Show or No Show?

Friend and fellow photographer Nicole Lami recently emailed me to ask for advice in dealing with a question we all face at one time or another.  Her question, paraphrased, centers around a recent shoot after which Nicole chose her best images and presented those to the client.  The client, however, wanted to see all the images captured during the shoot.  Nicole wanted to know how I would handle this situation.

My response was NO! don't do it!

Now for my logic:

The reason clients choose one photographer over another is their confidence that the chosen one has the talent to produce the type of images desired.  In a photo shoot, we all will get a few shots that are immediate throw-aways for a variety of reasons, flash didn't fire, focus was off, etc.  Then there are the situations where we have tried a pose with the client that simply didn't work.  These images do not capture the client in their best nor do they show the photographer at their best.  To show an image  like this to a client may lead them to having doubts about the quality of all the images and your ability as a photographer..

There are some images that belong in the good-to-great category but may a little retouching before presentation.  I will make preliminary edits to those before I show them.  This takes time on images that may not sell but I don't want to have the client turned-off by an image that takes little effort to fix to make it marketable.

My problem is that I tend to show the client too much. I've learned that this tends to confuse the client and actually reduces sales rather than increasing.   Sales then tend to be "I want a 4x6 of each of them!"

How would you have answered Nicole's question?

Laziness!

I attended a hospital-related function and encounter Martha Davidson, a professional photographer friend and student in my Lightroom class.  She promptly chastised me for not being diligent about the blog!  I am so grateful that she did because it means that someone was reading my elaborations! 

So, I promised to do better from now on and I will do so.

To the meat of today's blog:  I found a website that has some of the most compelling photographs I've ever seen.  The website:  http://www.milkphoto.com/ is a gallery of photos showing Moments of Intimacy, Laughter and Kinship, thus M.I.L.K.  Take a look and be inspired!


I have singed up to conduct another Introduction to Lightroom class with the USA School of Continuing Education.  If you know of anyone who may benefit from the class, please let them know.  The schedule should be published in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks Martha for inspiring me again!