I was in the park yesterday doing some much-needed thinking and writing after a Your One Degree seminar. It was a beautiful, but windy, day and noticed that there was a girl having her senior portrait made in the park
instead of in the studio. There was the photographer, the senior and a girl holding a reflector to capture the natural light for the photo.
They were too far away for me to hear conversation but as they moved into my field of view, the photographer, to demonstrate how she wanted the girl to pose, laid down on the ground in the exact same pose as this in this photo. I got to thinking…
I’m sure in most cases the seniors take complete direction from the photographer. After all, that’s their business. But I wonder how many photographers first ask the seniors, “How would you like to pose? What is the best way for people to see the real you?”
Are we to believe that lying on the ground or standing against a stone wall or leaning through a Y in a tree is natural? “Oh, I love that pose! It looks just like something they’d do!”
I don’t want to accuse, but it’s as if this photographer was posing this senior girl just like all the other senior girls she’d shot in her career. If you enter “senior portrait” into almost any image search engine you’ll see an amazing lack of creativity.
One size definitely does not fit all. We’re all different and the perfect pose for me is just not going to fit for you. And for a photographer to assume so is being short-sighted at best and conceited at worst. I guess it was just a reminder to me that whether you are marketing your business, your church, or yourself you can’t afford to treat everyone the same.
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