So, I'm doing a lot of small side jobs with my art and design to make some money to start buying back everything I lost when I was robbed. I've learned a pretty horrible truth. Well, not quite LEARNED, but it is a thought that has definitely been supported by clients.

I'm not one to badmouth people, but the number of cheapskates out there is RIDICULOUS. It got to the point where I either worked for nothing or didn't work. I decided I'd do ANY job if it paid over $100. Bad decision.

So now I have some guy who wants me to do photo manipulation like he's seen on the Ed Hardy site and a few other major professional sites. He wants me to put his models on a background, so he says. His photos he sends are UTTER CRAP. No wonder everyone else has told him they won't work with others' photos. His models are all cut off on at LEAST one side. What do you want me to do?!

I tell him for what he wants, his crappy photos on a background I have to somehow pull out of thin air with all of the edits he wants done and as impossible as he is, I'll charge $500 for the over TEN total pictures he wants done. He says he'll pay $150 for all of them and sends me my work. My new policy is ANY job over $100. Damn my new rule. I'm getting paid about $10 per picture to do something he'd probably usually get charged in the hundreds for.

He's bitching about the backgrounds. He wants it done very specifically. He sends me pictures of what he wants. All are ACTUAL images with the model ACTUALLY in that background. The only photo editing done is to the colors and lighting.

He basically is asking me to fix his crappy pictures and add them into a bright and colorful warzone but the models actually have to be there. When I have made some progress, I send him an email at the end of night one to show him what I have. I tell him I haven't shadowed her or anything yet but I'm looking for feedback on the background and on all the filling in I had to do to give her complete arms. He replies with "If you look at my site the rotating banner on the bottom and the hom page and top banner I did myself so i looking for someone to work with me for the long term, but they have to good creative work. the image you sent yesterday was bad stock image that the color was just change and you added the girl you did not even fade her in or shadow her in." Anyone that sees the half completed background would KNOW it's not just stock I changed the color on. I am NOT getting paid enough to be completely insulted by someone who created a really terrible banner.

He then sent some more professional images with models either actually in the location or added to a surreal digitally painted background. He sends more cut off models. He is pretty much asking for the impossible. I don't know what he is thinking. He now wants me to do several more test images. For free. He doesn't understand this AT ALL and definitely doesn't know the depth or cost of work like this. I have to fix the cut off images somehow, pull a background out of NOWHERE, add in stuff he wants out of NOWHERE, explain somehow that the picture looks off if the angles are different and he took the images at very odd angles, wait to be insulted, and try all over again.

Any suggestions?