Don’t go into autopilot until you explore their ideas.

In planning a shoot, a client said “I saw this great spot at the park…,” to which we said, “Oh, we know that park pretty well! Sounds great!”

What we should have done was to find out exactly where they meant. We thought we knew the location well enough and took them to what we thought were good locations. By the time we got to the client’s spot, we realized what a mistake we’d made—it was fantastic! By then, the kids were getting tired and we were almost out of light, so we scrambled to get what shots we could, like the shot above, which would have been so much better with a little more sun. Why hadn’t we started there? Because we assumed we knew better and imposed our photographic will. Not making that mistake again.