Blog 10 – Communication

The great thing about life is that you’re able to continually evolve and grow.  My internship is constantly teaching me something new and I’m grateful that it’s from such talented people who’ve been in the industry. What I learned today is how to communicate with clients.  Prof Vargas is always dropping gems to which I can always take with me, not only with school but into the real world. 

 

Our client for the day was the Dental department who needed headshots for their website.  Prof Vargas was the photographer and my responsibility was to hold the reflector and assist him in any way possible. It was amazing being able to see how Prof Vargas spoke with each person and was able to make everyone feel comfortable.  I feel that as a photographer I seem to get caught with just getting the picture and not with communicating with the person. Being in front of a camera is nerve recking for some people and it’s my job to talk them out of their nervousness.  

 

Throughout the shoot, he communicated to each client by telling them what will happen during the shoot and showed them step by step of what he was doing.  For example, he would take a picture and look at each picture. While he was looking at each picture he would say “Right now I’m just checking to make sure the lighting is good, you’re doing an amazing job. “ This was great to witness because I do the same thing, I just don’t communicate to the client what I’m looking for.  Instead, I would say something like “These pictures are where I want it to be yet. “ Me saying this the client often assumes they’re doing something wrong when in reality it’s just the lighting I want to fix.  

 

When I talked to Prof Vargas about my observation, he gave me great advice on how to I can say certain things to the clients.  Having a great photography language with the client it will help me in the long run. It’ll help me because it’ll encourage me the client to book me more and it’ll help me have a more successful.