Clients requests versus reality

Being working in this business for almost 15 years, I participate in about 600 shootings. During these, I often have similar remarks or demands from my Clients and attendees. Here are my common answers.

(1) Please take beautiful pictures!

This the basic request, of course beauty is quite a different concept depending of each person eyes. I hope I will always try to do my best to get great pictures. To make sure we have a common understanding, it’s often better to provide sample of previous projects you like to get inspire.

(2) Can you make me look slimmer?

Yes, I can be using a tele-lens or a wide angle to change how perspective looks.

(3) I know a friend who have the same camera.

Quite classic introduction when you are not sure what to say to the photographer you hired. You are just instantly inside his friend list! But camera model are usually not what will make the creativity shine or not.

(4) Can you take a picture to look exactly like this 3D rendering?

3D rendering could be quite beautiful, and obviously, I will not copy with a camera what you can create with your computer. Maybe, you should stick to the 3D rendering if you like it.

(5) Can you teach my wife how to take nice pictures? (So next time I will not bother you with such shooting).

Don’t laugh; it happens a lot of time to me! Sometime, just basic skills are enough to cover some client needs and few training hours may be sufficient to reach this level. Of course, we can take care of this and after few training, you may so understand that taking a picture required a lot of skills and hire us on more interesting job!

(6) Can you upload all the pictures to my phone immediately after the event?

Social media are getting extremely important and fast communication could have a major impact on your event. Nowadays, our professional cameras can do dual recording with low resolution files to get it right after your event online or on your phone.

(7) Look the picture I did with my phone, you should use this angle.

It’s very important for us to respect your feeling and we always value your input prior to the shooting in order to bring the right gear. Please provide us as many references as possible to understand what you are looking for, we will not impose you our style, but more respect your needs.

(8) I will pay you when I will get paid…(My favorite one)

No offence, but this particular sentence is only a French one! I’m not sure why, but it seems that some companies do not even have the cash flow to cover a shooting and ask us to act as a bank for them. This is, of course, completely understandable ad we always listen to your money concern in order to reach a agreement on payment schedule. It’s important for us to get this sorted before your shooting, of course.

(9) We did not had the time to clean the office before your shooting, can you do it with Photoshop later?

We do not take pictures, we made them. Getting your site in order and as clean as possible should be done prior to our visit. Of course a lot of things can be arranged later, but will impact on your final price.

(10) Can you do it for free? My website have plenty of views and you’ll get exposure.

Yes, we can work for free, but we have to understand why! If you running an non-profit organization, please let us know in order to find a way to get your project done. We value what we can do to help making this world better more than our exposure to the web.

(11) Your camera takes really good pictures! (nothing to do with my skills).

As we run a rental website, we can offer you to work with the latest generation camera implying the best image quality available up to date. We own and test as much as possible and always get trained before starting a new job. Don’t get afraid of our weird looking setup, we have been running for so many years that we only coming with the best gear you can get!

(12) Can you send me also the rejected photos? And all the raw files (even If I do not have the software to open them), Here is a usb key.

Part of our job is to select the best angles and clips for you. We may try some new compositions during your shooting, but if we do not give them to you, it’s mostly because we know it will not be fine for you. We also often export almost all the file in order to let you select anyway the one you prefer.

(13) Why do you put your watermark logo in the middle of the picture? I cannot use it this way.

Editing is a a long process where you should not use the temporary file, it will also help finding which version we are working on and this tag is there for this purpose.

(14) Can you send us again (for free) a copy of all the pictures cause we lost the key of the drawer with your past disc inside.

We always have a safe copy of the raw footage and the exported files. We know anything could happen and that your image is important, also, your team may change and it’s sometime easier to call us to update a project. Feel free to contact us if you lost your precious memories.

(15) (Me) Which color do you need the backdrop to be?
(Client) I don’t know yet, can we do many different colors, and choose later? (or Photoshop all the pictures?)

Again, everything takes time, and time is money. A good brief will save both of these! Make sure you can gather as many confirmed information as possible. Doing something twice, will cost you twice!

An I’m not even talking about the scam email receiving every day..