Tuesday Thoughts: December 5th

I'm a loaded baked potato baby!

I’m battling a sinus infection and post-op aches so you get this lovely AI creation to go with this post. I know some hate these but this made me laugh SO hard and sometimes we just need to laugh at the absurdity of life.

All credit to midjourney for this monstrosity

The Blog

I got a tip that a past thief, Amanda Elizabeth Photography, was still up to their old tricks. This time instead of stolen images for a mini session ad it was stolen images used for ads for her workshops, er I mean “content days.” These ads were allegedly also boosted which is another level of WTF.

Unlike the last time there hasn’t been any big display of an apology or acting like she didn’t know any better. Her Facebook has been continuing on as usual but her Instagram is either down or she changed the name yet again. She quietly removed the images called out for the stolen images within but appears to be still running the workshops.

The Buzz / Copyright Corner

Well, this week’s is a wild one. Late last week I posted about Brandon Burton Photography on Substack. If you haven’t read it yet, click below to catch up.

If you don’t have the time, basically a photographer sold a bundle package to a client for $900 that included a few sessions and $150 print credit per session. The client, Destiny, ordered her prints 2 months ago and started following up wanting to get an ETA on the prints after a month had gone by. Brandon eventually replied with a LOT of sass and here we are.

Due to the aforementioned surgery/sinus infection and kitten wrangling (we captured the new kitten, “no” and got him to a foster family) I didn’t have time to dig into Brandon last week when I made my post and I knew that the local news station was looking into him and I’d hoped they’d do a good job.

Over the weekend KFOR went out to get Brandon’s side of the story. After not finding him at the addresses listed for his studio they did find him at home and the story is kind of a wild ride. I cannot convey the roller coaster you’re about to go on. Just read it then come back here if you haven’t yet and make sure to watch the video too.

“I am not an email provider!”

Now, before anyone gets upset that I’m talking about a man in a mental health crisis it’s been stated many times over that this is just how he is.

There’s quite a few stories out about issues with other clients in the past in the various comments to the posts online. Here’s just a few of the comments I saw:

Furthermore, more clients have came forward with similar stories to Destiny regarding his sassiness when following up on things after the fact.

Then there’s this allegation about Brandon using an image that wasn’t his in an ad for Santa photos… and it kind of tickled my brain like I’d heard this before?

Sure enough, I’d been tipped off about him/this incident back in 2015!

It’s interesting that more often than not when a photographer goes viral for bad behavior there’s at least one ad that has photos that aren’t the photographer’s original works.

But wait, there’s more!

When I saw in the comments someone link to his new Instagram profile (yes that really is what he changed it to) I noticed the photos in the last post’s ad seemed… stock-y?

I was right.

Anyway, don’t worry about Brandon too much, he has a whole Facebook group of friends making him a basket of goodies and are donating cash to the cause to cheer him up.

So apparently I just need to go on national television and declare I’m a loaded baked potato to get some donations to keep Photo Stealers rolling? Unfortunately I’m just a sad french fry.