Olan Mills

I started taking headshots of our employees about a year or so ago and until recently they were more of a waste of time for me, rather than a learning experience. They are dead boring – 3/4 pose, facing the camera, blue background. For the most part, they are basically point and shoot – to the point where I have a couple of people who know practically nothing about photography covering for me when I’m out. The shots are basically used for proposals and employee databases etc. and creativity is not important to the clients. To date, my assistants and I have shot roughly 2000 subjects and have amassed a pretty large database of images.

But lately, as I’ve been learning more and getting exciting about photography I’ve been trying to refine these headshots and have been trying to squeeze some education out of them, especially considering that they are one of the opportunities for me to shoot almost every day. I’ve been playing around with lighting and setup etc, and have come up with a pretty good looking headshot – for what it is.

And what is it? Grade school Olan Mills portraits.
Seriously, I was looking at my photos and it looks exactly like those photos you used to get every year on the sheets that you had to cut out yourself, 4x6s, the 8x10s, and the ubiquitous wallet sized ones that you would give to all your friends with yearbook style personal notes scribbled on the back.

And then, the day after I made this realization I read that Olan Mills has gone bankrupt. Oh god, what will the grandparents of the world do without school portraits?! Unfortunately for the employees it sounds like a bad situation:

The staff have been told they will not be paid for this month, and the area managers have been told to lock up the stores and go home. There have been reports of some store employees taking equipment home (cameras, computers, studio lights, etc), holding it as ‘hostage’ against unpaid wages.

Give me my money, you corporate bastards or the camera gets it! Seriously, this sucks for the photographers and all the other employees. I was stiffed out of a paycheck when the bookstore I worked at went bankrupt and the whole thing just sucks. Of course, people could come to my Times Square studio if they’re jonesin’ for some cheese-tastic portraits.

Update: Looks like the liquidation is only the UK Arm of Olan Mills, the US version appears to be up an operating. But given the way they treated their UK employees and customers, I’d say steer clear.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 12:03 pm and is filed under Photography, Workflow. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.