Meet the Nieratkos - Photo reject

By Alex

Do you know that routine with the football that Lucy would pull on Charlie Brown? Where she yanks it away each and every time he runs to kick it so he eats shit? That’s basically how my relationship is with Vice. And I’m stupid Charlie Brown.

“Hey, we should work on a VBS show…”

Kick and a miss.

“We should get a full camera crew down to Cuba with you…”

Kick and a miss.

And my annual football is:

“Chris, can you get us some photos for the Photo Issue. We’re running late so we need them right away.”

And so I run as fast as I can at that Photo Issue, dropping whatever I’m doing to pull shoots from years past, yesterday, and even tomorrow--ones that haven’t even been shot yet--and I swing my leg as hard as I can at that stupid email full of my photos…

Only to have it yanked out from in front of me again and again.

“So which photos are you using?”

“Oh. Dude. Space was tight…”. Or, “We have a very specific theme for this year,” or (and this is a great one), “You sent so many, we couldn’t decide which to use…”.

So you didn’t use any?

“So we didn’t use any.”

It’s bullshit stacked on top of bullshit. On a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis.

Luckily for me I have friends who would like to see me not starve. My friends at eS recently hired me to shoot party photos of my friend and eS team rider Bobby Worrest for his recent shoe release party.

I guess they believe that I’m just as talented(?) as the rest of the Vice photographers in the upcoming Photo Issue with a point-and-shoot digital camera.
Which ain’t saying much….