Your Pictures Suck
“I can’t sell these pictures your giving me.” The Passer says with her hands on her hips. “I don’t know about you, but I drove all this way to make money.”
“Oh?” I say and give her a blank look, having hear this particular Passer bitch and moan about my images before. “What was wrong with the portraits?”
“They were horrible!” She says and lets a look of disgust flow over her face in a well rehearsed gesture. ” You pre judged that man because he was alone and he didn’t have anything to choose from. I almost marched him back in here for some new images.”
“He got the same five shots any other single man would get.” I say feeling more than a little defensive at the point. “Did he buy anything?”
“He spent $300 dollars, but I was so embarrassed by how bad those pictures looked I was a shamed to take his money.”
Some Passers think that pissing off The Photographer is going to win them points somewhere, that their bitching and moaning is going to somehow make things better. They are wrong. A pissed of Photographer will take worse images, and everyone brought in for additional portraits will have more bad images to look at.
In the good old days I didn’t have any Passers to deal with, then I had one, then two or more, and now it is heading back to one. Passers are great fans of conspiracy theories. If they are having a bad day, it is because their coworkers are out to get them. I have spent more hours than I care to recalling listening to Passers talk about other Photographers and Passers. I spent a good deal of my own time bitching and moaning, but I never go up to one of the Passers I’m working with and say Damn, You Suck as a Salesperson.
The man whose portraits so embarrassed the Passer was a large man wearing a suit that was clearly bought when he was not quite so large as he is now. This means that he can’t close the jacket, which means I can’t take any full length or 3/4 shots of him. With the top button of his too small shirt fastened and his tie snugged up, his head look like it is about to explode-so it is not a great idea to take a super closeup. He has very round features and he is not going to look like Brad Pitt in his portraits. I take five images, changing the background, posing, and lighting. I do the best I can with what I have to work with.
Other Passers have a softer touch with the usually Prima Donna Photographers-they bring people in for Retakes by saying They didn’t this or that and rolling their eyes or shrugging their shoulders to say-I tried to tell them their portraits were fine.
I’ve worked with a lot of Passers who hold the opinion that if they have a good day, it is because they are great salespeople who overcame the crappy pictures they were forced to sell-and if they had a bad day, well, your pictures sucked.
My Manger was watching me shoot one day and a single man came in. He got my Standard Set of five shots, including my Hollywood Shoot. I got the kicker light a bit close and the rim lighting on the side of the man’s face was a little hot, but for this shot that’s ok. The Manger liked the shot, but notice how harsh the kicker light was, I said I would try to watch that. After the man left, the Passer came out and said the man had spent a little over $400 dollars-and I turned to the Manger and said the lighting was perfect.
“If it had been perfect,” The Manger says. “he would have spent $600 instead of $400.”
That’s the kind of thinking a lot of the Passers have, they bought, but if I had better pictures, they would have bought more. At the end of the day, all I care about is the total sales-that’s what my commission is based on. You can’t eat your Average. And you can’t always take magazine cover portraits.
Good enough is usually good enough. I shoot my share of bad images and my share of great images, in the end the only thing that matters is if the people buy those images, good or bad as they may be. I’ve had more than one stunned Passer tell me that people bought pictures the Passer didn’t like, they always act as if they are now going to put in a call to Ripely’s.
All Assembly Line Portrait Photographers have slightly different styles, but we all take pretty much the same images. There are only so many ways to pose a group of five, a group of three, or a single person. There are grumpy 3 year olds, 17 year olds, and 66 year olds. There are also people who look perfect and take perfect portraits-they are often called Nonbuyers.
I like just about all of the Passers I work with now. All the Old Timers have seen good and bad days. We all do the same thing every Sit. And if it isn’t working, we call always blame whoever we are working with, or The Preseller, or The Shoot, or The Weather, or. . .