I have learned the hard way that you can never please everyone all the time. Some people are just unhappy and decide to take other people down with them into the darkness that dwells in their heart and mind. I feel like telling you, so that you don’t make the same mistakes that I’ve made. If you’ve already done this then know you’re not alone.
I had the bright idea to run a groupon to get more boudoir photography clients. I decided to go big and run the groupon not just in Houston but also in Oklahoma City. I was going back and forth all the time anyway to see family and friends and thought it was a great idea. My friend Tracy had a nice studio that we could share when I came up and in exchange, she could use my studio when she came down. I thought it was a win win. I scheduled my appointments around my trips and then filled in the rest of the weekend with leisure activities.
Just before a weekend that I was staying in Houston I get a call from a new Oklahoma City client. She had just bought the groupon and needed my services as soon as possible. She asked me if it was alright if she could have her little dog in a few of the photos so i agreed. I decided to go ahead and go up although I needed to be in Houston, so this was going to be back and forth trip without hanging out. It is about 450 miles between my house and the studio. I drove up overnight and took a quick nap before the appointment.
She showed up with a friend, which is always a bad idea for boudoir. I started to tell her friend that she could go down the street to the coffee shop but as she got out 4 dogs also got out of the car. My heart started pounding. What is this? My client very quickly started telling me she had to put her baby to sleep the next morning and she brought her friend to help with the dogs. I was so stunned I was silent as I tried to process the situation. You see I specialize in boudoir and the groupon was for boudoir. We talked about the session in detail before I drove all those miles on no sleep. I felt bad about all the gas money now gone in making the trip. How could I tell her no after all of that? I am also processing that the groupon would only pay me 9. If I had known I would have told her no and to get a refund. There are many photographers she could have gotten to do the session, but she loved my images and told me how much she was looking forward to seeing herself like this.
In slow motion I opened the studio up and the menagerie along with my client and her friend came inside. The session turned into a blur in the details of how everything went but I remember the important parts. This was a lifestyle session with her and all 4 of her large dogs. She told me about how they saved her life. They were all old now and have various ailments which meant that she was going to lose them soon. One of them had an appointment the next morning. The session was part of making the dog and her live their best life. I then became happy to be a part of it even though I was discombobulated. After the session I brought in all my different albums, photography on canvas, in glass boxes, in wooden boxes wrapped in gauze. I showed her corner samples for frames if she was interested in having anything framed. She looked at me with her eyes glazed over and started crying about the appointment the next day. I told her it was ok for her to not decide what to do with the images right now because she can always order what she wants by calling me or going through my website.
I felt pretty good about the day and cleaned up the studio although Tracy would later tell me she found dog hair in the weirdest places. After I made it home and tried to catch up on sleep, I took all the images off my camera and culled the set trying to get the best. I took so many images trying to get them to all look at me at the same time, but it was so very hard to control. I edited the best ones and uploaded the images to my site and sent the link to my client so she could look at them. After waiting for a bit, she emailed me with the list of what she liked with a list of edits. We went back and forth with phone calls and emails until she bought 4 matted and mounted prints along with the matching digital images. I needed to make more edits and we went back and forth on those until she was happy. I then sent her the digitals right then, ordered the prints and after inspecting them I mailed off her package.
A few months later I was notified by groupon that she had reviewed my work and had given it the lowest score she could give. She thought I was expensive and was not satisfied with how long it took to get what she paid for. Immediately I sent her a message asking what was wrong and telling her it couldn’t have gone any faster than it did. I asked her if there was anything I could do to make her happy. To make a long story short there was absolutely nothing I could do. I couldn’t have given her an album, all the images, I couldn’t have given her my business, thousands of dollars. It also cost me time and money.
Some will say the moral of the story is that no good deed goes unpunished. I tried to be fair and even tried to make up if possible because I wanted all of my clients to be happy. I learned once again that you can and will never please everyone all the time nor at the same time. Not everyone will like you or your work. I have had to learn to say no and I can’t do that. There is a balance when you are creating art for someone between what you can do and what they want. You have to set parameters and boundaries not just for yourself but for the client. Also, you have to have good communication which includes everything in writing possibly in the form of a contract, so that everyone knows what is going to happen and exceptions are set. Even with all this in place misunderstandings are bound to happen which may mean changing your written material or contracts. Life can be messy and not go the way you want it to go.
In the end I will always love making art.
Cathy