Yesterday, I finished folio for my mother. As New Jersey Portrait Photographer I am helping to people understand that it is not the digitals that are important but the printed photographs. So I am showing you the folio box that I ordered for her 55th Birthday. This one is in red color and comes with black mats. I think its more dramatic and I hope she will like it. I picked the best 20 photographs, I tried to pick photos that are different from each other.
Being portrait photographer can be hard when as the artist but also as a photographer, you have to choose photos for your clients to see. If I know my client well enough, its a little easier to see when they did a fake smile or just didn’t looked comfortable in front of the camera. It is much harder to pick photos for the people that you just meant and you photograph clients and don’t know them well enough. Obviously the fake, cheesy smiles you can predict from a collection of photographs. It gets harder to pick photos where you are not sure if a customer will like their look on some of their photographs. You as a photographer might love it but your client can hate it.
I am teaching my self not to get personal when it comes to customer’s selection of their own photographs. I can see the beauty in the photograph and a customer can only see the flaws. People tend to really judge themselves on their looks. They see their flaws and only love their photographs when they don’t see them anymore. I tend to take it personally only because I put time and effort and I feel like a customer should love them because I spend time on those photos. Unfortunately, customers don’t know how much time you spend on their photos, they don’t know how long it took you to pick them out, sort them out, touch them up. Sometimes I don’t use that much time, I may see the photo and fall in love it and I can’t change my mind on it. Customers may see the same photo and see their same smile and not recognize it as the beautiful portrait.
Majority of the photos that are on my website were picked as my best work and what I loved. Customers when they see my work, they enjoy it but when it comes to their photographs, they pick something that I wouldn’t pick. This is what I am trying to avoid with every customer not to make similar photos and make them love their portraits even more.
