Andrea
Los Angeles,#2UPDATE Employee
Fri, March 23, 2007
I am a model who has been to many Glamour Bash workshops. I am no longer managed, but I continue to do modeling jobs for Alan. I have no idea why there is even a complaint here. If you read it, the model has nobody to blame but herself. When you model at a Glamour Bash, the photographers are not permitted to publish your pictures unless you sign a release and give them permission. If you sign a release, you are paid for it. They don't get to use your pictures for free. This girl signed a release, regrets it and now she wants to blame Alan. This really makes models look bad. Isn't she smart enough to know what a release is? Why isn't she screaming about the photographer? He is the one who posted the photos, but then, she signed a release. A lot of people have photo events in L.A. Inevitably there will be a few photographers who are there for the wrong reason. Alan works very hard to get rid of the ones who are bad and goes out of his way to protect the girls. Trust me, there are a lot of events I won't go to. I wish Alan would put on more. I have never seen him be rude with a model or act inappropriately and I have never heard a model complain about him. He treats us all way too well and I would work for him any day. The girl who complained needs to get a life and learn to be responsible for her own actions. I understand why photographers don't trust models when this girl has behaved so badly by making a false complaint.
Alan
Long Beach,#3REBUTTAL Owner of company
Fri, March 02, 2007
Sometimes a person makes a complaint and it is difficult to respond. It is particularly difficult when someone doesn't have the courage to identify themselves so that we can even tell what the incident is. What we have here is an angry model, but it seems to me that the anger is being directed at the wrong person. Apparently the poster was hired to model at a group photo workshop. At that workshop, she posed for photos and signed a release with the photographer to allow him to use the pictures. Two years later she googled her name and found that someone had posted her pictures online. Since I have no idea who posted this complaint, I have no idea who she is complaining about. If, however, she signed a release, it is difficult to understand why she is complaining now. If she signed a release she consented to allowing the photos to be published. If the photographer used them in ways she is now upset about, the person who she should be angry with is the photographer, not me. What she is suggesting is that photographers come to the events, take pictures and then freely post them on the Internet. Every photographer that comes to a workshop signs a document promising not to post any photos on the Internet unless he first gets a release from the model. If she chooses to sign a release (for which she will normally get paid extra), she has made the decision to allow the photos to be posted. If a photographer posts an image without getting a release, he has violated the terms of the agreement he signed when he registered for the event. She would certainly have some recourse. The problem here is that the poster has chosen to get angry and complain here rather than to bring the issue to me to see if it can be resolved. More often than not, a simple phone call to the photographer will resolve the disagreement, but if not given the chance, there is little I can do. The vast majority of photographers that come to these events are good, serious amateurs who are trying to better their craft. I am sure that there are a few bad apples. If there is a problem, she simply needs to speak to me to see if I can get it resolved. Even if she signed a release, a phone call will often get a photographer to take an image down simply as a courtesy. I can't help if I don't know there is a problem. As for the window into the dressing room, et. al. that is simply silliness. The room she is referring to was not just used as a changing room, there were also hundreds of pieces of clothing for the models to use for free, jewelry, make-up, hair supplies, etc. All of these things were stolen regularly from the studio by models and others so we needed to monitor the room to avoid being robbed blind. The window had a set of mini-blinds that the models could close any time they needed privacy and there was a restroom down the hall they could use to change. Those are just mean spirited statements being made by a model who was angry at finding her pictures on the Internet. If she would bring the problem to me, I would be happy to help her but all she does here is to make all models look bad because she is both vindictive and anonymous.