This is a list put together with a light heart. I'm not an angry person, and I love what I do.... but this is how it goes sometimes....1. Put down the phone in the studio. You're in a professional photography studio, your paying me to take beautiful images of your children, senior, whomever. I'm taking the time and my professional expertise to pose the subject, choose the best background, lighting ratio, lens, etc. You can trust me to get it right. Please don't cheapen the moment by shooting over my shoulder with your phone. It's rude. And don't even try to do it after I ask you not to. I'm a photographer, I'm really really good at telling when someone is taking photos...2. Don't ask to see the photo right after I take it. Do you really need that level of instant gratification, or are we just that obsessed how we look. Again, we're professionals, we want time to retouch things we know you don't like. Viewing a photo immediately is not a good idea for anyone. OH and if your photographer is looking at the back of the camera after every shot - red flag.3. Please don't ask me what kind of camera I am using. This questions is almost followed up with what kind of camera they just bought that is the latest and greatest. I don't care and it doesn't matter. Come look at my expenses running a lab and studio and you will see why I can't pop over to best buy to let a guy with a blue shirt talk me into a camera I don't need nor know how to use. I love my cameras, all Canon and I know them inside and out. Isn't that enough. 4. Please let me the photographer create and decide the background and location. I'm a professional, and I don't think at all like an amateur would. Usually when I'm looking at a set that someone has created for me to take photos of people at I try to hide my concern. The worst may have been prom photos a couple years ago. It was a small-reflective plastic, wrinkled photo of the Eiffel tower. It didn't reach to the floor, and the tower was dead center to poke out people heads. I couldn't get feet in, nor the bottom of the dress because of photo proportions. Now I know that people go through great lengths to create these, but in the future, I'll be using a photo set that we create.5. No pets on my furniture. Really, do I need to say more?6. Posed Sports photos. Let me say this. If a mom is standing behind me with the iPhone camera, who then will the child look at.... stranger Steve, or Mamma Mia? Who then gets blamed when the photo comes back and the child "isn't even looking at the camera it looks like she's looking to the side"? Please try to refrain from taking photos during the 20 seconds I am.
