Client-Based Senior Photography by Jeff Smith
Who Determines the Value of Your Work? Is It You? The Client Is the Ultimate Judge.

The first question I have for you is: Who determines the value of your work? Is it you? Not to discourage anyone, but I have never seen a photograph taken by a photographer (at any skill level) that he/she was not proud of. Photographers who think they are the best judges of the value of their work should think of all the mothers who have said those famous words: “My daughter is so beautiful, she should be a model!”

After you hear this, you then get a look at this “goddess” and wonder just how many times she was whacked with the “ugly stick.” Our photographs are like our children. We made them, and no matter what they look like, we are convinced they are beautiful and worth a handsome sum.

I call this thinking “I am the professional, I will tell you what’s good” thinking. Photographers that fall into this trap create every photograph to meet their own standards and to satisfy their own tastes. These photographers then spend the rest of their (usually short-lived) photography careers trying to sell people what they think they should have rather than what their clients really want.

The next question: Is the value of our work determined by other photographers? As we start learning photography, we form relationships with other photographers that help us become better and improve our craft. Once we get to a certain skill level and no longer need a mentor to guide us, many photographers still look for the approval of their peers as a way to determine the value of their work.

I have a great respect for many in our profession, but I really don’t think I want to put any of them in charge of my financial or professional destiny. Let me give you an example. I am a senior photographer. Seniors are not a portion of my business, they are my entire business. When I attend senior seminars and conventions, I can’t help but notice the number of prints with seniors in swimsuits, crop-tops and shorts that leave little to the imagination. From what I have seen, this type of photography is well liked by fellow photographers, at least according to the ribbons I see hanging on these prints. In 20 years of senior photography, I have been asked two times to photograph a young lady in swim wear, both were the request of the mothers. One had just won the swim portion of a pageant and wanted to show her crown and sash, and the other was the star of the water polo team. I can say that the swimsuit market in senior photography (at least in my area) is fairly limited. And as far as the other seductive clothing I see seniors displayed in, I can honestly say that I have never had a senior or parent come up to me and say, “I don’t like these portraits, I don’t look seductive enough,” or “Could me make me look just a little trashier, please?”

The other thing I have noticed at these shows is that none of the girls or guys in the winning portraits look like 90 percent of the clients I (and you) work with everyday. They look more like stand-ins for Halle Berry than like average seniors. Never once in these photographs have I seen an overweight person or normal-looking person. Personally, I think that all prints should have a before and after attached to them, so we could see if the photographer simply captured reality or created a reality that a paying client could live with.

Whether you try to determine the value of your own work or you turn to other photographers, you are missing one of the true keys to success and happiness in this business. The hardest lesson I had to learn was that art was in the eye of the buyer—our clients are the ultimate judges to the true value of our work. This means all of our clients: the short ones, the overweight ones, the balding ones, all of them.

Most photographers dream of a place that has nothing but men and woman that all look like the people on display at the shows. I have often heard complaints from clients who could see this bias toward the beautiful. One mom told me about her children. The first senior was a beautiful, outgoing cheerleader, while the second senior was less attractive and shy. As you can imagine, when they went in for senior portraits, the cheerleader had a beautiful session with all the biggest and newest sets and backgrounds, while the less-attractive sibling was run through her session getting all the same backgrounds as her less-attractive friends. The good news was the third senior came to me.

I realized a long time ago that I couldn’t make a good living selling beautiful portraits to only beautiful clients. I needed to sell beautiful portraits to all my clients. The first step in creating client-based senior portraiture is taking the time to care about your clients, not just the beauty queens, but every person who graces your studio. The second step in creating client-based senior portraits is learning how to make the average client look beautiful. I saw the obvious bias toward beauty and wanted to show photographers how to make every client look beautiful so I wrote the book Corrective Lighting and Posing Techniques for Portrait Photographers.

While I don’t want to re-write the book in this article, there are some key points that need to be addressed. The first one is: Lower your expectations. Quit expecting each client that walks through your door to be beautiful. Expect the worse. Say to yourself, “I know this next client is going to be a real beast, but I am the photographer that can make them look beautiful.”

