Yesterday, I shot one of my most casual weddings at the Salish Lodge and Spa at Snoqualmie Falls. Picking Seattle as their wedding destination, Cindy and Seth brought about three luggage bags, about 40 families and friends and threw one heck of a party.

Driving home, as usual, I got to thinking about my day and what I liked and disliked about some of the decisions I made. Should I have gone to the park instead of the observation deck? Should I have used a softbox at the reception instead of sticking with my Neutral Density gel? Should I have used my softbox instead of the LED earlier for fill?

These questions are easily tackled. Just figure it out when you look at your pictures and go the other way if you’d dislike the results, or stick with it if you do.

The harder questions to answer are things like were my clients comfortable with my style of working? Did they receive sufficient coaching on how to pose and be relaxed and natural in front of my camera? In short, was their experience pleasant or even fabulous?

These things are based largely on, of course, the personalities of our clients. I’ve worked with individuals who are very comfortable in front of my camera and even if they aren’t experienced models who know how to “shapeshift” and produce different looks each time I click, they aren’t afraid to “perform”. These clients, naturally, are easiest to work with.

However, the majority of my clients require coaching and coaxing every step of the way. Constantly self-aware and conscious of the camera, these subjects require conversation to draw them out. You ask questions about their work, how they met, their hobbies – make small talk, basically, constantly snapping away and keeping the individual from staring at the camera.

It all boils down to communication
Being able to articulate what you need is key to both making your client feel comfortable and getting the shot. With time, I’ve learnt to mince my poses into chunks of detailed instructions involving angle, tilt of head, face here, look there, hands must be visible and so on.

Showing is also a great way to demo a pose but learning to deliver verbal cues makes getting your shots faster. The good thing about your clients is that they learn pretty quickly too. Just a few times of doing the same pose, they know what you look for. You’ll discover that all they really needed were good, precise instructions. They trust you completely to know what looks good and when you successfully communicate to them what you want in precise, easy to understand terms, they immediately begin to loosen up and may even learn to “play” with the camera.

Working with kids
In this way, children are much easier to work with. They may be conscious but they are not conscious about the camera. They are conscious about you, who you are, this strange person with a box constantly hiding his/her face. This is what Mommy or Daddy does all the time, so why is this guy here?

This in itself is a fantastic opportunity to get kids to cooperate, when they are feeling curious about you. This is when I seize the opportunity to quickly get the group shots done. Without having sussed me out, kids listen and stare most of the time at the camera or actually, at you. Five, ten minutes tops and they lose interest and may have even tuned you out. After that, you fall back on your bag of tricks.

Learning to see
As photographers, we are trained to see light. Some of us are so focused on the technical aspects of making a good picture that we forget that we also need to “see” our clients.

Far from being professional models, our clients may have very different expectations of how they want their pictures to turn out – and may not have the words to articulate that expectation. While they trust that your pictures will turn out fine in the end (which sometimes is all that matters), how you get them might not be expected.

Within the 1.5 years I’ve been doing this professionally, I’ve learnt the dynamic of working with people you pay and people who pay you, is very different. This is not something immediately obvious until you discover that what you’ve envisioned in your mind for a great picture, isn’t necessarily something your clients want to do. And as your clients, your deal is to give them what they want – despite what they might’ve seen on your portfolio. Each couple is unique and expect their pictures to turn out a little different even if the style remains.

So how do you make sure that your style is in synch with your clients’ personalities? How do you marry the two to bring out the best in your subjects?

For one, meeting with your client prior to a shoot to suss out their personalities ALWAYS helps, and being interested in their lives. Ask what kind of magazines they read or books. Shows they watch. What they like doing together in their free time. Where they grew up. Are they city or more country people.

While most people are okay sharing with you their lives, some may be more reserved, and that tells you a lot that helps you on the day of your shoot. For one, use a long lens so as not to be in their faces all the time .

Being a great experience is important to me. I know I am a competent photographer and have learnt pretty much to do a lot of things on the fly with my camera so as not to disrupt this experience. What I want my clients to feel is a sense of lightness in my sessions, so it feels more like play than a service.

Ultimately, comfortable clients yield the expressions and lightness of mood in your pictures that makes wedding, maternity and family photos emit that glow that makes you – and your clients – want to return to them time and again. Understanding that is a crucial step towards becoming a great professional people photographer.