Pre-show jitters are a real thing. And not just for actors and performers, but for photographers too! At least that’s the case for us – and we’d like to think that we aren’t alone with that!
Every time we receive a new booking we get so excited at the opportunity to serve our clients! But, we’d be lying if we didn’t also acknowledge that there is a healthy level of nerves that we experience as well. When someone books us to take new family photos for them, or to capture their experience as a high school senior, or to document with our photos the happiest day of their life when they get married, we don’t take it lightly to ‘perform’ the very best we can for them!
When Erica used to shoot alone, she’d have to work out her pre-show jitters on her own. But since we’ve been working as a husband and wife team, we have developed our pre-shoot warm up to help us prepare and get synchronized together! It helps us relax, dial ourselves in, and make sure we deliver an amazing client experience!
Understanding Our Clients
In the time leading up to the session, we do our best to learn as much as we can about our clients – most importantly their names! People love to be called by their first name. It makes a person feel valued and important and speaks to them directly! We make sure we know our clients names and their story. If they have children we learn their children’s names. If it is a wedding, we do our best to learn immediate family and bridal party names. It goes a long way to establishing trust and definitely makes a difference in our time together.
For weddings, this is an easy step because we chose to meet with all of our couples before we book their wedding date! For families and high school seniors, we ask questions that help us find out a little more about them via email. We do this initially when the inquiry first comes in and do our best to answer any questions they may have before they even have the chance to ask them. It helps us because we are able to make an initial connection with them before we even meet, which makes it feel a little more like we are meeting people we already know, rather than complete strangers! It also allows us to address any expectations and inform them about us and how we work so that their aren’t any surprises on things that we are or aren’t doing during our time together. Overall, it starts to develop a relationship between us and our client, which is a huge plus going into the photo session.
Walking the Walk, Talking the Plan
Depending on the type of session we have, we talk through and sometimes literally walk through what our plan of action is. Like we talked about in How We Start Every Session, we typically start each portrait session with fun walking photos. It helps our clients get warmed up and allows them a few minutes to get a feel for how we will instruct them. Plus, they make for FUN photos full of movement! Often times, they are some of our favorites!
We sometimes have ‘pre-game huddles’ the night before a session to really nail down the details. Erica will have Jon stand up in the living room and walk in place and move into action as Erica talks through and instructs him into what we think we’ll direct our clients to do next! We know what you’re thinking…if you could only be a fly on that wall, right?! But it helps us to visualize the clients we will be working with and to talk through a general idea of what we will do based on the number of people we will be photographing, age differences, and any particulars about the location we’ll be shooting at. We never want our clients feeling for a second that they don’t have clear instruction to follow, so it helps us having a general plan going into session time.
We realize that not everyone has a business partner that they get to work with on a consistent basis, so for you it might not be walking it through in the living room the night before. Maybe for you, it’s a phone call to your mom or dad, or utilizing your best friend to let you talk out your thoughts until you have a plan of action you feel good about and that makes sense for your session.
When it comes to our weddings, this step is played out in the form of a detailed timeline. We talk through our bride’s wedding day and formulate a timeline that at times gets broken down all the way to 15 minute intervals! It allows our bride and groom and everyone else involved in the wedding to be on the same page and know where to go and when to go!
Perfect Spots & Test Shots
We always make sure to arrive at our locations before our clients. Working as a team, arriving early allows us to get our gear out and together and to compose ourselves before the session. If we are at a location we haven’t been to before, we do a quick pre-session scout to find the perfect locations in advance of our client’s arrival so that we have a plan in place!
We also leave time for some test shots of each other! Sometimes they’re a real nice genuine portrait that we take of each other. But, 99.9% of the time, it’s a goofy and much less serious shot! 🙂 The fun aside, it allows us to check our settings and make sure we love the color and exposure we are getting! That way, once our clients arrive we are able to greet them, get them in place and start shooting!
Again, if you don’t have a shooting partner or an assistant with you for your session, adapt for the same results! Use buildings, cacti, trees and other landscape to check your exposures. It will make for great filler photos on the blog post of the session as well!
For all our photographer friends, we hope you find our ‘pre-show jitters-be-gone’ tricks to be helpful and something you can try to implement as you prepare for your next session!!
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