A Know-How on How to Deal with I-Know-Better Clients

Once upon a time, a fortunate middle-aged gentleman was exalted to the presidency of a huge public company. The purpose of this story is recreational, maybe a little educational but by no means accusation, so let’s call said gentlemen Mr. Smith. As a professional big boss of a serious company, Mr. Smith was in need of beautiful corporate-style portraits. To fulfill his need, a crew consisting of a photographer, an assistant, and a makeup artist was deployed to the president’s office. The photoshoot began almost on time, just some one hundred and fifteen minutes after the scheduled hour. As an older, more experienced but generous individual, Mr. Smith felt it was his duty to educate younger people. He started with a brief history of his executive life, a big chunk spent in showbiz. It was there, in showbiz, that he perceived the endless possibilities of photo editing software. “I don’t need any grooming. You can draw it all later in Photoshop,” he proclaimed. Theoretically, he was right. Practically, it was a photographer and not a painter that was invited to take the president’s portrait. The goal of the project was to take some corporate-style photos, not a pretentious “oil on canvas.” After being informed of all these details he relented and gave the makeup artists ten minutes to make his excellency even more excellent. Working with Mr. Smith was akin to working in a mine; there was no room for even a slightest mistake. The light had to be flawlessly set for each and every location. Each click on the button should lead to a perfect photo. Two shots by the window and Mr. Smith is moving to his desk. Three shots at the desk and he is changing his jacket. Two shots with this jacket and he is already standing in front of the pin-pierced map that symbolized the ubiquity of the company. Luckily for the crew, Mr. Smith was a very photogenic type of homosapien. It was relatively easy to take a decent photo of him even within those two to three clicks. Mr. Smith had a radiant snow-white smile. It was so bright, he might have been able to read books at night under the blanket with no flash light. Smiling broadly, Mr. Smith educated the photographer, “You, kiddo, have to learn a lot about shooting. You are doing it so slow. The key to a good portrait is to take at least fifty shots in a second. That is the only way you can catch my smile in the moment of its perfection. That moment doesn’t last long. The real professionals have super fast cameras. They work like gunners: “Rrrr..Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta-TAT! Rrrrr...Ta-Ta-Ta-TAT!” They take hundreds of photos and catch the very best moment.” A shade of perplexity emerged from the photographer’s face but was instantly supplanted by a bashful smile. Without interrupting the sluggish photoshoot, the photographer exclaimed, “Oh, Mr. Smith, maybe today we have an amateur, unprofessional photographer on set; however, we are very fortunate with our gorgeous model. We might not be taking hundreds of photos, but because of the model’s professionalism we’ve already got some incredibly handsome ones.” What happened after that comment was a shock for the whole crew. Nobody could predict the executive’s unexpected behavior. The smile rapidly slipped from the glowing president’s face. He slowly stood up from the deep-brown president’s chair and stately strode alongside the dark oak president’s table towards the photographer. Once he approached the tiny figure, he put his president’s hand on the photographer’s shoulder and uttered, “No, you are good. You are doing very good. Everything is good!” Right after that very short pause the crew proceeded with their photoshoot and Mr. Smith continued their education. He shared his thoughts about a clumsy waiter in the company’s eatery and lamented the sluggishness of the postal service and the limits of the Internet speed on airplanes. He still was too quick changing his poses and jackets, but he never again questioned the qualifications of the photographer’s crew. For the rest of the photoshoot the president was in a cheerful mood and there was hope that for at least the following week his employees got a vacation from his autocratic I-Know-Better managerial ways.