Once you adjust your expectations (and realize you don’t live in the town of “Perfect”), practice to become better at your craft, and stop thinking about getting better print scores. Quit having beauty kings and queens come in for sample or test session. Practice with average people. Learn to make average people look beautiful, and you will tap into more success and happiness in this profession than you ever could imagine.

Shortly after I decided to start making “all” of my clients look beautiful, I had a senior girl in my studio who was significantly overweight. I worked very hard to make her happy with the way she appeared in the images.

I used corrective lighting and posing to hide the problem areas. When the girl and her mother viewed the images, the mother asked to speak with me. I went into the salesroom and the mother had tears in her eyes. She stood up, gave me a hug, and said, “I always tell my daughter that despite her weight, she is a beautiful girl. These portraits show the beauty that I see.” As long as I live I will remember that mother and senior. That’s why we do what we do; that’s why we care about our clients. And for photographers that are into merits, that lady spent a bundle of money on portraits of her beautiful daughter—those are merits you can take to the bank!

The next step in creating client-based senior portraits is to allow your senior clients to select the backgrounds and poses they want done in their session! How many times have photographers heard, “Why did you pick that background? Oh my God what were you thinking?” Educate your clients as to what they need to bring in for the various colors and styles of backgrounds/sets (through a consultation and consultation on DVD), and then let them take control of their own session. Most of the time, they are really good at it. When they make bad choices, it is up to you as the professional to guide them in the proper direction, but this allows a client to get specifically what they want and not have to live with what you think they should have. This benefits them and you. No more having to “figure out what to do.” And if the client doesn’t like a background choice, they simply don’t order it, instead of raking you over the coals.

This giving up some control over the final outcome of a client’s session is something that many photographers would never think to do. After all, they are the photographers, they know what’s best! Wrong. You are a professional that wants to live above the poverty line, so produce a product that your client wants to buy, rather than something other photographers want to look at.

To further our clients’ control, and our direction of photography, we ask our seniors to bring in photographs that impress them from magazines, CD covers or the internet. Why look exclusively to other photographers to see the current trends in your market. The images gathered by the seniors are hand selected by your target market. We save these images, and we recreate them in our test sessions for samples in the studio (with average seniors). These clippings give new direction to test sessions rather than just recreating the same backgrounds/poses with new faces.

Creating client-based photography is no different than creating a client-based business. It shifts your thinking from “me” to “them.” Your staff also has to be trained to think like this. I call a meeting with each new employee. I schedule it really early in the morning, on their second day of work. As they are sitting in front of me at this meeting, half asleep, I ask them, “Why are you here?” Their eyes get big, and they typically say, “Because you told me to be here.” Or if they are like most younger people today they say, “Because I have to be.”

I then give them this example: “The interior of a house has to get painted. There is the husband that ‘has to’ paint the house and the wife that wants to paint the house. Which one is going to have more fun and do a better job?” I continue, “Ninety-five percent of people think they ‘have to’ go to their jobs, not that they want to go to their jobs. Most people think of how they would rather sleep in, watch TV, or go to the beach rather than come to work, but that isn’t a reality. You have to work to sustain your life, so the question is, do you want to be here and work for me, or do you want to work for someone else?”

Although the response is half-hearted, they get what I am saying. Each day I come in to work, I greet each employee, “Why are we here?” And they learn to smile and say, “Because we want to be here.”

To you photographers, let me ask you, “Why are you here?” You had better learn to respond, “Because I want to be here!” And you better do it with a smile! Quit daydreaming about sailing or golfing or riding your Harley. Quit looking at your client as “getting in the way of what you really want to do” because none of those activities are going to make you money, so it isn’t realistic to think they are an option.

Quit looking for perfect clients and learn to make the average clients you have look perfect. Learn to care for all of your client—the wealthy and the poor, the beautiful and the average. If you can do that you will find that you find true success in this profession and have fun doing it!

Jeff Smith owns and operates Smith & Co. Studios in Fresno, California. Smith is the author of Corrective Lighting and Posing, Outdooor and Location Portrait Photography, Professional Digital Portrait Photography and Success in Portrait Photography, all published by Amherst Media. The studio has its own web site: www.jeffsmithphoto.com/.