Ugh, As If! - contemporary art and culture podcast · Lisa Fevral

Photoshoot horror stories - 3x17

·57 min·3 clips

She messages a guy for a shoot, then discovers he's wearing dreadlocks and is Asian.

The duo is wiped out from the jump. They open with that exhaustion, joke about never sleeping, and treat the whole thing as a deliberately light, funny way to get people through a rough Monday. The topic is photoshoot horror stories. They also point listeners toward a Patreon bonus episode about music, since music talk keeps drifting over there anyway. Then the story starts. One host talks about spotting a potential model through a name she already knew from chatting with him at the cafe where he came in, so the contact feels ordinary and professional enough to turn into a DM. She sends the message, assuming nobody will read it as flirting because she does not think that way and does not usually do that in general. That assumption goes badly. After opening his Instagram properly, she finds older photos with dreadlocks, which lands hard because the guy is Asian and the image does not match the reality she thought she was booking. The room loses it. The story becomes one of those brutally specific creative work warnings that is funny because the social error is so obvious and the correction comes so late. They keep pushing the joke. The host admits that since then she checks a person's entire Instagram before agreeing to work with them, because one quick glance is not enough to tell the whole story. Even that is not foolproof. The point of the anecdote is less the awkwardness itself than how fast creative collaboration can go sideways when context is missing and the first impression is off. The pacing stays loose. They interrupt themselves, correct themselves, and let the conversation wobble around the story instead of sanding it into a polished anecdote, which is part of the appeal. By the end they are back to playful sign-offs, talk of future collaborative content, and the kind of chaotic banter that makes the whole thing feel like a studio hang that happened to get recorded.

As heard by us

A sharp backstage cautionary tale about looking past the polished first impression.

This episode treats horror stories from photo shoots as more than gossip. The hosts are tired, profane, and funny, and that gives the whole thing a scrappy feel as they turn one backstage mess into a wider lesson about how fast a booking can go wrong.

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Why you'd press play

You want a photoshoot horror story that starts casual and gets painfully specific.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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