Lesson Learned: The Customer Is Always Right

The biggest lesson I learned from my headshot session with Krista was: Give the client what they want. When she asked me to take her headshots, I took it literally: her head filled every frame. I did this despite the fact that she gave me a sample image a week earlier in which the woman's head and the top of her torso were visible. When I showed her the photos on my camera's LCD screen, I could immediately see that she wasn't happy. She didn't want to just see her head. I asked her to show me the sample image again, so I could replicate it. Once I got on the same page with her, the photos were more to her liking. I learned a valuable lesson in humility: Give your customer what they want, not what you THINK they want. But what about artistic freedom? There's definitely still room for that. After you do what the subject wants, you're free to experiment. Change the lighting, change the scene, have fun, time permitting. At least I got one thing right: she wanted some silly and playful shots. As you can see, she was definitely silly!