How a Craigslist Scam Turned Me Into a Professional Photographer

Reese Witherspoon and Team Docusign, Momentum ‘24 New York City at The Glasshouse – Joe Jenkins Photography

Hello there. My name is Joe, and I’m a professional, full-time photographer hailing from Brooklyn, New York.

Technically I live in Jersey City but as I’m never there and end up sleeping on my studio floor half the time (I’ve a little futon mattress I crash on and am not that hardcore). I just state that I hail from Brooklyn in order to keep things simple and because women in Manhattan won’t swipe right on dating apps if they think you’re even remotely a bridge and tunnel person (I’m actually no longer on dating apps but this is still true).

I’ve been pretty fortunate in my photographic career, thus far spanning eleven years, and have shot the likes of Jeff Bezos, Reese Witherspoon, and Eli Manning, and I regularly work with the most prestigious modeling agencies in the world. With this said, I’m here to tell you about how I fell into professional photography after walking into (but not falling for) a talent agency scam; a scam that is evidently somewhat common in the wilds of the entertainment industry and passed along to the people vying to get into it.

It was also the best thing to ever happen to me and it changed my life, irrevocably, forever.

The End of Me as I Once Was

President of Samsung North America, KS Choi, at Citifield – Joe Jenkins Photography

In the fall of 2013, I quit my job. At the time I had for a previous number of years made eyeglasses for a couple of guys in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. That job in particular was supposed to be a random safety net an acquaintance of mine had set me up with at the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis and was something I’d taken with every intention of only being at for a very short period of time – and so of course I was there for the next five years (as life always happens like that).

The two owners that I worked for were very nice, treated me well, and it was work I honestly enjoyed doing. I went in at 10am, stayed until 7pm, and thought about my work not once outside of those hours. For any self-employed person, especially one whose self-employment comes from photography, not thinking about work while not actively or technically at work is something akin to Nirvana/Eden/Bliss/Cheesecake/Etc.

This being said, somewhere around the fourth or so year my thoughts working at the aforementioned eyeglass store began to grow restless. While I enjoyed my job wholeheartedly, it for starters didn’t pay very well. Additionally, somewhere at the beginning of my fourth year a small ember of a sensation that I did not have a career but more a job began to quietly settle into my thoughts and, towards the middle of my fifth year, that ember of a sensation had developed into an all-consuming blaze. And so with enough money in the bank to tide me over for a few months while I figured things out, I quit.

The Beginning of Me as I Now Am

Docusign CEO Allen Thygesene Keynote at Momentum ‘24, New York City, Joe Jenkins Photography

After I’d quit my job I awoke on day one as an unemployed-but-by-choice person with a complete and total sense of freedom. I was my own man, and as my own man, I could do anything. Anything! I could paint, run, jump, craft, play baseball, make mac-n-cheese out of my bathtub, wake up at 3pm, wake up at 3am. Literally anything and everything. The world was my freaking oyster.

By day five I was miserable.

What on earth does a person do with their time on a random, Wednesday afternoon? I’d imagine thoughts like this in large part come from living in New York for a stretch of time. Just as Californication is very much a thing and causes a person’s blood pressure to drop, the finish on their snooze button to become more worn by the day, and their need to do things ‘right then and now’ diminish, the opposite can be said of New-Yorkification. Whether I knew it or not, New York had type-A’d the crap out of me and I was wholly unprepared to spend my days walking around in a bathrobe at 3pm in the afternoon.

And so, just to get out of the house, I started looking for things to do. I took up some hobbies. I participated in some community sporting events. I reminded myself that I’m not even remotely athletic and stopped participating in some sporting events. And eventually I ended up on Craigslist, where an ad entitled ‘Be an extra for Hollywood!’ caught my eye.

As a person that could walk into a movie theater, buy a ticket, watch said movie, walk out, and buy another ticket to another movie immediately afterward, I’d always wondered what it would be like to be in one of those movies. Even if it meant being just some guy milling around in the background, the idea had always intrigued me, so I responded to the ad and showed up at a talent agency somewhere over on 8th Avenue a few days later.

Actor headshot. Joe Jenkins Photography

The agency lobby itself was a total cattle call of people that appeared to have little to no acting experience; just dreams of being famous. Literally dozens, upon dozens, upon dozens of people were crowded into that room – half of them sitting on the floor as the chairs were all occupied.

The room was mostly a big wall of sound as people prepared for their interviews/auditions; I vividly remember a guy in an Autozone uniform butchering a monologue from The Godfather in preparation for his extra interview. I remember he kept pronouncing ‘Michael Corleone,’ laced heavily in a Queens accent, as ‘Miguel Corleone,’ and it was kind of brutal to watch, actually.

Anyhow.

I waited about an hour for my turn, was eventually called, and after a few minutes of hall roaming found myself in a tiny audition room. A woman walked in, handed me a strip of paper with one sentence printed on it, had me read the said sentence, and then with what seemed far too much enthusiasm congratulated me on the excellent job I’d just done.

She handed me another strip with a name and number on it that I should call the next day to ‘see if I got the part.’ I remember being confused about ‘getting the part’ as general background work doesn’t involve ‘getting parts’ but who was I to question.

Enter Tom the Vampire

Modeling headshots and portraits – in studio. Right image taken on the Nikon D850, Left image on the Fuji GFX 100S

I was given strict instructions to call the number the next day at exactly 8am. I found this rather odd but once again didn’t question it. Upon calling the number a guy picked up and his name was Tom. Tom sounded, and I say this with no exaggeration, a lot like what a vampire would sound like on the phone if you were to call one about a movie job.

