Stop Making Excuses!

I guess it’s time to take off the nicey-nicey apron and get down to business, again…

If I am going to take the time to look at your images and provide thoughtful, tactful input that contains both comments on the good aspects of your images as well as some pointers for improvement, I don’t want excuses.

I understand that in the beginning, you can’t get clients. That’s good. Real good. I don’t WANT you to have clients. I want you to be using your kids and family members to practice on. That’s how you learn.

If you show me an image, I expect it to be some of your best work. If you follow up my comments with “this was just a practice session” or “this wasn’t a paying client,” you are making excuses. Even if your best work isn’t all that good, yet, I expect you to show me images that were done to the best of your ability.

OK, so maybe you don’t have your lighting down pat, yet. That isn’t permission to not iron your background, not wipe the snot off your kid’s face and not dress him/her in an outfit that matches. If you KNOW enough to tell me “well, I didn’t iron the sheet behind them because this was just a practice session,” then you aren’t practicing correctly.

Would your kid’s little league coach let him get away with not trying to catch that outfield fly because it was only practice? No. Your kid is expected to wear the proper clothing, bring the proper gear and perform as if a game were in progress. Right? You’d be all over your kid in a hot minute if they tried to pull this on their coach, so why are you doing it?

Practicing is pretending you are doing the real thing, with some allowance for screwing up because you are still learning. Maybe you didn’t know that sitting your kids cross-legged was preferable to having them with their feet sticking out straight in front of them. That’s ok, we can deal with that. I’ll let you know you might want to try that next time and tell you why it’s a better option. Then, we go on. But if the kid’s feet are dirty and they’re wearing pink pajama pants and an orange t-shirt with grape juice spilled on it, and your excuse is “this was just a practice session,”  we’re gonna have a Come To Jesus Talk.

Let’s adult-up and stop making excuses. If you want to get better and improve, then make that apparent in your work. Don’t hand me junk and expect me to critique around your sloppiness because it wasn’t a real client or session.