• A lot of people think that the job of a photographer is to just turn up with a camera and snap at whatever the client has asked for then plug the camera into the computer and bingo.
WRONG WRONG WRONG! ...spesh if you're a people photographer. I'm going to educate you about this wrongness - with this whole digital cameras are cheap and anyone can be a photographer vibe that we have going on these days, loads of peeps think that if you just take a shit tonne of photos, the law of whatever means that at least a handful of these photos will turn out half decent and you can just give those ones to the client, right? Cue family-fortunes-esque UH UHHHHHH here.
NO NO NO NO NO! It takes a certain 'je ne sais quoi' to photograph people. Obviously it's important to have top quality kit to call yourself a professional - otherwise you're going down the route of false advertising to the poor client who probably doesn't know any better. I'm not really a kit-centric photographer but I make sure I have decent toys to bring out with me - I have lenses that cost close to £2k!!!. However my geekiness lies in other areas and I don't spend my time banging on about f stops and radial filters [BORING!]. There's knowing how to light people correctly too - in my experience, men and women work best under different lighting conditions and as a woman myself, I like to think I know what bits us laydeez feel insecure about without them having to spell it out to me. The thing that is THE MOST SUPER DUPER IMPORTANT THING about photographing people is people skills. You can have the most bad ass set up, kit, lighting and fancy schmancy studio, but if you can't make the person feel awesome during their shoot, then stop now and go and photograph potatoes or sausages or something.
I just did a photoshoot for a lovely lady called Pam. Pam, like most of us, was not looking forward to having her photo taken, but needed to put a face to her business. She had had her photo done previously by another photographer but she totally hated the photos and I think in turn made her think that she wasn't photogenic. This time when it came to new photos for her website she chose to have hers done with me instead of the other dude. The deadline was close and the studio I use wasn't available within the time we needed to get the photos sent off to the graphic designer and website people. So, to give my customer what she needed, when she needed it - I offered a slight improvisation and said, of course I'll squeeze her in but we'd have to do the shoot in my living room and checked she'd be ok with the über glamourous location.
Check it out, haha!
We took our time on the shoot and took as many photographs she needed. I kept showing her on the back of the camera and made sure she was comfortable. Making a customer feel good on their shoot is more than just flattery - it's easy to keep saying 'beautiful' or 'great shot' but people can soooooo tell a fake. It's so important to be genuine! To be honest, we did take a lot of photos on her shoot and we actually ran over time but I wanted her to be really happy. After the shoot, we went through the images on my laptop so she could see them larger than on the back of the camera. Out of the 92 we took that session, she shortlisted 41. That's not a bad ratio at all. I'm really pleased too as it's nice to have made someone feel like they liked their photos so much that they end up ordering more than we originally agreed at the end of the shoot. Woohoo!
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