Wedding Workshop One | Communication, Planning, & Happy Clients: The First 15 Minutes | Part 2

The First 15 Minutes | Part 2 | Transcription

The first fifteen minutes, part dos. That’s in Spanish, for those that can’t read what it says there. Which would be weird because it’s literally just two lines. All right, this is another chance to get to know your couple even better. We call it the first fifteen minutes part two because it kind of mirrors that first fifteen minutes of the initial meeting or the first few minutes of an engagement talk through or the first few minutes of a wedding talk through, which we’re going to talk about later on.

The first fifteen minutes is a chance to again build trust. We want to always start the conversation where we left off and that means that you better have dang good notes from the initial meeting, from your engagement talk through because we don’t want to ask questions that we have already asked. We want to remember who they are. One of the worst things that you can possibly do that I myself am guilty of because in the past I didn’t take proper notes and I would show up to these sessions without having my ever note notes and all this kind of stuff is I’d call my studio manager and be like, “Who am I photographing again today? What are their names again?”

I feel so incredibly guilty that that was ever a thing that I went through. At times, I’d gotten so busy that it was something that I was dealing with and figuring out like who I was shooting and all that stuff. Stay organized, keep your notes, pull them up, review them. These are all things that I do now to make sure I can deliver the experience that I want to deliver. Remember who they are.

When you show up, call them by name. Remember where the conversation left off in your notes and remember this is a chance, this is for many of you, your first opportunity to meet the guy. Oftentimes, brides are actually booking you just by coming solo and they do the engagement talk through with you solo. This is oftentimes the first time I’ll actually meet the guy and so what I want to do is focus my time, especially during the first fifteen minutes, on the guy and on developing a relationship with him.

My focus is usually him because what I can do by getting to better know the guy, I can kind of put my bride or my bride to be at ease. This is why. Girls in general, in general, girls like to take photos. I know some of you girls out there would be like, “Pye, I hate taking photos.” I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about everybody else. Okay. Guys in general dread the idea of going out and doing a photo session. Once again, there are guys out there where they’re like, “Pye, I love taking pictures.” Me too, I actually love photos. Not really, I actually don’t like photographed myself. I like taking pictures of other people.

Anyway, guys in general are much less comfortable with the entire idea of a photo shoot. The girl typically knows that, okay? What do you think, if you were a girl and, I know guys out there just think about this for just a second. If you were a girl and you know that your guy is uncomfortable with this situation and you really want him to go, your anxiety, your worry, is going to be that he is having a good time. Now guys, if you’re having a hard time thinking of yourself as a girl, just think to yourself as you like to take photos and your girlfriend does not.

Either way, you’re going to be concerned about that during the shoot and it shows on the girls face. It’ll show on her face because she’s concerned that he’s not having a good time and so forth. If I focus a little bit on him, I make sure that we’re developing a great relationship. We’re talking about sports, we’re talking about cars, we’re talking about what we like to do, hobbies and interests and movies and so forth. She instantly just has a just internal sigh of relief and the weight comes off her shoulders and her future hubby says to me in the first fifteen minutes that, “I had no idea it was going to be this easy. I had no idea that it was going to be this fun.” She’s like, “Whew. Now I can enjoy and have fun during this shoot.”

By focusing on the guy, making sure that he’s having a great time, we end up getting the girl to relax more, to trust us more, to get more into the photography and overall we yield better images and better emotions from both the guy and the girl. Now as we’ve chatted and we’ve kind of worked our way and we’ve got to our location, then we work into our posing communication by walking them through the foundation posing framework. Let’s go ahead and show you now what this first fifteen minutes looks like on a typical shoot.