Push It! Push it reeeeeeaaaaaaal goooooooood! Oooooooh baby, Baby!  B-B-B-Baaaabaaaay!

Haha!  Now that I put a lil Salt n Pepa in your head, let me explain.  HBO documentaries are the TOPS.  The other night, I found a documentary celebrating 50 years of Rolling Stone.  Working for Rolling Stone was my dream job  growing up.  I loved taking photos, I LOVED such an eclectic amount of music (particularly classic rock, alternative & Hip Hop) and even talking about it makes me heart feel like exploding so I was all in.  The first half ended with John Lennon’s final photo shoot as taken by Annie Leibovitz (she was discovered by Jann Werner – founder of RS).  Annie was sent to photograph John alone, but when she arrived, John said Yoko was going to be in the photo too.  She replied with something along the lines of – Well, we’re gonna have to make it good then!  They were both going to be naked in that famous pose, but at the last minute Yoko decided against it.  Annie snapped a polaroid and showed John and he said (again something along the lines of) That’s perfectly us.  Like with that, she was able to capture the dynamic of their relationship and how smitten he was with her.  He was killed later on that evening, which makes it all the more powerful.  Of course I wound up a blubbering mess as I watched Annie tell the story and look at her work on the white wall.

I’ve been feeling those vibes all day which lead me to this blog post.  We need to push ourselves.  If not for us, but for our clients.  There are photographers who take pretty pictures, more traditional poses and such.  And that’s nice.  And it’s easy (and now I have Proud Mary in my head).  But I feel like as storytellers, it’s our duty to capture their personalities.  Their truths.  Them.  Right now.  Yeah it’s challenging and yeah it’s A LOT more work, but it’s real and it’s satisfying.

You need to know your clients and give them a chance to show you who they are.  That just can’t be done in a “20 minute, one outfit, one location” shoot.  Care about your clients.  Heck, I hate even using the word “clients”.  I’m stepping off of my soap box and heading off to watch the second half of the documentary, but I just had to share.

Not every day is going to be a Rolling Stone cover, but we can certainly push ourselves to try.  For them, and for you.