Some photo assignments can be challenging in one way or another. But a professional photographer should welcome such assignments as an opportunity to help build customer trust and enhance the photographer’s reputation.
Any corporate photographer can arrive, set-up, shoot a few business portraits and then deliver the finished photos a few days later. Hopefully, the customer receives a professional level of competence and quality but beyond that, the photographer didn’t really “prove” anything to the customer.
But if. . .
• a business customer needs an extreme rush (e.g. pictures shot, edited and delivered on the same day so the company can meet its last-minute printing deadline), or
• an organization needs photography shot within a very brief time span, (e.g. posed portraits of visiting diplomats done during a short break in a conference), or
• a retail business wants pictures of its new store for next week’s newspaper ad but the parking lot has yet to be paved, the landscaping hasn’t been done and the sign hasn’t been installed, or
• a corporate sponsor needs pictures of a celebrity in front of the company’s logo but the celebrity is well-known for always being uncooperative,
. . .then should the photographer successfully complete this type of assignment, it will be like hitting the game-winning home run in the bottom the ninth inning.
In the eyes of the client, this “hero” photographer has set themselves apart from other photographers and has earned that customer’s trust and, hopefully, their repeat business.
The next time a challenging or high-pressure assignment comes along, the photographer might see it as an opportunity to bat in the bottom of the ninth inning.
