Want to emphasise that I’m really happy with the outcome and the photos look good, but the expectations on the other side seem different from what was delivered
- Photos were at a different location to a place we’d shot previously, liked the previous shoot better
- Not happy with the classic “Couples” poses
- All four are on disability support, and were chaperoned by parents (which I wasn’t aware of) and contradicted my instructions speaking over my shoulder on client posing at every stage making it hard to get natural posing.
Basically I back my work (https://williamsphotographyau.pixieset.com/couplesshoot/) and think it’s a good shoot. Not great, but I think it’s the best I could have done based on the circumstances above but they’re just angling towards getting another shoot for free which I don’t want to do nor feel their entitled to.
How does everyone else address unhappy clients for what you feel is a good shoot?
Personally I think most of the shots look like snapshots everybody with a camera phone could have made. I would like to see more bokeh and more cropping on the rule of thirds. But i assume that is your style and they agreed to that before the session. I think posing wasn’t great but not bad either. I mean you do see the fun and love they have in the photos and I think that’s what it is all about. Either way, can’t please everybody. If you’re going to do a second shoot I would suggest splitting the costs with them and let them tell you what they think should be different in that shoot. or tell them to piss off because that is what it is.
That’s pretty accurate. They aren’t bad, but everyone is perfectly centered in full-body shots and a lot of them have the background be more of the subject. A lot of the issues could be fixed with some editing.
I think an aspect is there’re just so many redundant pictures that we see 4-6 versions of the same pose/setting that what could’ve been a great image just gets lost in the crowd. I get OP may want to deliver as much as possible but I personally have a rule of "If there’re two images that’re almost identical, pick the best one.
This is by design, I shoot with a larger image count because I find people’s favourite shot from a shoot are ones I wouldn’t think twice about. I’d rather give a few tooany than a few too little. Same with scaling, I shoot landscape and portraits of the same pose and a variety of slightly different angles to try appease most people’s tastes which has served me well this year with almost 80 shoots under my belt having only started this year
Yep, didn’t think of that since the photography I do is mainly for me and rarely for other people.