{DISCLAIMER: NONE OF THE DADS PICTURED IN THIS POST HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE FRUSTRATIONS I AM FEELING! I purposefully picked some examples of the dads who 100% got it right and nailed it!}
Dear Dad of Adorable Family I’m Photographing,
Okay, I get it.
You don’t like that you had to pay a lot of money for an hour of my time in your presence. You don’t like that you had to change clothes twice when your wife rolled her eyes and scoffed at your oh so curated choice of golf shirt and cargo shorts, even though it was in the color range she told you to pick. You are uncomfortable and hot in the half zip sweater that she bought you two years ago that is now barely fitting over your slightly more padded dad bod. You don’t like having to smile and pretend that you are happy repeatedly, over and over, when you are in fact far from it.
I want you to know a couple of things. First off, thank you for showing up, I know you are taking one for the team. Thank you for actually smiling, because believe it or not there are dads out there who flat out refuse to do it. Thank you for standing behind me and making googly faces and tossing your kids around to make them laugh, because you know that all your wife wants is some genuine grins from your beautiful children to hang on the wall. Thank you for bribing your kids with a promise of ice cream or toys later, even though you really don’t want to spend another bleeping dime on this endeavor. You are rocking the dad bod, trust me you are, and believe me, you are a thousand percent scoring big points with your wife by playing along. She will now have physical evidence that at least for an hour, you were the best dad and husband on the planet, and she’s going to share the crap out of it with all her friends.
For those of you who are less good at hiding your frustration during the shoot, I want you to know a couple of things too.
Do you know that we in the industry get genuinely worried sometimes about the wife and kids in your family because of your actions and attitudes? Do you know that we can tell, immediately, when you show up in your cap and work boots what kind of a shoot this is going to be? I can see it when you reject the shirt she gently offers you to change into when you show up. I can see her face fall when you snap at one of the kids when they stray a little too far out into the field. I promise you she’s spent ALL day making sure they got their naps and were well fed beforehand so they would have the best chance possible to cooperate, and it’s painful watching her hard work go down the tube when the kids burst into tears at your sharp rebukes. I can see it when she tries desperately to cheerfully make up for your bad attitude the entire time.
It gets really awkward really fast for everyone. When I try to get you to embrace your wife, and she turns to you and smiles and tries to lovingly interact with you and you barely smirk. When I ask you to help make your kids smile when you’re behind me and you gruffly mumble “they don’t think I’m funny.” When one of them runs off and you sit there while your wife, in heels and a skirt, chases after them because hey, this is her thing, you are off the hook for the hard work for the whole hour.
But you are my client too. You paid me money out of your pocket to work some magic and give you some epic family memories, and I respect that and honor it immensely. So let me just remind you how to make that money worth it.
You may think the hour is a waste, that' doesn’t bother me at all, you are entitled 100% to hate every minute of it. But you know what will one hundred percent ensure that your investment went down the tube? Ruining the experience. Every irritated bark at your kids or sometimes even your wife, every rejection, every flat out refusal to participate is a chunk of your cash in the trash can. I can promise you your wife will look at the family photo and all she will remember is how stressful that was. She will remember every forced and fake face or wiggling and crying photo of the baby she’s having to work by herself to try to get to be happy without your help. Those photos will go in an album at best and no one will see them.
I am well aware that photos are not my husband’s favorite thing to do. But he is also well aware that it makes me very happy when it goes well. He knows that wardrobe choices are not up to him and that it means a thousand percent more to me than it does to him what he’s wearing. He is good at making the kids laugh, and he helps, he’s positive, and he doesn’t complain, not once. This is normal. This is what about 95% of my dads do and I appreciate it, I really really do.
For my 5% gentlemen. As I often tell your wives when they begin to tell me how difficult you are making the experience BEFORE we even get started (yes, they tell me, they want to prepare me, they hope beyond all hopes that I can somehow magically make you appear to be the perfect husband and father in your photos), it’s AN HOUR OF YOUR LIFE.
Sorry if I yelled that too loud.
You’re okay. You’re fine. If it helps to reward yourself with whatever the adult equivalent of ice cream or toys is after, do it. Pretend you are at the DMV, perhaps for you an equally miserable place to be, but you can’t yell at anyone around you because you are a grown man and don’t throw tantrums in public. Make sure you are well rested and well fed beforehand too. I usually have snacks, I’m always willing to share.
And let your smile and cooperation earn you the value of every penny spent with me.
Sincerely,
Wives and photographers everywhere