I Asked Photographers for Ideas for Photography Horror Movies

I asked photographers to come up with a premise for a photography-based horror movie, and the answers did not disappoint. Some of these situations quite literally terrify me to think about, and others make me outright laugh!

Models hunting down photographers for endless retouched photos for their Instagram accounts —Rob Polgar
Exposure. Just a never-ending slew of emails and inquiries asking to work for free. It’s giving me tremors just thinking about it. —Claudia Hershner
Bridezilla. Giant angry bride tears city apart whilst screaming “Where are my photos? It’s been two days!!!” —Brandon Adam
A photographer spending days on planning, directing, setting up, shooting, retouching a shot — and the client ends up butchering the shot by posting an iPhone screenshot of the image on Instagram with the Kelvin filter… —Kristoffer Sandven
No matter what you do, your lens cap is always on somehow. —John Barley
The Day All The Batteries Died. —Keecia Buster
They Died from Over-Exposure. —Justin Rosenberg
It would be “Groundhogs Day” movie theme. You are shooting the same family reunion event over and over every day… for exposure. —Scott Schmidt
You’ve been kidnapped and forced to re-touch low res JPGs from a 20-year-old cell phone. And they had better come out perfect…
—Scott Myers
A story where the photographer shoots the series of their career but is paid net 90000. —Dan Moore
The day I shot a wedding but forgot to put the memory card in. —Laura Spires
Same apparition appearing in the images, everywhere the photog goes. And the subject mysteriously dies after. —Cce Soo
Photographer drops his Hasselblad into pristine ocean waters during magic hour shooting for SI with the most beautiful model on the planet. There is no backup camera. —Ellen Hancock
The model who just left your studio goes missing. This is something I often worry about. “It must have been the photographer! Scumbags all of them!,” is what they’ll say. —Justin William Officer
From the directors of “You Forgot Your Camera Bag” and “Your Hard Disc is Corrupted” comes the horror story… “Your Model Didn’t Make it to the Shooting”… Based on a true story. —Felix Alejandro Hernández Rodríguez
The Pixel Plague. Slowly eating away and infesting anything that has the “RGB DNA”. Images, Drives, Sensors… —Rahul Mall
Silence of the Shutter. “It puts the gaussian blur on its skin, or it gets the hose again.” —Troy D. Davidson
Someone invents a small little gadget that completely rethinks the use of a professional camera with one app downloaded (for free), making everyone and their grandmother a pro… “iPhone 8” will be hitting your local theatre soon… —Deborah Anderson
Instead of Candy Man it would be Canon Man say his name three times while staring at your computer and he pops out the screen his camera steals your soul. His biggest weakness would be slow Internet. —Glenn Tucker
The Dead Shutter Island. —Vasilije Bajilov

Feel free to suggest your own photography-related horror movie premise in the comments below and we may add it to the running list above.

(via Retouchist)

About the author: Pratik Naik is a photo retoucher specializing in commercial and editorial work. To see his work, head over to his website or give him a follow on Instagram and Facebook. This article was also published here.

Image credits: Header illustration based on still frame from Psycho by Shamley Productions