Pros
You get to photograph newborn babies less than 48 hours old. You are given a wide range of artistic freedom. You meet diverse group of families to take pictures for.
Cons
I didn’t always feel welcomed by the hospital staff. Some of the behavior by hospital staff was very disrespectful and hostile. There is only so much my managers could do to protect photographers if there was a complaint by the hospital, even if the photographer had done no wrong, a doctor or nurse could simply make a complaint and you’re at the mercy of the hospital whether the complaint was valid or not. I sensed a lot of hostility between supervisors and photographers: managers saying coworker was fired when I know they had quit, former manager accidentally sent me a text complaining of photographers by name (this was the first day of work for me, now I understand everyone’s gotta vent at work at times but if someone under you is not doing what they’re suppose to, it’s on management to step up, not punch down), photographers not being given an option to leave for loss of family, and then subsequently getting fired for “no call, no show”, having schedules repeatedly altered several times within the same month, on one occasion I verbalized my concerns to a supervisor who was equal to my own supervisor and that information was leaked back, there was no number for HR or a higher up to vocalize problems, equipment would fail and I would get sarcastic texts back from my supervisor on why we were breaking company equipment. There’s no reward for going the extra mile with sales. I remember there was a contest with prizes involved but all three awards were for photographers who had improved the most. None of them were for top earners. There’s alot of pressure to sell even if circumstances don’t allow for it. Example: January is historically a low sale month for us, I remember the sales trainer telling us over zoom “your numbers don’t lie” but the beginning of the year is when people are broke because of the holiday spending. Example 2: it’s hard to sell when the majority of patients come from a low income area. Sometimes we would get customers who didn’t want to pay for services because they wanted the products with the watercolor attached. Our company offers free sessions but you have to pay if you want the actual pictures. I’d repeatedly get customers who were from low income communities try to take advantage of our work. It was the worst because as a photographer, you put your heart into what you love doing and then to be disrespected like that. Only 2% of customers ever buy online after they leave the hospital, the managers know this because they see the numbers every month but there’s nothing that’s done to protect the worker’s time and effort. We were expected to cram as many shoots as possible, purely for number’s sake,
