One of the reasons I love my photography work is the chance to talk to people I don’t usually talk to. Sometimes talking is necessary to put your clients at ease, but mostly I just find them very interesting. I get people who have all kinds of jobs, have travelled to interesting places, who read good books and just have interesting lives. I love to engage, and generally finish my sessions wiser than when I began.
My own children are in their twenties and I don’t have grandchildren, so perhaps my favorite kinds of clients to talk to are the young ones. I love hearing about their lives, their friends what’s important to them, what they dream about – whatever interests them, I usually find interesting (well, except for the musical tastes of clients under 8. I usually hate that, but have learned not to ask so that I don’t get stuck having to put their music on while I shoot!)
I like to ask kids about their imaginary lives, and if they have things that particularly interest them, I try to find a way to incorporate them either into the shoot or after when I am editing. You can find anything online, and there are millions of inexpensive digital resources that you can use in photoshop (and millions of videos on youtube showing you exactly how to do it!), and I take it as a personal challenge to try to delight my smallest clients with their finished pictures. Common themes are fairies, mermaids, the circus, and wild animals, and you can find digital resources in all these areas, and any area you can think of, on etsy or just by googling (e.g. mermaid resources for photoshop.)
This client liked fairies, so I posed her on some fake rocks (photo props) and used some greens from Michaels to create dimension in front of a woody/flowery background that I had. Then I googled to see how to add water and a reflection, and bought the plug in that allowed me to do that (which I have by now probably used for 20 different clients) and I went to etsy and bought some digital fairy wings that I could attach to the client after general editing. I’m attaching two before and afters (I played with the tone a bit to try to give them some choices) and she was delighted.
I do a lot of this kind of thing for Holiday Shoots (I add Santas, put clients inside snow globes, on sleighs, etc.) It’s a bit of extra work, but it’s fun to do, keeps me learning, and really makes people happy!
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