Top 5 Tips to Prepare for Your Photoshoot
Welcome to this blog where you will find tips for you as a photography client, and ideas for you as a photographer! As photographers, we are always learning, but hey, we can share ideas when we learn and hopefully help at least one person out. Right?
To start this brand new blog off right, I’m going to share with you 5 ways you can prepare for your upcoming photoshoot. Want to know a secret? They DON’T involve asking about the photographer’s style, pricing, or availability. Really? Oh, how alluring. Let’s go!
Top 5 Ways to Prepare for Your Photoshoot:
Share your inspiration with your photographer
Regardless of whether you are a small business or brand who wants to capture images to draw in your dream client, or a parent who wants to memorialize the age your little ones are right now (stickiness and all), your photographer really wants to know what style of images you love. Even if the photographer you have been stalking on Instagram has a certain feeling about their images, they still want to know whether you love grainy shots, those blurry photos everyone is obsessing over, or whether you love bright, heart racing colors. Why? Not only because photographers want to ensure you both are a good match for one another, but also because it helps the photographer start planning what they call “shot lists” to ensure they are thinking about possible locations, time of day, and equipment they will need in order to make your dream shoot, a reality. So plan to share your Pintrest boards, share images you love on social media with them, or simply email/text them shots you love. It will go miles for ensuring you get what you want when you open that delivered gallery!
Schedule a planning chat
In order to meet you, ask you questions to get to know you, and make sure you are a real person (not kidding, there are a lot of scammers who try to get free work or trick photographers into fraudulent transactions), plan to set aside 30 minutes or so before your shoot so your photographer can meet you either in-person, by phone, or via Zoom (or Google Meet). We are all incredibly busy (heck, I work a full-time day job, shoot on the side, and have a family and just started a doctorate degree…hello overcommitment), but if you don’t take some time to review inspirational boards or meet with your photographer, you are more likely to be disappointed with your finished images. That is the last thing your photographer wants! We want you to be obsessed with your images and we want to make sure you get everything you love. Photographers also put A LOT of time into the before and after of the the photoshoot process, so by spending a few minutes planning with us, you are honoring our commitment, while also boosting the likelihood of receiving stunning images.
Identify your ‘must have’ shots
Remember that “shot list” I mentioned? This is a list your photographer will keep that includes not only their ideas, but any images you indicate you MUST have. I have heard horror stories of friends who thought they found the perfect photographer, planned the perfect event, and then went to review their gallery and were livid that there were missing images. In fact, I heard one story about a new bride whose photographer never snagged photos of the bride with her parents. You can’t hear me right now, but my cringe is audible. To the photographer’s credit, it could have been because they never chatted with the bride about what images they had to have, or because those particular images did not turn out well (see #4 below for more details on this), but in general, I would think this is a required shot. The point is, talk to your photographer about what images you really have your heart set on. Are there detail shots of your outfit or accessories you want to have? Perfect. Tell them that! Do you want to make sure you have both landscape and portrait style images because you’re already planning where you will hang them in your home? Tell them that! We want to know everything so we can plan around it. Otherwise, you may find the images you receive are the photographer’s best guess at what you would want. Trust me. We prefer to over prepare, rather than guess what you want.
Accept the process
Ok this is a big one. Ready? The pre, during, and post process for a photoshoot are much more complex that we photographers often share. Not only do we spend a lot of time planning each detail (from where the sun will be at that desginated shoot time, to what bag we will carry out equipment in), but we also spend a lot of time in “post”, or the process of selecting images, editing, them, and exporting them to your gallery in a way you can get a high resolution when you print them. Why is this important to remember as a client? Because when we deliver a gallery, it includes all of the images that were the cream of the crop. In other words, a very small percentage of the images we shoot, actually turn out. As in very few images are ones you want to see of yourself and exclude weird faces you made (hey we all do), some weird camera setting that didn’t work in that location, or simply didn’t look pleasing to the eye. This isn’t because of a lack of skill, it’s simply a reality of photography. What can you do to prepare? It’s OK to ask questions of your photographer (we invite feedback), but also remember that if you ask for more images outside of your pre-selected package, it will require more editing time for the photographer, which means additional charges. This is why if you didn’t put a lot of time in from the start to plan what you wanted, you may not have all of the images you really wanted. There also may be a limit on your gallery options.
One last thing, for non-brand or business clients (because the selection process can look completely different based on contracts), expect that you will not receive unedited images. These files are not ones you can use or look at if you don’t have a professional editing software. They are intended to be edited. Also, do you really want unedited versions of images where things aren’t polished to highlight the emotions in that shot? Photographers don’t necessarily edit image so much that the final version looks completely different, but we do tweak things with lighting and coloring so the image is true to what the eye saw in that moment. Trust us. We’re professionals.
5. Drop your baggage & prepare to be authentic
Alright, pay attention here friend. Ready? You are enough, just as you are. Please try not to weigh yourself down with overanalyzing how your cheeks look at certain angles, or that you are embarassed to follow the photographer’s prompts. When we are behind the camera we are looking at all of that and giving you prompts for actions you can take during the shoot so there is movement, you feel more natural, and we can get your authentic reactions in the moment. Also, we love what we do and we truly appreciate that you have trusted us with your time. Yes, we can edit certain things, and if you tell us you are really self-concious, we will be aware of that, but overall? We see the beauty in you and we want you to too. You are perfect just the way you are in this moment, and it is highly likely that not one person who sees your final images will tear them apart as much as you will. So own your power, let go of traditional posing, and let us help you shine.
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