Know Your Boundaries
Photography is an intimate experience. For the client and for the photographer.
On one side of the lens, someone is shedding what they normally let the world see. Or they’re sitting in a zone of discomfort, just for that moment. On the other side, the photographer has to be at one with that moment, present enough to capture what he feels and what the client wants to see.
That’s a lot of trust to pass back and forth in a short space of time.
But here’s the crux of what I want to write about. We have to know when that intimacy starts, and when it ends.
A lot of my clients are friends, or have become friends. I like to believe that’s down to the comfort I allow them to feel. The environment I try to create, especially in a one-to-one shoot, is quiet and unhurried. Nobody is performing. Sometimes that space invites a little too much. We start sharing things we wouldn’t normally share, and by the end we know more about each other than either of us planned to.
I don’t regret that. It’s often where the best frames come from. A person who feels safe stops posing and starts being.
But it blurs a line.
When a shoot feels like a conversation between friends, it gets harder to remember that it’s also work. The client may ask for a few extra edits, or a quick reshoot, or “just a couple more” images. Because of the relationship, those requests come with a smile and no ill intent. And because of the same relationship, the photographer finds it hard to say no.
The blur doesn’t only happen with clients. Quite a few years ago, a friend invited me to his son’s birthday. I wasn’t particularly close to him, but I was excited to go. Then it became clear why I’d been asked. I was invited with my camera. Not as a guest. As the photographer.
I took the photos, of course. I was naive, and I love capturing moments. That’s the part that’s hard to admit. I wasn’t forced into anything. I enjoyed it, and that enjoyment made it easy to miss what was happening. An invitation had quietly turned into a job, and I suspect nobody had ever planned to mention a fee.
That was the moment I realised my work was being taken advantage of. Nobody meant harm by it, which is what made it hard to name.
These days I do it differently. When I was booked to cover a cricket match through a friend, I still asked for a contract and a deposit upfront. When the match ran over and nobody mentioned compensating me for the extra time, I packed up and left. It wasn’t dramatic. My time has a value, and once it stopped being valued, I stopped giving it.
I’ve learnt that a clear boundary rarely costs you the relationship. If anything, it protects it. Resentment is what damages a friendship, and resentment grows in the gap between what I agreed to and what I ended up giving.
It’s hard to be that soft, open photographer during the shoot and then switch off afterwards. I haven’t found a perfect way to do it. But I believe that if you go into a shoot fully present, accepting that the environment you’re creating ends the minute the shoot ends, the boundaries become much clearer. You give everything inside that window. Then you step out of it, kindly and without apology.
Being warm and being clear aren’t opposites. I’m still working on holding both.