Day 6 – Your images

Get inspired by your own work

We’re only as good as our last game as the saying goes. But don’t always think about how you felt about the last shoot as a whole but what worked for the most important people of all…… your clients!

What has sold well or provoked the strongest emotion for your past clients?

Are you still using those techniques and have you developed them? Have you developed a set of your ‘go to shots’ or ‘winners’?

Ask yourself why the clients liked the images. Was it the lighting, the cropping or merely the fact that captured your subject as they see them/themselves?

Sometimes it’s very easy to push a certain style or technique on a client. Many photographers take the somewhat naive  approach and boldly state ‘They hired me for my style so that’s what they’re going to get’

Did they? Maybe, just maybe, they hired you because they liked you, or maybe you were cheaper than another photographer they met. Maybe you just got a very good referral from a past client?
How educated in terms of photographic style and techque do you think your clients really are? Perhaps they just liked the way you got everyone smiling in a group photo rather than the post processing or lighting techque you used?

I’ll be the first to put my hands up and admit to gently urging portrait clients towards images that I liked and that I know would look good enlarged.
Not that there is anything wrong with this as you want the work that you put out there to be your very best.
But what has always surprised me are the pictures that I’d included in a viewing only as an afterthought or becasue they were a little quirky. These turned out to be some of the most popular images.
It made me take a second look at what my signature style actually was! Maybe those quirky images actually defined an element of my style?

This led me to ask my clients ‘How would you describe my style of photography and the experience as a whole?’
I got quite a few different answers, some confirmed what I’d already thought (and told them…. I’m this type of photographer etc) but some held quite a different view.

How refreshing!

For more posts in this series go to Get Inspired