My first Yoga photoshoot was one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had in my business. In fact, it’s probably on the ‘Top 10 shittiest days of my life’ list to this day.
These days I love a photoshoot. I work with great people who understand my brand. I’m clear on what I need and know what to wear to convey the image I’m going for. I’m really good at selecting props and accessories to take along with me and can work with the photographer to get the images I need.
While it still makes for a long and tiring day, the output is consistently very useful and I always feel great about my investment.
How I can have shoots that go so smoothly and yield such great results will be the material for a series of ‘Yoga Photoshoot’ blog posts coming out over the next few weeks.
In this article I want to focus on the major learnings I received from my first, horrific shoot as they became the foundation for knowing, asking for and getting what I want not only in a Yoga photoshoot, but in my business more broadly.
This is an article about boundaries: how I compromised ALL of them the first time and how I now lovingly reinforce them EVERY time.
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Let’s go back in time about eight years or so. I was working a very stressful corporate job, paying off a mortgage and trying to make a go of my coaching business on the side. I’d invested heavily in a coaching program myself and was mixing with a group of ‘boss babes’ who seemed to have cracked the code on the ‘follow your bliss, girl boss’ lifestyle. It was the era of watercolor fonts and gold pineapple paperweights. Pre ‘Girl Wash Your Face’.
Instagram influencers didn’t exist and personal branding was only just beginning to emerge as a service. My boss babe/crushing it peers were working with an LA-based photographer who was making them look like rock stars. I decided I needed to find my own version of that.
Where to turn?
Google, of course!
After much searching, scrolling, reading and agonising, a made a few calls and unknowingly placed myself into an aggressive and relentless sales funnel with each of the businesses I contacted. For the next month or so I was emailed, text and called by sales reps from each of these photography companies giving me the hard sell, the up sell and the down sell.
Finally, I relented and chose a company.
A week or so before the shoot I was contacted by the same sales rep who advised me she was now my ‘stylist’. She instructed me on what clothing to bring on the shoot day based on the content of my wardrobe, the extensive ‘client questionnaire’ I’d filled out in advance and the brief she put together during the conversation. It seemed odd that she didn’t suggest any Yoga clothing, but I trusted she knew what she was talking about.
On the day of the photoshoot my high-end, personalised AND bespoke (yes, both) experience started with being given a glass of cheap sparkling wine and being sat in front of a mirror to have my hair and makeup done. I was in a makeover queue, with two women on either side of me also having their personalised and bespoke experiences. The woman doing hair and makeup was buzzing up and down along the line being personal and bespoke with all five of us at once.
Then it was my time with the photographer.
I was ushered into another room and we came face to face for the first time. She promptly explained to me that she knew exactly what she was doing, she’d been doing it for 20 years, and that my questionnaire and my stylist’s brief were of no use to her. She was ‘the artist.’
We got going.
I did exactly what she asked me to do. I didn’t see any of the shots as we progressed through her obviously well-worn list of poses and set ups. The instructions and the poses felt rigid and just, well, not like me. But I wasn’t a confident person and she reassured me repeatedly that she would be able to make me look great. Again, she had the experience and I was brand new.
After about 40 minutes she informed me the shoot was complete and I was to wait in a loungeroom-like space featuring a massive TV. After another 40 minutes the sales rep/stylist came into the room and loaded all the photos up on the massive screen.
And that’s when things really took a turn for the worse.
Most of the pics were black and white (not my brief). I looked pained in many of them, pensive in the rest. Certainly not the ‘warm and engaging’ I’d required during my preparation session with the stylist. Despite bringing loads of clothes, most of the images featured me wearing a god-awful snakeskin patterned polyester shirt that I’d only thrown in as an afterthought at the last minute. Everything—EVERYTHING—was ‘off brand’.
Then the hard sales pitch began.
It became apparent that the sales rep/stylist was receiving a commission based on the number of shots I was going to buy. My stomach dropped. I didn’t want to buy ANY!
I started to feel ill. Sweat. The more uncomfortable I got trying to come up with a short list, the faster the stylist seemed to scroll through the shots. My face—three times life-size—looking awkward yet judgy at the same time dizzyingly panning across the screen.
I can’t remember exactly how it ended, but I do know that I was crying a lot as the stylist walked me out to my car. I can’t remember what I agreed to buy but I suspect I chose a couple simply because I felt SO rotten that my stylist wasn’t going to get paid.
Over the course of the 90-minute drive home I consoled myself.
No, I didn’t really have the money to waste but I did have a job and would be able to pay for the (awful) pics.
No one would ever have to see them.
I’d never need to speak to the photographer or any of her team ever again.
And I was throwing that fucking snakeskin shirt the hell away.
