Client or Customer?

I had not properly conceptualised this, it works for photography and every other field of business.

“A customer is someone who purchases a commodity or a service”.

By referring to someone you sell to as a customer, verbally or in your mind, you are saying that you are a commodity.

We can purchase anything as a commodity.

If we label ourselves a “commodity” that is what we become. Just something to be bought and sold.

A “Client” on the other hand, is some one who is under the care, the protection, the betterment and the well being of another.

The master photographer Paul Wilkinson suggests that as a portrait photographer, we should fall in love, just a little bit with each client. Making someone’s portrait is a deeply personal and intimate process. Whether it a painting or a photograph, the artist is looking into your soul. The painter, takes many hours carefully crafting the image with their paints. The photographer, initially, a brief moment, taking the shot, but then follows the processing, a very deep examination of that image. I look at you, on my screen, I see you, its intimate. If that bond is not there, neither is the portrait!

The skill of the portrait photographer is to build that bond, to initiate the feeling of trust. The brief moment of “love” between the client and the photographer.

That is what makes you a client and not a customer!

I am happy to say, that everyone who’s portrait I have made, when I meet them again, its a happy reunion, a joyous rekindling of a friendship! This has happened many times to me, reinforcing the above.

#beautifulportraitsforbusyprofessionals.