Hey photographer friends! Welcome back to our Photography Blog, Mastering the Wedding Photography Biz with Hunter and Sarah! Today we’re sharing 5 of the most awkward client requests we’ve ever gotten from our clients. After capturing more than 150 weddings and more than 500 portrait sessions, we’ve gotten some pretty strange requests from clients. And today we’re sharing how we answered some of the most awkward ones!

 

 

Awkward Client Requests #1: “I don’t like my face in the photos. Can you replace it with this one?”

Okay so believe it or not, this first of our awkward client requests actually did happened to us during our second year as wedding photographers. We were shooting family photos just after a wedding ceremony, and for whatever reason, our bride’s grandmother just refused to smile. Hunter did his usual, “Okay, big smiles on three! One… two… three!” and when he saw she was still scowling, he even gave her a little, “Alright, one more, and this time how about a big smile from you too Grandma Smith?” She did not give us a big smile. She continued to scowl, and the bride gave us a look that was like, “whatever, it’s fine”. And we went about our day.

 

Then, a week or two after the wedding, we got an email from Grandma. Here’s what it said:

“My granddaughter sent me your delightful collection of photos taken at her wedding. Even though the minister called her family and friends “a motley crew” you turned them into a nice-looking group. With one exception: this grandmother of the bride, the one in the royal blue lace who has a scowl on her face in each shot she’s in. Can you work a miracle?  Can you take my head out of the attached pic and stick it on my shoulders wherever you see me? I’m a very happy person and can’t believe I stopped smiling just moments before your shutter clicked. I look forward to hearing some good news. Thank you so much.”

 

 

No joke, we really got that email. And she attached some iPhone photo of her from some other part of the wedding day, in totally different light. So obviously this request wasn’t really possible, or at least it wasn’t possible to do in a way that wasn’t going to ruin the couple’s family photos. And this wasn’t the only awkward request we’ve gotten for things that are either impossible, or would look really bad if we actually did them. We’ve had people ask us to “make them look thinner”, or if we can Photoshop a missing person into a photo, and we’ve even heard of clients asking photographers to entirely remove ex-boyfriends or ex-wives from family photos after a breakup or divorce.

 

So, in these cases, we do exactly what we did with Grandma: we politely explain that we won’t be able to help, and could potentially make the photo look worse if we tried. And in this particular case, we told Grandma that we were glad that she WAS smiling in her one-on-one photo with the bride (which was the only smile from the entire day). Oh and by the way, a few hours later, the bride emailed us with lots of lol’s and told us not to worry about her Grandma’s strange request.

 

 

Request #2: “Can you come back to our hotel room with us?”

So in full transparency, this second of our awkward client requests didn’t actually happen to us, but it did happen to one of our students, who is a single female photographer, which might actually make it worse. Her wedding couple explained that they were going to be in the best shape of their lives on their wedding day, and wanted some more “intimate and steamy” images to remember it by. So they asked her photographer how much extra it would be for her to come up to their hotel room with them after the wedding and capture some more “intimate” photos. 😨

 

Okay, first of all, stop right here. No matter what a client requests, if you don’t feel comfortable with what they’re asking, you DO NOT HAVE TO DO IT! Especially f you shoot by yourself, and a client asks something of you that makes you feel unsafe, don’t even feel like you have to justify it. Just say no: “Oh I don’t do that type of photography” or “I don’t do in-home sessions.” or “No, I won’t go out to the parking lot with you — I really should stay here and keep photographing the wedding.”

 

And of course, if you did want to try something like this, more power to you! Just be sure to bring a friend or an assistant, and do everything you can to keep yourself safe. And definitely be sure to set clear expectations and ground rules up front, and let them know what you are and are not willing to photograph.

 

 

A Safe Working Environment

Along this same vein, we recommend that every photographer — whether they’re a single female or a couple like us, and whether they shoot weddings or portraits — has a “safe working environment” clause in their contract. This clause essentially says that, if you feel unsafe for whatever reason, you’ll bring it to the attention of your clients and give them an opportunity to rectify the situation. And if they fail to do so, you get to leave, and they forfeit whatever else you would’ve owed them. In other words, if they fail to ensure you have a safe working environment, the night is over and you go home, only owing them what you’ve done up to that point.

 

We think that the chances of you ever having to invoke this clause are tiny, but on the off chance that something happens at your portrait session or a wedding day that makes you feel unsafe, you can in that moment feel confident that — if you take steps to rectify this with your clients and they fail to do something — you’re not worrying about whether or not you can financially afford to leave and keep yourself safe. You know that you have a contract you can fall back on that will protect you, and you can get out of there.

 

 

Request #3: “Can we take some photos in front of [location in terrible light]?”

The third query in our list of awkward client requests is one we used to get a lot more in the early days of our business, when we weren’t as competent at leading our sessions or directing our clients. Here’s the thing, clients usually don’t know anything about light. They just look at things and think, “Oh, that fountain is really pretty” or, “Wow, that background looks gorgeous!” But they’re NOT thinking about whether or not the light hitting that spot is good, or how it will make them look. That’s our job. So when a client asks, “Hey, can we take some photos over there in front of that mural?” and we look over and realize that the mural is getting harsh direct sunlight, or worse is in really severe split light, we want to be honest about that.

