Working with a Relative as your Client: Part 2

As you may now know, working with a family member as a client can be stressful. It also does not represent how real photoshoots typically go. I know from personal experience as I have had to photograph a family member for a special occasion.

Here’s a little story. I had the pleasure of taking engagement photos for my sister and her fiance a few months ago. I was hesitant to say yes just because I know taking photos for family members is different than taking them for regular clients. However, I briefed her early on that I will treat her as a client. When it comes to prepping for the photoshoot, I will help decide on a location and time of day, as that affects the end result of the photos, but it’s up to the client to decide on the overall aesthetic they wish the images to have.

To be honest, that part alone was rough at first. It was easy for her to brush it off and say that I had to do all the choosing since I was the photographer and she will go along with anything I say. Oh, that was wrong because all of my ideas were shot down after taking the time out to research and pick different locations. Once I sat down with her and we researched locations (together) we came up with a mutual location that not only pleased her, but gave me creative leeway for the photoshoot.

The next part was the photoshoot. I established my expectations of myself and of my sister and her fiance right at the very start. I stated that I want to remain professional and treat this as any photoshoot with regular clients. I scoped out the area and showed them places that I believe would be great for their portraits. We did some test shots and I positioned them in various poses to get multiple shots in each location. We continued the shoot in this same manner and even let the client, my sister, provide any suggestions of what pose or shot we would like to try. I made sure not to let my sister look at the pictures on my camera in order to refrain from passing any type of judgement, positive or negative, about the raw images. These images go through a post-editing process and the client will not understand this process and automatically assume the end product will look like what’s on your camera, which is not the case.

After the shoot, I made sure to reassure my sister that the photos will not be ready for a few days. For a full-time photographer, whose sole job is taking photos and editing them, they can typically get them turned over in a day or two. But as this is a side job for me, I knew it would take a few days. What I learned from this experience, is to not show the client any photos until I am done editing all of them. However, I wanted to get my sister’s approval on some of the raw images before moving ahead on editing them. She is a very particular person and if she doesn’t like how she looked in some photos, she will not give it a second look, even if the image looks perfect to other people.

Since I knew this, I ran a few raw images by her and asked if I should move ahead with editing them, or disregard some of them. That was a big mistake because she assumed those few proofs I was showing her were the only photos I had, even though I had over 200 photos from that shoot. She also nitpicked how she looked in them, to the very small details, and wasn’t looking at the images as a whole. On top of that, she tried to dictate how they were going to be edited. In the photography world, that is one of the last things you want your client to dictate.

When I sent these proofs to her, she assumed that she could use them for her own personal profile. Despite telling her that I need to edit them and these sample images are not to be used in any public way, she decided to post them on her social accounts. Although flattered that she was excited about them, I had to explain to her that those images were not ready to be published and that these images represent my brand. When images are posted before the photographer states they are ready to be utilized, not only does it affect the trust between the photographer and the client, but also puts the photographer’s brand on the line. Since it was my sister, I let it go and said it was okay after the fact. But if you have a contract with a client that states they are not allowed to publish proofs to the public without the photographer’s approval, it could make the relationship very strained and even create potential lawsuit situations. Ultimately, creating those boundaries between my sister and I, clearly stating in written form, what she is and is not allowed to do with certain photos would make the process much easier.

Although it had its ups and downs, learning how to work with a family member as a client was a very educational experience. It was a fun and exciting experience to be part of my sister’s engagement journey. Knowing that the photos she will forever have for her engagement were taken by me will always be heartfelt for the both of us.