Did the roaster grind finer than you usually do?

I saw a similar story on a legal forum a few months back where a paralegal tried to do her own renewals on a small photo collection and lost the rights to a whole batch of stock images used in ads. The client was a local restaurant chain and it cost them way more than $3k to redo their menu boards and website. It's wild how one little missed deadline can snowball like that... I always let the pros handle anything with deadlines attached now.

Oh man, a buddy of mine who does surreal landscapes had this exact same thing happen. He spent a whole weekend redoing his portfolio with that stark white look because some big name photographer swore by it. The gallery he was trying to get into actually told him the white was making his pieces feel flat and lifeless, like they were all floating in a void. He had to go back and make duotone background versions that matched his dreamy, moody style instead. So yeah, that advice is definitely not a one size fits all thing, it really depends on the vibe of your work.

22 years is a long time but I gotta be real with you @bettywood and OP, is the fade game really "completely different" or are we just overthinking it. You still take hair off the head with clippers and blend it. That's the core thing. The burst fade stuff is just a new shape on the same old template. I watched a video last week of a barber from 1998 doing a taper and if you squint it looks the same as half the stuff on Instagram now. People act like learning to angle trimmers differently is some major career shift. It's not. It's five minutes of practice. I don't buy that the expectations changed that much either. Customers always wanted clean lines and good blending. They just have better vocabulary for it now. Let's not pretend this is rocket science.

Wait, @lisaf38, did you say 275 degrees actually melts solder?!