Wootness | the blog of christine walsh-newton

This article originally appeared in the December 2014 Issue of Southern Exposure, the magazine of the Southeast PPA District, page 15. View it HERE.

In 1983, I worked for a concession stand company, traveling from street fair to street fair across the state of Ohio for five months peddling corn dogs. In exchange for working a number of ungodly hours that had to be against some kind of labor law, I received a paltry weekly sum and all the corn dogs I could eat. They were hot, filling and affordable. I sold them by the thousands. Thirty years later, the sight of a corn dog still turns my stomach.

Hold that thought.

Tucked in the woods, on the shore of a lake is a little bistro. In the middle of nowhere, Ohio, it’s a small treasure to the locals. A bit on the pricey side, with a delicious menu, it became “the place” to go when there was something to celebrate. Birthdays, anniversaries, post-wedding parties; from a table of two to a family group of twelve or so, we’d appear several times a year for a nice evening of food and wine.

On one of these occasions, the menu had slightly shifted, as it sometimes did. It had become trendy to stack food items into a tower, and my medium rare filet mignon was served on a bed on dirty mashed potatoes and topped with the vegetable of the day. Individually, the items were delicious, but I preferred cutting into a nice maison-buttered steak without having to scrape mashed potatoes off the bottom and green beans off the top. I ate the meal with no complaint, but decided that next time I should order the items to be served unstacked. A medium-rare steak… well, let’s just say, pink mashed potatoes aren’t very appetizing.

The next time I ordered that meal from the little bistro on the lake, I asked for the items to be unstacked. When the meal was delivered, it was on three different dinner plates. One for mashed potatoes, one for the steak and one for the green beans. Our table for two already contained two water glasses, two wine glasses, two salads and two plates of appetizers. Suddenly, it needed to hold four more plates, one for my husband’s meal, and three for mine.

I caught the snicker of the wait staff while I tried to arrange the table, and finally had to place one of the plates of food on top my water glass and was forced to hand my salad plate to the waiter, even though I hadn’t finished with. Clearly, I was considered one of “those” customers that had somehow offended the chef (we’ll call him “Richard”) with my request.

Now, maybe this strikes you all as a little funny, but at the time, it wasn’t. I had pleasantly and discreetly asked for my meal that way, and the resulting effort, orchestrated to embarrass, left such a bad taste in my mouth (pun intended) that our visits there eventually stopped and we haven’t been back in a number of years.

Hold that thought, too.

The other day I was shopping for some imported olive oil at a small store in my area. A lovely lady, Kimberly, had opened an olive oil and vinegar shop, somewhat unusual for our area, but her extensive knowledge of her product line and her excellent level of customer service has won her a loyal customer base. As I shopped, I noticed that the olive oils from Italy were missing and asked if I could speak with her as there was a particular reason I wanted some. Due to some trucking strikes on the west coast, her shipments had been held up for an additional week and the oil I was looking for wasn’t available. She asked about the intended recipient of the gift, their food and cooking tastes and recommended a substitute oil from Peru. I sampled it, listened to her explain the qualities and subtleties of the oil and was convinced it would do nicely in place of the oil from Italy. I bought the Peruvian oil with no regrets and went happily on my way.

And now, hold that thought, as well.

And… this has to do with photography…how?

I began to think about our businesses. And how the boutique studio model has become popular. We want to be refined, elegant, specialized and serve the uppermost clientele in and out of our area. Sometimes we do a bang up job of it, like Kimberly. But sometimes, well sometimes we act just like Richard. And we chase our clients away.

I began to think about our clients. And how sometimes they ask for something that is not exactly what we have or wish to provide. Maybe the client has brought in 39 Pinterest pictures of poses so tacky we want to jam our fingers down our throats. Setups we’ve seen a jillion times. Props we are SO. OVER.

Stylistic concepts as common and ordinary as a corn dog.

We’ve been there, we’ve done that, and we have the t-shirt and the keychain. But yet, here’s a bright shiny new client face that wants the tacky corn dog pose. Because they haven’t seen it a jillion times. They like it. They often love it. And sometimes it’s “the pose.” The one they absolutely have to have and plan the whole session around.

It happens all the time. I’ve been reading a lot of questions on some of my forums and online groups asking for advice in how to deal with these kinds of clients. I’m a little bit horrified when I see requests of this nature treated w ith disdain, with contempt, with a “how dare you insult my artistic integrity with your request for tackiness?” attitude. An attitude so thick with indignation that I don’t believe for a minute that the photographer is able to completely hide it from the client. And I wonder if the client winds up feeling like I did at the bistro on the lake.

“But that’s not my style,” they whine.

And the photographer in the industry forums is coddled and placated and their attitude is echoed and approved of by others. Advice to charge extra fees, delete the images, refund the client money and a variety of other creative solutions are often given.

And I’m thinking to myself “Are you kidding me?” When did a client request become an issue? An insult? A situation worthy of this level of angst and unrest?

In the olden days, before digital, before there was a home studio in the basement of one house on every street, there was one, maybe two photography studios that served an entire town. Studios that you could walk in and ask for a certain kind of photography and get what you asked for. No one told you that you were asking for something that wasn’t “their style.” Requests for something special were not countered with policies and rules and additional fees. Did you want family photos? Wedding photos? Anniversary, graduation or first birthday photos? Pictures with your cat, your car, your tennis trophy? Unless you were a total creepster asking for something crass and/or illegal, your request was usually granted.

But these days… we’re acting a little spoiled. A little bit full of ourselves. A little bit like that bistro chef who stuck his nose in the air and made sure I felt as if I were asking for a corn dog in his culinary kindgom.

The next time a customer asks for something that makes you want to roll your eyes, or asks for something slightly different than what you offer, hold that thought. Are you going to act like Richard or are you going to act like Kimberly, the lady who couldn’t quite offer what I wanted, but worked with me to find a compromise that pleased us both?

Somewhere along the line it seems that the customer has been made into the enemy. The last time I checked, those customers were the key to photographers being able to support our businesses, selves and families. Along with the dream clients that hand over artistic control to us, it’s just a fact of life that we are going to have a higher percentage of average, every day clients, whose tastes are more common, and whose need for creativity and specialty is not as high as others. But, they walked through OUR door. They chose US. They have shown that they do, indeed care who they choose as their photographer. Just because their photography requests and ideas do not completely match our own is not a reason to throw down the “they’re not my client” glove. Let’s get over ourselves and step up to the plate and deliver some stellar customer service. Like Kimberly, we can take this opportunity to work with our clients and offer them some creative additional options. Let’s utilize our knowledge and skill set to serve each client as best as we can to fulfill their requests and make them happy.

If we don’t, they may very well never be our client again.