Naughty by Nature

How do I put this? I think I was just put through a hard sell. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I got a phone call from a lady named Joanne saying that I won a free make-over from Naughty by Nature. She said that I had won this at the Great Singapore sale but honestly I cannot remember entering any competition for this. They would do a shoot for me and give me two free shots on CD. She told me that this was a once in a lifetime chance and the package usually costs $550. I was not that interested but she was quite insistent. Work is a bit slow so I thought ah what the heck, go down and see what it is like.

So I brought down 2 suits and went to their office in Circular Road. The reception area is pretty huge with several tables with iMacs to show clients. On the walls are cheesy portraits with packaged templates. An image consultant named Chloe attended to me. It looked really busy and we could not start immediately. With time to kill I asked her if she was from Lasalle design college or something like that, and she just smiled and told me its a secret.

We finally get to the make up room. They powder my face. Chloe tells me that my green t-shirt and jeans would be good for a casual shoot. So in my jeans and t-shirt, I get shot in a room (one of several) by a Russian photographer. They have a light with a small softbox and another light with a gridspot. The lights by Eclipse. I have never heard of them before. There is a couch and several chairs in the room. There is a red coloured wall, a white wall and a wall with a black backdrop on it.
She put me through some poses that made me feel out of sorts. But I managed to get a couple of ok shots from this session which you see.

Chloe then asks me to try something different, like a Chinese costume. Yucks. I said no flatly and wore my suit next. Then put more powder on my face and gelled up my hair. I was shot by another photographer, a Chinese guy named Chris. Oh my god, he contorted my body even more. I hated the images. Made me look like a real goof ball.

Once I had changed back to my clothes, Chloe brought me in front of an iMac where she tried to touch up my eye bags, really badly. Oh my, my eye bags look better than the crap she was doing. She smiled and said that actually she is not that experienced and asked a manager over. He started talking to me and realized that I was a full time photographer and there is no way he would be able to sell me any photographs. He put the above 2 images on a CD and gave it to me. I think they realized that doing a hard sell on me would be a waste of time. But I googled Naughty by Nature on the internet and found the following horror stories.

Story 1
Story 2

I guess the truth is that there is no free lunch.