 

For starters, we always want to set accurate expectations. So we might say something like, “We CAN take some photos over there, but looking at that light, it won’t be the most flattering for you two.” Then, our couple might say, “Oh, no worries! Just a thought.” And we move on. But, even after we warn them, they might still want to take photos over there — in which case, let’s do it! We told them that the light isn’t going to be the best, and they want the photos anyway, so we’ll spend a few moments in that area, then move on to a location that we know will be more flattering.

 

That way, when they see the final photos and see that that harsh split light isn’t very flattering, their first thought is, “Oh, I see why Hunter and Sarah said that.” But if we hadn’t said anything, and just capitulated to their desire without educating them, their first thought might be, “Why does it look like this? What did Hunter and Sarah do wrong?”

 

 

A Variation: Venue Coordinators

And by the way, a variation of this that we occasionally get is an overeager venue coordinator who feels like it’s her job to tell us what spots on their property are best for photos. Now, sometimes this can be really helpful, especially if it’s a big property that has hidden areas we might not otherwise find! But other times when we get these comments, it’s the venue coordinator trying to micromanage us or make sure that the photos we take look juuuuuust like every other wedding that’s happened at that venue. And that’s basically the opposite of our goal!

 

In these cases, we’re always polite and gracious, but unless our client makes the suggestion, we’re going to evaluate a location or backdrop based on our own artistic vision and our own interpretation of light.
So, for example, if a venue coordinator tells us that clients just LOVE taking photos with the rope swing, and we think that that’s super cheesy, or it doesn’t fit the vibe of our couple or their wedding day, or if that rope swing is in terrible light, we might thank her for the suggestion, but explain that there were some other spots that we know our couple would be really excited to shoot at.

 

But just like explaining a bad lighting situation to your clients, this requires you to be confident in yourself and your work. Which will definitely come with time if you aren’t there just yet!

 

 

Request #4: “Can you remove all my blemishes and flyaway hairs?”

Now this is similar to the grandma-face-swap question, but much more reasonable. Some clients do have the expectation that — when they hire a professional photographer — that photographer is going to virtually air-brush their skin, smooth every blemish, whiten teeth, or one-by-one remove every flyaway hair or person walking around behind them in that crowded public space. These kinds of requests fall into a different category than removing ex-boyfriends from family photos, mostly because we know that these things are doable… but they would also be super labor-intensive.

 

If you’ve seen our Lightroom vs. Photoshop video (HERE), or especially if you’ve seen our video about the two different ways to run a wedding or portrait photography business, Shoot-and-Share vs. In-Person Sales (HERE), you know that our goal is to deliver a comprehensive wedding gallery that covers the entire day, and to do it without opening Photoshop at all. Since we often deliver 100 images or more per hour of coverage, our portrait session galleries often have 150-200 unique images, and our full-day wedding galleries could have close to or even more than 1,000 unique images, all retouched for light and color in Lightroom.

 

So if a client asks us to remove a single blemish from all 600 photos she’s in, even if it only took us 60 seconds per photo, that could add up to an additional 10 HOURS of additional editing. And once you get into teeth whitening, removing people or objects from a background, or editing out flyaway hairs, we’re talking multiple minutes of editing for every photo, which translates to days of your life for each wedding.

 

 

Our Photoshop Policy

That’s why, when we get a request like this after the wedding day, we’ll remind our clients that we retouch our images for light and color (a phrase they heard us say during our wedding consultation sales call) but don’t do any additional Photoshopping. However, if they want additional work done, we send them an hourly rate and an estimate of how much time it would take.

 

Theoretically, if it WAS really important to our couple or to their families, they’d invest an extra few hundred dollars to have us go through and photoshop every image. But in the 4 or 5 times we’ve gotten these requests over the years, no one has ever actually paid us for extra Photoshop. Which tells us that it really wasn’t that important to them. They probably just assumed it was as simple as a click of a button, rather than a labor-intensive process.

 

(Oh and by the way, if a client asks us to do this kind of photoshop on the 2 or 3 images that they’re planning on printing or using for their Christmas card, and we know it’ll only take us a few minutes, of course we’ll just hop into Photoshop and take care of that when we can. But anything that’s going to take us an hour or more, and we’re going to mention our hourly fee for additional editing.)

 

 

Awkward Client Requests #5: “When can I send over my Pinterest board?”

This final item in our list of awkward client requests is another one that we get less and less often as we raise our prices, but still get it every now and then, even as wedding photographers who charge between $8,000 and $12,000 for full day coverage. Now, it’s one thing if our couple wants to communicate a general vibe or a theme to us ahead of their session. But it’s another thing entirely if they want us to — shot-by-shot — recreate a Pinterest board.

 

And this is especially problematic when the board is full of images from different photographers of different couples in different locations, basically implying they want their engagement session or wedding to have like 19 different photo styles. Or sometimes they might even show images that would literally be impossible for us to capture, so setting expectations is again so important.

 

So now, if we get this request, we might say something about how we’re happy to get a feel for the vibe or the type of imagery they enjoy, but ultimately, we know that they hired us because they enjoy our artistic vision, and trust us to lead their session and guide their posing well. And that means we can’t guarentee we’ll capture any of the images that they send us. Again, like with most of these awkward situations, confidently standing by who you are as a photographer, AND setting the right expectations with your clients in advance can resolve these situations with only a bit of additional awkwardness 😉

 

 

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