the thousands, I came up with a far lower number on average of what each image would be worth and messaged her personally, offering to pay the sum of my calculation to her directly, without involving her “manager” as a middle-man. She still insisted she couldn’t communicate on her own behalf and that I had to deal with him.

To make a long story short, he repeatedly refused to agree to my counter offer, demanding that she had as much ownership of the images as I did, and far other hilariously incorrect assumptions. When I calmly and logically described how copyright laws worked, how the modeling industry deals with such things, the standard trade agreements photographers and models work out, and how I have worked personally in the past with other models, I came down to a simple and finite ultimatum: Accept what I’ve offered in good faith for the sake of your client or I can simply delete the photos from my Patreon and no one will receive anything.

Now this wasn’t a slight against her, because I knew that, though as mature and smart as she was for her age, she was still just 18 years old and incredibly impressionable to this guy’s wrongheaded opinions. I had no great animosity towards her, but I also wasn’t going to be dictated to about how I live my life and run my accounts because this ignorant, unprofessional fool thought I was doing things improperly. Moments after I clicked SEND on that ultimatum email, still fuming at my keyboard in my quiet, dark room, I opened up my Patreon account and began deleting. I deleted every image of Kayla, every mention of her name, and re-edited collages she had been inserted into so that she no longer existed on the site. It was my digital “damnatio memorae” of her, and I wasn’t happy about it. These were great images, taken on fun, carefree days with a willing muse who had enjoyed the process as much as I had. But I knew that if a decision was going to be made about these images, I would be the one to pull the trigger, not some dishonest and disrespecting poseur on the other side of the country.

I received a response to that ultimatum email only a few minutes later, with the “manager” happily relenting to accept my offer of the money. “Sorry. Too late,” I told him. I didn’t need his approval, nor had I decided that I was going to wait for it. The damage was done. Then I explained that when he talked to Kayla next, to inform her that she didn’t receive the payment because HIS approach to the situation had tainted the experience, that HE was the one that had complicated what could have been a five minute phone conversation between friends, that HE brought an unfortunate conclusion to the discussion I was trying to have with her directly. Finally, I ended my curt response by telling him to inform her that, in the near future, when I predicted that she would decide to cut ties with him as her “manager,” I would be open to possibly working with her again.

But otherwise, I told him, I considered this particular matter closed and expected to never hear from him again. This is where the tale ended, or at least where it has laid the last month.

Then yesterday, a surprise email. I was out with my nieces at a local community festival, eating too much and having a great time. I was recovering from a long and productive weekend spent with my friend and acclaimed model McKenzie Eckels, who had just left an hour before. McKenzie had driven up the three hours from LA to sleep on my sofa the last two night just so we could spend some quality time devoted to working together. Over the weekend, we shot continuously all over the local landscape, drinking whiskey, sharing stories and laughs, creating some of the best work I’d made in months, all in all confirming that I did have fellow creative souls who believed in me.

And now here was this message on my phone from Kayla. A long and apologetic email proclaiming how bad she felt, how she had already cut ties with her “manager,” how right I had been and how wrong he had shown himself to be. She sounded heartfelt and sincere, saying all the things I’d been wanting to hear since the whole ugly mess started, yet now I heard it with a much more careful and guarded ear. Through a remorseful  paragraph she conveyed  how she missed working with me, how she was fine with my posting our photos again, and how she hoped we could work together some time in the future. Most importantly, she deeply requested my forgiveness.

I haven’t responded to her yet, simply because I don’t know exactly how I feel about all that, nor do I know what I want to do about it, which are both rare occurrences for me. I’m usually very sure of my responses,  deliberate and confident almost immediately  when presented with  most questions. This wasn’t the first time a situation like this had happened to me, nor will it probably be the last. 

Maybe it’s my recent self doubt, maybe it’s just  my emotional melancholy due to my birthday arriving tomorrow, maybe it’s because I’m in a somewhat lost and lonely place in my life in general, but I am unsure what my next step will be with Kayla. Maybe she’s a perfect symbol of how I feel about my where I am in my life; That even when I’m right, things don’t work out. Even when I haven’t done anything wrong, I’m still the one left on the outside. That even when I haven’t made a mistake, I’m still the one that loses.

I didn’t write this for you, dear reader, I wrote it for myself, to drain this grey, moody, emotional abscess out of my head. Thank you for reading this, and now maybe you’ll understand that my life as a photographer is not just an abundance of bouncing “T & A,” not just a series of artificial joys you might assume I’m living. Things are always real, and for as tough and messy and complicated as they may become at times, I suppose I wouldn’t have it any other way.