A client in Thailand told me my photos were too 'posed' and it made me rethink everything

Tbh, I was booking a lot of co-working space shoots in Chiang Mai and thought I was killing it with these staged shots of people typing on laptops. Then a guy hiring me for his cafe said 'your photos look like stock images, show the real mess.' So I switched to catching people mid-conversation or spilling their coffee. My bookings went up by about 30% after that. Has anyone else gotten feedback that totally changed how you shoot?

3 comments

3 Comments

piperbailey16d ago

i mean this is super interesting because it makes me think about how "posed" vs "real" is totally cultural, right? idk maybe it's just me but western photographers are always chasing that natural candid look but in a lot of asian markets the posed stuff is literally what they pay for. i had a friend shooting weddings in vietnam and the couples wanted the most stiff posed shots possible, like hands exactly here head tilted this way with fake smiles. they thought the candid stuff looked lazy or unfinished. so maybe the feedback you got was more about that specific client's taste than any universal truth about photography. the 30% bump is real though so clearly something clicked for your market.

hugoj1215d ago

Yeah the "lazy or unfinished" thing is really key. I had a similar experience shooting portraits for a Korean client back when I was starting out. They wanted EVERYTHING locked down, like chin at this angle, shoulders square, hands on hips no variation. If I tried to catch them mid-laugh or looking away they'd literally ask to retake it. Meanwhile my western clients would get mad if I made them hold a pose for more than 10 seconds because they wanted "natural" shots. It's wild how different those expectations are. The 30% bump probably just means you figured out what YOUR crowd actually values, not what some online tutorial tells you to do.

mia70016d ago

Not everything needs to be analyzed to death, sometimes people just like what they like.