Do Whatever You Like-As Long It’s Exactly What We Tell You To Do

“You need to be taking more creative portraits.” The Manager says as he looks at some of my recent sittings. “We have to go beyond what we have done in the past.”

“I take portraits that I have had luck with in the past.” I say and shrug. “My sales numbers are still OK.”

“It’s not about your Sales Numbers” The Manger says and frowns as he shakes his head. “You have to take the portraits we tell you to take, that’s what’s important.”

I’ve only worked at one Assembly Line Portrait company that totally left the portrait creation up to me, all the rest have had guidelines on what makes a good portrait.   Stepping outside these guidelines was usually grounds for dismissal-or at the very least a good talking to from The Manager.  The Company always knows best, at least that’s what The Company likes to think.

What happens, of course, is that The Company is not there while you take portraits and you can do whatever you want.  Most Assembly Line Portrait Companies hate to fire anyone, so they will spend a lot of time telling people to straighten up and fly right-until such time as they have no choice but to fire someone.  I have only been fired once while doing this kind of work and that came as a bit of a shock-I thought I was doing fine.  But I wasn’t do exactly what The Company wanted me to do.

As a Portrait Photographer I like to flip through magazines and books and pick up poses that look good and are easy to recreate.  I have no interest in complex sets and elaborate costumes-and I don’t have the equipment for any over the top lighting.  But I do what I can and sometimes the images look pretty damned good.  But that doesn’t mean either The Subject or The Company will like them.

The real problem is one of being in a rut.  We all have our Standard Sets that we shoot out of habit and when we are busy or at the end of a long day.  We like to fall back on the familiar and do sitting that don’t make us think.  Doing Assembly Line Portraits means doing the same thing over and over and over again.  It is not uncommon to hear a Subject say this is the same pose we had last time-and it will likely be the same as the next time as well.

The Subject is more educated now, the Web makes it easy to find all kinds of images and some people have higher expectations about what their portraits are going to look like.  The Company, of course, wants us to Exceed Expectations, and that is not easy to do.  The Subject who walks into my Studio has an expectation is getting The Freebie and getting out in about three minutes-so they have those expectations shot down as soon as they are told to wait to view their portraits.

I’ve never been good at the whole Customer Service thing.  I hate walking into a store and having everyone yell WELCOME TO. . .so I don’t do a lot of Hello My Name is…myself.   The Company wants me to be friendly, to thank people for showing up, to walk people in and out of the Camera Room.  I do this in a half hearted way most of the time, I tend to spend more time getting people in and out than making them feel like they are my only customer of the day.

The Company is not always around to see how you treat people, but they do see the Portraits.  I have to admit that there are times that my pictures look, well, amazingly bad.  Especially the sits at the end of the day.  So as much as I like to think of myself as a great photographer it is easy enough to go through an average day and find images that don’t look all that great.  I tend to blame the Subjects for bad images, they don’t do what I tell them to do, or their kids are little hellions what won’t stand still, or the Dad is grumpy and refuses to smile.

I am expected to overcome these minor difficulties and get everyone to pose in whatever fashion The Company has decided is required this week.  Floor poses with the kids siting on Mom and Dad, low key shots with everyone covered with strong shadows, contemporary cropping where the top of the head or half the face is missing in the finished image.  I’ve had Subjects just flat out say I’m not doing that and walk out.  The Company, of course, doesn’t care what the Subject wants-they just know what they want the subject to want.

Do these modern portraits sell? Sure, sometimes they do sell, but sometimes the Standard Set sells as well.  One of the suggestions I do agree with is to offer a variety of cropping, poses, and groupings.  But I still find it hard to do full length shots of people who walk in the door saying-These are from the waist up, right? In the end, it really does come down to what The Subject allows us to do.  I can instruct people, but it is still up to them whether or not they want to do what I tell them to do.

And I need to try and work in a few of the things The Company wants.  Some of my fellow Assembly Line Portrait Photographers just do what they are required to do when Management is around-this is not a great idea now that we use digital and The Company can look at our photos anytime they want.  I always sprinkle a few of The Company’s favorites into each sitting, while insuring that I have enough proven shots to make some money.

That’s the trouble with working for someone else, you have to at least pretend to do what they tell you to do.