He said ‘Joe’ very breathily to confirm who I was and while doing so I could sort of see him eagerly leaning forward into the telephone with each passing sentence as he tried to suck up bits of me through the receiver. He asked me a few more questions to further confirm who I was and after the fifth or so seemed to satisfy him completely switched gears and thereafter took on more of an infomercial host persona.

‘Joe! I’ve really gotta tell ya. Everyone at the agency, gosh, we are all SO excited about you!’ says Tom.

As soon as that sentence was completed, my heart completely sank and I realized that the person on the other end of the line was going to try to scam me into buying something. What that something was I didn’t know, but being intrigued and not having anything to do that day (nor any day for that matter at the time) I waited silently on the line for Tom to launch into his pitch.

Tom proceeded to tell me that everyone at the agency was super excited about me. Not that anyone had seen me, outside of the woman in that tiny audition room. Or not that anyone had heard me, outside of that tiny audition room.

As Tom unraveled his pitch he began talking about how his agency was working a lot with Kevin Bacon. And Liam Neeson. And then he dropped a few more famous names as I sat quietly on the other end of the line.

‘Joe! Man, Joe. Everyone here. So excited. Heaps of excitement. Veritable mountains of the stuff. Heck, somebody peel me off the ceiling right now. Ha!’ said Tom.

Then, a pause, as Tom breathed in a little bit and sounded perplexed. ‘Hmmm…’ said Tom.

‘What’s that hmmmm, Tom?” I asked, knowing that the time was nigh for Tom’s scam to present itself.

‘Well, ya know, Joe. I don’t see any headshots.’

And at that moment, I knew what Tom’s angle was. He wanted to sell me headshots. And thereafter probably a million other things. But he was going to start with headshots. And before I could even say anything further he launched into a fevered pitch on the importance of having headshots and how if I didn’t have a professional set I’d just be dead in the water and would never make it in the industry.

‘Ya gotta have headshots, Joe!” – Tom.

Nike, Joe Jenkins Photography

I asked Tom how much the headshots were and with as much innocence, confusion, and sincerity for my well-being as one could muster he asked me, very literally, this:

‘But Joe, can you really put a price on your career?’ – Mother. Freaking. Tom.

At that point, I was pretty much done with the conversation and it had about thirty seconds left in it, but I still was curious to see how much he’d try to bilk me for. I asked him once again how much the headshots were and he replied that they were ‘only a thousand dollars, Joe!‘

And so I said some things to Tom thereafter that I would not repeat in front of my mother, and hung up the phone.

Back to Craigslist and Into Photography

Dropbox cofounder Arash Ferdowsi handing his pledge check to Code.org – Joe Jenkins Photography

At the time, I owned a Nikon D3200 that I’d bought a few months prior because I’d considered getting into graphic design and had come across some graphic designer’s blog that had some fancy photos of him and his girlfriend in Japan that were taken with a DSLR and figured as a result that all graphic designers had fancy cameras.

Also right around that time period I’d developed an interest in selling second hand clothing on ebay, mostly because in New York one has access to second-hand clothing like no other area in the world and I figured I could probably flip things with rare labels that other people wanted but couldn’t easily get. As a result, I bought an inexpensive lighting kit that came with a shoot through umbrella, light stand, and corded sync kit.

And so, walking down the street after my conversation with Tom, I came to the decision right then and there that I was going to start taking headshots. I had no experience as a photographer (aside from taking photos of myself wearing idiotically expensive clothing for eBay listings) but I knew that headshots were this thing in New York City. They were a thing I had no understanding of, but they were a thing. And to me, having no experience at the time, headshots almost seemed like magic money. Someone pays you $800+, the two of you spend an hour or two together, and they leave. And that sounded pretty okay to me.

Jeff Bezos, Oxford University, and the JRR Tolkien Family – Joe Jenkins Photography

And so I picked up the phone, called my mom (who was concerned about me being jobless and with no present-direction) and said ‘So I’m going to start taking headshots.’

And she went ‘That’s great!’

Then she said ‘I don’t know what those are, but how wonderful.’

And back to Craigslist I went, where I posted an ad that day entitled ‘Free Headshots,’ began embarking on a journey to become a New York City headshot photographer and within a few short hours began to get not just replies, but tons of them. I had zero idea what I was doing but began reading obsessively about photography (the number of hours I spent on this very site at the beginning of my career is probably in the hundreds) while just meeting up with and shooting a bunch of randos over the following months.

After each shoot, I’d put the results on a Tumblr (my first portfolio) and after about a month or two some guy reached out and asked me if I’d shoot his wedding. It was a city hall wedding and as a result paid just a fraction of conventional wedding photography, but I was still floored by the idea that someone wanted to pay me money to take photos.

Thereafter I was mostly relegated to getting work off of gig sites – where sites like Taskrabbit, Thumbtack, and Upwork probably supplied about 80% of my shoots for the first few years while codeveloping my skillsets and momentum at any chance I could get.

Vita Coco CEO Michael Kirban – Joe Jenkins Photography

Eleven Years Later

Eleven years later and so many crazy wonderful things have happened over the course of my career that I never imagined would be even remotely possible.

In that eleven year span I’ve worked for a slew of big brands like Samsung, Docusign, and Google, and have met and photographed some extremely well known and influential people such as Jeff Bezos, Reese Witherspoon, Dropbox Cofounder Arash Ferdowsi, Eli Manning, and tomorrow may very well be in a room photographing Martin Scorsese (seriously how I lucked into this is beyond me but no joke holy wow).

What I’m most proud of, however, is that I’m going into my fifth year as a studio owner, with a 1,000 square foot space in the Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Keeping it open is tireless and oftentimes a grind, but if you love what you do (and I very much love what I do), work rarely ever seems like work and life always seems like so much more than life.

About the author: Joe Jenkins is a professional headshot photographer based in New York City. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can find more of his work on his website and Instagram.