When I first started photographing families and children, my photography model wasn’t a satisfying one. My typical process was sending a gallery to the client for them to choose their portraits. Many times, people would not get back to me on which portraits they would like to order. Once they made their final selection, I would edit the images and email them the files. I would then get an email back saying that they loved their images. There was something missing. The connection wasn’t the connection I was looking for. I didn’t feel like I was helping them in this process. I didn’t know what they thought of their individual portraits and which ones they were not particularly fond of. I felt likeI was doing a disservice to my clients. They deserved more than that.
Last year, I decided to change things up and give my clients more attention, provide them with my expert advice and guiding them through the portrait selection. I started meeting my clients in their home to show them the best images we have taken during the session. I show about 50-60 images to each family or couple. For single beauty/headshot portraits the number is lower, but it still has a good amount of images to choose from. We sit down together on their home where they feel the most comfortable and relaxed. I play a slideshow of their images and I pay special attention to those images that they reacted to or made a comment about them. Then we review each image separately and mark each and every one of them in one of the three categories: yes, no and maybe. Then we look at the maybes and we make a final decision on the ones that the client can’t live without. I provide my opinions on many of the selections since I see things differently from the eye of a photographer. After that process, we design their wall or a photo album, which I will cover in the next post.
Agata Powers
