After more than a decade of commercial photography, I’ve learned something that may surprise you.
Very little of what matters on a shoot day has anything to do with cameras.
The longer you do this job, the more you realise that photography is just the visible output. The real work happens in conversations, pauses, glances, silences, and small decisions that never make it into the final frame.
Here are a few things 12+ years of commercial photography quietly teaches you about people.
Most people are nervous — even the confident ones.
The CEO who’s spoken on stage to thousands.
The senior partner who leads meetings effortlessly.
The marketing director who briefs agencies for a living.
Put them in front of a camera and something shifts.
It’s not vanity. It’s vulnerability.
Being photographed asks a simple but uncomfortable question: “Is this how I appear to other people?”
Experience teaches you that confidence doesn’t remove nerves — it just hides them better. And the quickest way to lose someone’s trust is to pretend that nervousness isn’t there.
The best shoots don’t eliminate nerves. They make space for them.
People care more about how a shoot feels than how it looks — at first.
Early in my career, I thought success was obvious: sharp images, great lighting, strong compositions.
Those things matter — but they’re not what people talk about afterwards.
They remember whether they felt rushed, whether they felt listened to, whether they felt exposed or supported, and whether the day felt stressful or calm.
You can deliver technically excellent images and still leave a bad taste if the experience was uncomfortable.
Over time, you learn that psychological safety comes before aesthetics. Without it, no amount of lighting finesse saves the image.
Hierarchy walks into the room before anyone speaks.
On a hedshot session, people don’t arrive as equals.
There are unspoken dynamics: who signs off, who feels watched, who wants approval, who wants to disappear.
You can feel it immediately — even if nobody mentions it.
Twelve years teaches you when to give someone space, when to take quiet control, when to protect a junior team member, and when to gently step around internal politics.
This isn’t about manipulation. It’s about not making someone’s workday harder than it already is.
The camera exposes energy before it exposes faces.
You can fake a smile but you can’t fake ease.
The camera has a ruthless ability to reveal tension, boredom, defensiveness, and fatigue.
What experience teaches you is this: if the energy is wrong, fix that first — not the lighting.
Although I will go and pretend to tweak the lighting to give someone a pause while we chat about the weather, traffic, kids etc.
Sometimes that means slowing down. Sometimes it means changing approach. Sometimes it means stopping entirely for a moment.
The best images usually happen after people stop trying to be “photogenic”.
Silence is often more useful than direction.
Early on, it’s tempting to fill every gap with instruction: tilt your head, chin forward, smile a bit more.
Over time, you learn restraint.
A pause can do more than a sentence. Silence gives people permission to settle into themselves.
Some of the strongest portraits I’ve taken happened when I said very little — and waited.
People want to feel seen, not styled.
Clients rarely say this out loud, but it’s there underneath the brief: “I want this to feel like me — on a good day.”
Not perfect. Not idealised. Recognisable.
Twelve years teaches you to aim for familiar truth, not performance. That’s what people accept. That’s what they use.
When a shoot goes well, it barely feels like a shoot.
When everything works — when people feel relaxed, time behaves, decisions flow, and trust holds — the photography almost disappears.
It feels less like having photos taken and more like a well-run day that happened to include a camera.
That’s rarely accidental.
The biggest lesson: this is a people job.
After 12+ years, the cameras have changed. The lighting has evolved. The files are sharper.
But the work is the same.
Commercial photography is anticipation, empathy, judgement, and calm under pressure.
The images matter — but they’re the outcome, not the craft.
And the longer you do this, the clearer it becomes:
If you understand people, the photographs usually take care of themselves.