Question/Advice - Dealing with clients

<p>Hi! </p>

<p>I just recently shot a graduation event for a client. I had never worked for her before but she was a friend of my boss. I captured the whole party....took about 1,000 pictures and processed around 200. Is that pretty normal? I gave all the pictures to her, she said she went through them and loved them all. Then about a week later she emails me asking for a couple specific pictures that she didn't see. I sent her one of them (I must have just missed it - my fault) but she asked for a couple others that we took but they just really didn't turn out very well (It was a picture of a bunch of girls doing a jumping picture). </p>

<p>How do you deal with all of this? Anyone experience this with a client? I feel bad that some of the pictures didn't turn out. She's not really upset about it, but at the same time I wanted to give a product that she was completely pleased with. </p>

<p>Any thoughts? </p>

<p>Thanks! </p>

<p>Well, if you were paid to do an assignment and some important pictures (like the jumping girl picture sounds) didn't turn out well, you failed to provide the service you contracted to do. I think you need to admit that and go from there. It can be as simple as explaining why you didn't include that picture (as in, what went wrong) so she knows what happened. </p>

<p>Honesty is always best.</p>

<p>Well, lots of spontaneous things happen at social events. Don't worry too much. I agree with Patrick: just admit that the photo didn't turn out well, but she can have it if she wants anyway.</p>

<p>I concur that honesty is a best business practice: but I'll add that editorial aegis resides with you, so it is not a case of telling the Client that she can have them (the images that didn't turn out) if she wants.</p>

<p>You have to first establish if supplying the Client an inferior product will be in the best interests for your business, the choice is yours, not hers.</p>

<p>WW<br>

</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I agree that honesty and being totally upfront is always the best policy. However, being too apologetic about the situation may not be. You don't want to sound like you are admitting some 'fault" or that you might sound incompetent. <br /><br />I would explain that a party is a fluid situation and that you are overshooting to try to cover everything. Editing down the images is to be expected and is essential to ensure a quality product, to filter out boring images or images that simply "didn't work out". Hopefully these won't include important or pre-discussed set-up shots (those you should have down cold), but ad hoc ideas and playful moments can be a crap shoot in the best of circumstances. <br /><br />Ultimately you decide what to include, explain that the image she mentioned didn't work out, but it was worth a try, and bring her back to the 200 images that you love and make sure she knows you are proud of the results.</p>

<p>I don't agree with Patrick. For me on a large shoot, those kinds of specific requests are just that - requests not orders. If you were hired to do a jumping shot, then that's different. (Jumping shots with lots of people can be hard btw.)<br>

Some people want to find some little fault to manufacture a reason to alter the payment, but she doesn't sound like one of those clients.</p>

<p>Thats what the LCD screen is for to check your shots. If you are going to make the effort to take a picture then get one frame that works.</p>

<p>Hi Sierra,<br>

As natural as it is to want to do a faultless job, I wouldn't feel too bad about this - in my opinion, it comes with the territory of being a photographer. It would be a different story if you hadn't provided any decent shots, but the fact is you produced 200 of them - and it sounds like the client is happy enough. Of course, it's important to learn from these things and I find it great that you have customer satisfaction as your priority. So perhaps just explain why you aren't happy with the way those certain shots turned out, from a technical perspective, but that you are happy to pass them on anyway if the client really wants them.<br>

:)</p>