Considering that I don’t really feel any more in whatever I do for a living these days, I don’t really know why I’m writing about the shoot I did earlier today. Perhaps it is because the shoot went well, but, then again, it is only when a shoot has gone belly-up that I feel compelled to write about it.

But, yeah, the shoot went exceedingly well. Smooth. Butter smooth. So well that I called for wrap almost three hours ahead of schedule. The weather held up. There were familiar faces on the set; my girls, who I still see almost every day even though I’m no longer resident at the production company they’re at; the same make-up artist and the same camera assistant who had been on my last shoot. The agency creative director was easy to work with, which was a surprise considering how, when he had been on the shoot we had a month ago for the same client, I had thought otherwise.

On that shoot, my mentor—my former mentor, really—took the lead; I was on set to assist him as the tethering tech, the guy on the shoot who works the shots as they come in live from the camera tethered to a laptop (I make Lightroom fly, something my mentor the old guard struggles with). I got the feeling that the CD had left the shoot not completely satisfied, even if he had put up the “good-job-you’re-the-best” front, that facade and veneer of hollow professional friendliness and courtesy I could detect from miles out and that I, despite being guilty of practicing exactly that every once in a while, abhorred.

The thing about compliments, receiving or giving regardless, is this: just as there is a very fine line between looking cool and looking like a dickhead, the distinction that separates a sincere compliment and a copious amount of it, so much and so profuse that it borders on gushing, is razor-thin. Keep gushing about something, and throwing in superlatives while you’re at it, and my bullshit meter goes off the scales. As far as I am concerned, a sincere ‘thank you’ gets you a long way.

I was glad I did not get much of the bullshit after we had wrapped. But the bit about “you’re a solid photographer” was really unnecessary, especially when it is followed by “you really know what you’re talking about.” Of course I know what I’m talking about. That is why you hired me in the first place, isn’t it?

I’d much prefer if you showed me appreciation by way of a fatter cheque. Superlatives do not cash out.