I had all the photos of my kid as a baby in his first 6 months on a CD/DVD. ~15 yrs later pulled out all my old CDs from somewhere and was transferring them to my HD when that CD cracked in the CD drive. Old CDs can’t handle the faster spinning drives. Tears for days (and sometimes still).

Had never heard of KEH till about a month ago; I was given their name by a local store that uses them as one of their brokers (hey take trade-ins but don’t sell much used equipment. I bought my A6400 body from them and am very happy with it so far. I shop around for sure, but I would buy from them again.

Hate adobe, too. I broke down and have a LR trial for he next 7 days, but I’m trying to find the thing that it does that I can’t do with Affinity Photo. So far haven’t found it yet.

Actually just the word “glass” as a synonym for “lens” bugs me. It probably shouldn’t, but it does. It’s sounds so pretentious.

Your first mistake was agreeing to do so many shots in 1 hour, but I’m sure you realize that by now.

When I worked in a commercial advertising studio (as an photo assistant, set stylist, and graphic designer), food shoots were a half- to full-day project (depending on the client), using stand-in food while the stylist made the ‘hero’ food look presentable. These shoots for well-known fast food restaurant menu boards and didn’t even including any models.

Can you do it in less time? Maybe. But this was for a single shot of [whatever type of sandwich] plus creative directors from the ad agency coming in & out to oversee everything. The food styling itself took hours to get right (separately-paid professional), and then you have get the shot in a few minutes before it goes bad. Model shoots with a product like exercise equipment were often equally time consuming.

Sure, you can squeeze in a couple of shots in a half day, but you’re on location (we never did food shoots on location) and you’re talking multiple models and multiple food products… and you agreed to do all that in 1 hour? That’s just craziness, IMO.

Someone already mentioned preparation. All of this could’ve been solved in advance with a meeting to discuss creative direction for each shot and how much preparation each shot would require.

Hopefully you get a chance to re-shoot this, and hopefully you are able to explain tactfully how expectations went wrong all-around. It would be nice if you could actually get paid for all the time it takes to do what you set out to do. Good luck!