BE LIKE WATER - A HEADSHOT PHOTOGRAPHER'S GUIDE TO ADAPTING TO CHANGE
LEARN ING TO LOVE THE UNPREDICTABLE
Before I ran Adam Rowley Creative as predominantly a creative agency for photography and videography I worked as an in-house producer, director and creative for a number of Television companies. Lots of travel, lots of awards, lots of stress and lots of stakeholders.
One of the best professional lessons I ever learned was about holding the line and adapting. A terrific Creative Director once told me that what really marked out a successful Creative was not their work ethic or their talent, their passion or their flair. It was their ability to hold onto a brief, to keep all the ideas up in the air and adaptable in the face of changing circumstances, demands of stakeholders and clients, right up to the last minute.
It was a process I hated up till that point, after which I learned to take not just pride, but pleasure in the challenge that whatever you have planned, you must always be ready to adapt.
And so it was with Milad’s personal branding and headshot photography, where the day started with potential disaster. My flashlights and my triggers decided this was the day they would stop working. Any given weekday, one could drop into one of the many camera shops in central london and buy a replacement. But most professional event photographers and videographers don’t just work Monday to Friday, and this was a Sunday. Ok. We can work with this. We can try bouncing the flash in auto mode off the ceiling, and we can bring the continuous lights you usually use for video interviews, promos and testimonials films.
And then the ceiling is too high, and then the backdrop doesnt work, and then the bright low spring sunshine flooding in is too bright and then and then and then.
That’s right. No one cares. The client doesn’t need to worry about this.
And as a professional photographer, you don’t have to worry about this either.
Because while we love to imagine every shoot will run like clockwork, without stress or hindrance, in truth almost every shoot ever, there is something, whether it is unwanted screen flicker or banding, or unexpected line up changes, or a client asking for something never requested before.
And this is the joy of the job, if not the joy of life. As someone - John Lennon, The Dalai Lama, some sage or other - said: “life is what happens to you in between the plans you make”
Another “unexpected” was the announcement of an urgent deadline with tight turnover. Again, an experienced professional photographer, particularly one who works in corporate events, will have foreseen this possibility. When you shoot professionally, you are already shooting for an edit, getting your image as good as it can be in camera, so that when a lightning quick delivery is required, it is barely more than a little scrolling and a few expert clicks.
And by embracing and learning to love the challenge of shifting goalposts, the fact that there will always be the “unexpected” , you learn over time to stay calm and enjoy the process, which in turn, makes that process enjoyable for your client.
In the famous words of the late, great Bruce Lee: "Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend."
