A long time ago I noticed a unique problem in our profession. There seemed to be the type of portraits that sell well, (which typically photographers don’t truly like to create) and the portraits that photographers like to create (which don’t sell well to clients). In this problem I saw an opportunity. I am, I say in all my books, a business owner and my business is selling profession portraits. I work for my clients and they are the judges of the work I create.
The way I work is to allow my clients to direct me in the creation of the portraits “they” want. Many photographers are like the Butcher that keeps trying to sell pork to his customers that want to buy beef…“If they want a damn steak then sell it to them”.
I was taught this lesson about twenty years ago when a Russian Family hired me to photograph their family. At that time I only worked with two types of clients, high school seniors and families and I thought I was pretty darn good at both. I went to this client’s home, which we had already discussed when I help select their clothing. They had a very large, very beautiful home. There was grandma and grandpa, my client and her husband along with the two other brothers and their wives. I started setting up for this photo in the living room which was perfect. My client came up to me and said she didn’t want the photo taken in the living room. She informed me that she already had the spot set up for the photograph. At that time, she handed me an old portrait which had four men sitting on a white bench and their wives standing behind each man in front of a plain white wall.
I walked into an area beside her kitchen and my client had created the exact same setting for their portraits. She even had a white bench (it may have been the same bench) and the plain white wall. My first reaction was to be a “photographer” and explain all the reasons why she shouldn’t take the photograph as she wanted but rather have a superior product that I would create using my enormous talent. She wanted beef, I was trying to sell her pork (which is ironic since most Traditional Russian People don’t eat pork, but you get the meaning!)
Even though I was smiling and nice on the outside, I was furious, a monkey and a camera could have taken a shot like this and here they were wasting my precious time. I had half-a-mind to leave and give them their money back, but as I thought of all the bills I needed to pay (when you think you, as the photographer, know more about what your client should have then they as the client do, money is often in short supply), I swallowed my pride and did the image.
The images came back from the lab (days of film) and we did a projection appointment. I was sure when this family saw how plain and dated these images looked they would apologize for their error in judgment and want to reshoot them. The outcome was a little different than I expected, they were thrilled with the images and proceeded to spend twice as much as the largest order I had ever had sold (to that point in my career).
This was a “life lesson”, I could continue in trying to educate my clients as to why they should buy what I loved to create or I could learn to create and improve what my clients wanted to buy. Learning and improving on what my clients want is a practice I still use twenty years later. I go to so many senior programs that show images that, as a photographer, excite my creative side, but as a business person I know there is no way they sell to clients. These images are create to excite photographers and fill seats, not to instruct the attending photographers what the market is buying. I always like when the speakers say, “well you don’t sell many of these, but they sure are fun to take!” If you don’t sell them, why in the hell would you want to take them in the first place?
The business person in me wants to give my clients exactly what they want, but the artistic part of me realizes that often a client’s ideas can be improved upon. Right now fashion is very popular in senior portraiture. Seniors like the look of this style of images, but again seniors won’t buy something that the technique or style overpowers the focus of the portrait (the person). When you notice what has been done to an image in Photoshop, the pose, the lighting or the scene before you notice how beautiful the person is, you are looking at an image that has been created for photographers or advertising, not to sell to a client.
I like to merge what is popular with what sells to create unique images that my clients will actually purchase. This was the idea behind my new book Head and Shoulder Portrait Photography. The majority of photographers look at head and shoulders images as the images to hurry through so they can get to the more exciting full length images, but head and shoulders images make up over 2/3’s of the images purchased in the average studio. Why not merge the idea of fashion with head and shoulders image to create unique images that actually sell? In our studio we sell many more of these fashion oriented head shots of our senior clients than we do the traditional style head and shoulders portraits.
By looking for ways to improve what clients actually buy we have high sales averages while creating images that are interesting for me to create. I practice and improve my skills creating what clients actually buy rather than wasting time practicing and improving my abilities in creating images that clients won’t buy. You don’t get better by practice, you get better by perfect practice. You don’ t get to be a success in the profession by trying to educate client as to why they should buy the product you have created (like the butcher) trying to sell pork to clients that only have an interest in beef!
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