I would be alright.
***
That night I received a call from an unknown number. I answered.
It was the photographer.
There’d been an emergency meeting between her and her team. They were worried about me. They weren’t going to let me buy any of the pics as I’d had such a strong, adverse reaction to them. And she thought it would be a good idea if I had the number of the suicide hotline handy.
I pretended to write it down as she read it to me.
We never spoke again.
Why did this happen? Why was this high-end, personalised and bespoke experience such a total shit show?
With hindsight the reason it happened is because I transgressed ALL of my boundaries:
· I said YES when I wanted to say NO.
· I did things to be liked rather than things I liked.
· I made choices that didn’t feel right when I made them.
· I didn’t speak up for myself, even though I knew better.
I never want that to happen to you!
So here are three boundary considerations to think about when choosing your photographer. (Over the coming weeks I’ll add more articles dealing with shoot prep and shoot day so you’re feeling confident and grounded ahead of time and you’re ready to get the results you want.)
Boundary Consideration #1
Make the Money Decision that Feels Safe for You.
Back when I booked that photoshoot, the financial outlay was considerable. In fact, other than my Yoga teacher training itself, the shoot was the most money I had spent on my Yoga business to that point and I'd been teaching for seven years by then.
The price per se wasn’t the boundary breaker. It was the pressure for everything to be perfect that came along with the financial investment that was where things fell apart.
Any emotional plaque that you have around spending the money is going to encourage you to make poor decisions during the photoshoot and in the lead up to it. That is absolutely what happened to me in my ‘Here’s the suicide hotline number’ situation.
You have got to feel great about your investment, whatever that takes. If you need to go out and make yourself extra money so that you feel really clean and clear about spending it on photos, great! Go sell some private class packages. If you need to find a photographer that fits your budget rather the one you go back when you are even more prosperous in your business, great. Start there.
After my colossal fuck up photoshoot, the next woman I hired she was a photography student and one of my yoga students. She charged me $70. It was such a low risk investment I put zero pressure on myself for the pics to be perfect. They weren’t perfect, but they were good enough for what I needed and I never second-guessed me, her or the investment.
Boundary Consideration #2
Remember Who’s the Boss!
Sometimes we give our power away to people that we perceive to be the authority. In my case, the combination of my people-pleasing tendencies and the photographer’s abrasive efficiency led to a situation where I let her call all the shots.
Despite her business being the service provider and my business being the client, she managed the entire process to the detriment of the outcome.
Even though she asked me at the start if I wanted half black and white and half colour, and I strongly informed her I didn’t want ANY black and white, at the end I had half black and white and half color because she told me she'd ‘been doing this for 20 years and knew better’.
Remember, YOU are the client. You are the person in charge. Yes, the photographer is the expert with the camera and ‘getting the shot’. But you are the expert in your brand, the Bhava of your business and the reason you need the pics in the first place. You've got to own what you are buying. Don’t give your power away.
Boundary Consideration #3
Choose Your Photographer Like You Choose Your Friends
The last point on knowing your boundaries is really trusting your intuition and loving yourself enough to hire a photographer that excites and comforts you. These days there are so many people looking for fun clients with interesting projects and enticing brands (hint: YOU!) that you don’t need to settle for someone you don’t really like. Take your time to find someone that feels trustworthy, someone who feels to you like they know what they are doing, and also someone who can put you at ease.
After hiring my student for some inexpensive ‘recovery’ shots, I invested another couple of thousand hiring a ‘personal branding photographer’. I hired her because when we spoke on the phone I trusted that she would keep me safe, that she knew what she was talking about, that she had the capacity to adopt my visions, and that she was going to be fun to work with.
When I told her about my earlier experience not only was she horrified, she assured me that it would be nothing like that, working with her. She let me know that I could check in with the pics along the way to make sure I was feeling good about how things were turning out. That we’d have another couple of calls before the shoot so we had an even clearer shared vision. And that there would never be any hard sells or manipulative sales techniques.
There wasn’t. The shoot was fun and the results were great. So much so that I continued to work with that photographer, as well as have her train my mastermind members, for a few years to follow.
***
So, when hiring your first Yoga photographer, remember healthy, lovingly maintained boundaries are essential. Specifically:
1. Make the Money Decision that Feels Safe for You.
2. Remember Who’s the Boss!
3. Choose Your Photographer Like You Choose Your Friends
I hope these three points are useful and mean that you’re never in a place where I found myself eight years ago!
If you’re looking for more advice and support like this, subscribe to my podcast, Abundant Yoga Teacher, wherever you get your pods.
And if you’d like to work more closely with me, check out my ‘Keep Growing Mastermind’ program here: https://www.amymcdonald.com.au/keepgrowing