I photographed this bright look with Meira while she visited Cape Town recently. She specifically wanted a yellow wall for this shoot and I found it quite amusing that there are so many yellow walls that I pass every day but at the time of our meeting I just couldn’t think of one!!

Naturally, the Bo-Kaap was a suggestion to me which I strongly suggested to avoid. Sometimes I feel that this location is so over used in photos that it does no justice for the clients shoot. I kindly suggested two location options that were “mini Bo-Kaaps” and Meira selected the option to shoot in Kalk Bay where I knew of a few yellow walls. On the day of the shoot, she selected the brightest yellow wall out of our options and we were spoilt with a gorgeous soft breeze that created these spontaneous looking shots.

Meira and many of my regular clients are the perfect example of a good client. She asked my suggestions for the best time of day to shoot and heard me out when I suggested what locations were good and which were not advised. Even though she had to be up at 5am, she arrived fresh and ready to shoot because this was the best time, from my photographic experience, to shoot in good light.

I recently had an unhappy client who really did not like their images as they “were not like the internet images” they saw. Let me explain why and how we got to this point:

As my first unhappy client I was blown away by the message I received as I know, being in the service industry for many years, the client is always right. Well most of the time they are not but this is the rule we go by. The unhappy client was warned plenty of times by my professional opinion to select a different location, a different time and a different day (on the day) but they still went ahead with their plans. What one needs to consider and keep in mind is that the photographer always knows best. LISTEN TO THE PHOTOGRAPHER (like Meira did). I tried my hardest to steer the shoot in a direction that would result in gorgeous evening light and a serene landscape BUT the shoot ended up being at 3pm (extremely harsh light), in the gale force wind (I suggested postponing to a quieter day). Unfortunately, Cape Town weather rarely plays nice and sometimes I have to suggest postponing. If a photographer suggests postponing, it is not that they cannot shoot in that weather – rain or shine, I can shoot – postponing happens when I feel that your vision and the current situation will not be the same result. After all of my suggestions I was told that postponing is not an option – so the shoot went on…

A few weeks later I received an email explaining how disappointed they were as they were not how they imagined the pics to be … If the client listened to my professional opinion, this could have been avoided.

The lesson in this post – LISTEN TO THE PHOTOGRAPHER, TRUST THE PHOTOGRAPHER.

My lesson learnt – Be stubborn and be more firm!

Always do your best in everything you do, sometimes to do this one needs to put their trust in others and take their advice. This experience has led me to trust people in other services as I now know what it feels like to be told how to do my job. Please listen to your photographer when suggesting times and locations and possibly postponing as this is all done for a reason. You cannot expect to receive sunset photos when you want to shoot at 3pm and refuse to change that. Back to Meira, who was willing to shoot in a colder, gloomy Cape Town because of the great soft light… I really loved this bright look she put together, it is effortless and edgy at the same time and I really enjoyed shooting all of the interesting details. Meira wrote a great post about it which you can read here.