It is difficult for me to imagine working with people and building good relationships without values in the background.
I have been in business for 18 years and over this time I have developed certain standards not only for my own comfort at work, but above all for the comfort of my clients.

Transparency

Very important for me. My business is definitely not a bogus company. You’ll find a packet of information about me online – opinions of my clients, a bio on my website, several interviews, you can view my portfolio, I run social media. And in direct contact, when you are considering shooting with me, you will find out how I work and how much you will be charged for it (specifically, not ‘somehow we will make a deal’).

Trust

Most people have trouble being in front of the camera and posing for pictures. They feel uncomfortable, embarrassed, tense. A confidence boost at the beginning of our collaboration makes things a lot easier. But how do I get it if we don’t know each other? The first impression from what you see online and, above all, a phone call or meeting before the session is a good start. Transparency will help here.
I don’t cheat, I don’t scam, I don’t postpone, I don’t lie, I don’t disappear. When I make an appointment for something, I do it. I have no hidden costs, no „little letters” in the contract, I won’t use a photograph of you unless you give me permission.
Honesty and openness – without that, trust won’t appear.
I’m a fan of ‘clear rules of the game’.

Timeliness

If something unexpected happens which makes it impossible for me to work – I’ll inform about it. Although I’m relieved to admit that fate has spared me such situations.
I’m always realistic about when I’ll prepare the photos, the deadlines are specified in the contract, I often accelerate if I’m able. I won’t promise something I won’t be able to deliver.

A separate elaboration could be written about timely payments for work. When I was working mainly on reportage, I used to send the finished material together with the invoice, i.e. a few hours/days after the event. It’s a well-known fact that reportage usually hits the news, social media and is a record of current events, so it needs to be sent quickly.
There have been times when I’ve lost liquidity due to unpaid invoices. Or I had to pay taxes on amounts I didn’t yet have in my account. This was very frustrating, especially as it sometimes caused me to fall behind with some fees myself if I didn’t have a large enough financial cushion.
Since I’ve focused on portraiture, I send out finished photographs as soon as the invoice is paid. Clients know what they are going to get, they have accepted the portraits before the document is issued, they will use the portraits the moment we have our financial affairs settled.
The situations where I had to call and ask when I would have my fee in my account are for the most part over.

Punctuality

There’s basically nothing much to write about here, the thing is clear as day. Being late can disorganise a session – portraiture in a hurry is not a good idea – or make it impossible if it’s a short shooting. Yes I know, it can happen, the world won’t collapse, but I wouldn’t like to experience a situation where you’ve been standing outside my Studio door for half an hour waiting for me to arrive late.

But I have observed the opposite, which notoriously has been happening to me recently.
Very often, clients with whom I have an appointment at a certain time come… too early. Half an hour, forty minutes early. Each time, I am perplexed. I take it in stride and it’s time to communicate more clearly how things are going.

Often my schedule is filled to the brim. If I have a phone appointment with a client at 12.30pm and a client I’ve been working with since 1pm arrives half an hour early, I won’t make that phone call and set up what was supposed to be agreed.

My Portrait Studio is an intimate space. In one room I photograph, in the other clients can change clothes and leave their personal belongings. There is no possibility of a stranger in this space waiting.

I work not only in my Studio. So if you arrive early, you might just not find me yet.

Quality

I don’t like sloppiness and shoddiness. Sometimes clients say: but I just need here to cycle twice and you don’t have to do post-production. Well I don’t find myself in that situation. Whether I prepare one portrait or thirty, I always take the same care about quality. The quality of the relationship and the quality of the product. And I guess that’s about it 🙂

The client our… partner

I’m paraphrasing the once popular slogan client our master. I believe in the first, not the second.
I am a specialist in what I do. So I try to combine what I know and can do with what you expect. If we don’t meet in this common ground, the collaboration will not go well.
I don’t do assignments by force if I know I can’t meet certain arrangements. I will recommend someone else. On the other hand, accept my portfolio, because the pictures we will create will not be different from what you can see in it.

When I go to my hairdresser, I know what I expect, but I don’t take the scissors out of her hand to do it myself. I have the memory, from years ago and thankfully the only one: I was taking a group photo at some event. Knowing the rules of correct framing, the correct perspective and proportions of human bodies, I crouched down a bit to take this photo. Seeing this, the head of the company, started shouting at me that it was wrong, not that way, that it would suck to take this photo, that I was too low and should get up immediately. Maybe if he had come up to me and say to me about his doubts in private, I would have had a chance to explain it to him. He boiled over in public, me inside. I did it my way, correctly. But that was my last collaboration with this company.

Have I avoided difficult situations in my collaboration with clients over the years? Clearly not. The longer I work, the better standards of cooperation I offer. I have learnt lessons, and one of the most important ones is that every time, for whatever reason – whether a desire to take a shortcut or pressure from the client – I have deviated from my values, there has been a problem or misunderstanding.

One thing is for sure: I won’t be able to please everyone. However, the truth is that I don’t want to work with everyone. I believe that clear communication — about what I’m doing and how I’m doing it — is the foundation and guarantee that, by finding common ground, we can come together and enjoy working with one another.

[photographs used in this post are backstage photos with my clients, taken during our session meetings. I love this part!]

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You can find the texts in this series under the ‘I have a company‘ category. Or click the tag: 18.

It is this December (2024) that the company I founded in 2006 celebrates its 18th birthday. And actually I’m celebrating this birthday, because in the case of a one-person business, combined with a personal brand and being an author, the company is me.
Over these eighteen years, I have accumulated a whole bagful of experience. My business has gone through several transformations, I’ve caught up with crises and doubts, and I’ve also enjoyed a huge number of successes.
In all this time, photography has been my only source of income.
I don’t know if I can count how many people I have photographed, how many events and places.

Of course, a one-person business isn’t just – in my case – about photographing and post-processing. It’s also a huge amount of work: communicating and meeting clients, running the website, social media and the shop, writing the blog, running workshops, dealing with documentation (invoices, contracts, etc.), promo activities, strategy and trying to get away from the day-to-day to draw visions and plans. It’s also personal development, education, new competences.
And a whole bunch of crap, such as servicing my car (which is my work tool, after all), taking care of the studio or running to the parcel machine with a delivery. So it’s not just a crap.

To celebrate my anniversary, I have decided to write a series of texts about how I run my business, what difficulties I have encountered and what goes lightly. Where I get my inspiration from and where I look for answers. What values do I hold dear. What my typical working day looks like – do I even have such a thing as a typical working day. And I’ll probably catch a few more ideas in between. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, I’ve experienced some total fuck-ups 😉 Fortunately, moments of elation and happiness were more frequent.