Show Your Work Without Selling It

Imagine a portrait photographer named Ottilie Brand who shoots headshots and family portraits in her studio. Dr. Pryce has just been named head of cardiology at the hospital, and he books a headshot for its website. Ottilie would like more family work, and he has a family.

The headshot goes well. While the photos load onto her laptop, Ottilie opens a folder of 30 family sessions and walks him through them. She explains her three collections, from $2,500 to $8,000. “October has the best light,” she says. “Shall I pencil you in for the 12th?”

Dr. Pryce says he will talk to his wife. He does not call. A month later, a colleague asks him about a photographer. “Good headshots,” he says. “Be ready for the family pitch.” The colleague books someone else.

Suppose instead that three large portraits hang on the wall behind Ottilie’s backdrop. One shows a family on the front steps of their house. One shows a grandmother with her grandsons in her garden, and one shows three sisters on a jetty. Between frames, Dr. Pryce looks past her at them. “Who are they?” he asks.

“Those are my portrait clients,” Ottilie says. “The family on the steps was taken at their house last fall, the year their oldest left for college.” Then she asks about his family. He says that his twin daughters are 17, and that the family is happiest at the lake. Ottilie finishes the headshot and says nothing more about portraits.

At the door, she hands him a card printed with the portrait on the steps. “If you’d ever like one of your family before the girls leave, I’d start by coming to see the room it would hang in,” she says. “If not, I’m glad to have done the headshot.” In March, Dr. Pryce calls to ask whether she could come up to the lake in June.

Ottilie had the same portraits and the same prices both times. What changed was who brought them up. In the first version, the portraits came in a slideshow with three prices and a date. So Dr. Pryce spent the time working out how to get away. In the second, he saw three portraits on a wall and asked about them himself. He heard one sentence about the family in them. Then he got one way to start and one easy way to say no.

So put a few finished pieces where clients will see them, and let the client be the one to ask. Then invite the decision in one sentence, with a way out. Here is why a pitch gets in the way of the work, and what two photographers found.

A client looks at the work until someone starts selling it

When a client sees a portrait on a wall, they look at it the way they look at any picture. They look at the people in it, where they are, and what they are like together. Nobody is waiting for them to say anything.

Here is the course’s view of what changes when the same portrait comes in a pitch. Now the client has to answer something, so part of their attention goes to the answer. A client who feels pushed tends to step back from the person pushing. A slideshow of 30 sessions also shows your ordinary work beside your best. A client judges a set of work by its average.

Many wealthy clients also look without saying so, the way they read your posts in silence. A portrait on a wall lets them look for as long as they like, with nobody watching for a reaction.

Looking is not deciding, though. A client who has asked about a piece needs to know what the first step would be. They also need a way to say no that costs them nothing. So the invitation is one sentence, and it keeps the “if” that leaves the decision theirs.

A Scottsdale photographer’s studio is a gallery, and his headshot clients come back with their families

David Lee runs a headshot and fine-art portrait studio in Scottsdale, Arizona. He started out with a borrowed camera and some YouTube videos. In 2022, Rangefinder wrote about how he sells his portraits, from what he said on The Portrait System Podcast. In the article’s words, he describes his sales style as “non-sales.”

When someone calls him for a headshot, he invites them to a consultation at his studio. The studio “also serves as a gallery of his luxury fine-art portraits,” the article says. “When they go to the headshot station, they see the fine-art canvases behind me,” Lee said.

He gives the consultation “in a very nonchalant way,” he said, “so they never think they’re getting a sales pitch.” As he points to the canvases, he says, “Oh, that’s my fine-art work.” Then he hands them a brochure or a card, and he talks with them about their family. He does not try to hook a client. Instead, he offers them a way out, saying that he wants to make sure he is the right photographer for them.

The article gives no figures for his sales. It does say that “quite often his headshot clients will return with their families for a fine-art portrait canvas to ultimately grace their home.”

“You sell what you show,” Lee said. His canvases were on the wall before the client walked in, so the client did the noticing. His sentence about them was five words long. What came next was a talk about the client’s family, and a way out, not a price.

A wedding photographer made two prints for a couple’s new house and showed them with the wedding photos

Abul Shah is a wedding photographer. In 2024, SLR Lounge asked 17 photographers what they had to overcome to sell their work in person. “I don’t consider myself a salesperson,” Shah said.

When he first met one couple, they had just moved into a new house and were about to start renovating it. He noticed that they had good taste and loved art. “I recognized immediately that I could potentially upsell some wall art to them for their new home,” he said.

On the wedding day, he kept that in mind. He made “a set of complementary images that would suit their taste.” A few weeks after the wedding, he gave the couple their wedding photos. He also “showed them the two prints that were ready to go on their wall in their new home.”

“They loved them!” he said, though he does not say what they bought. “I believe that you sell what you show.”

Shah calls it an upsell, and this lesson would not. What made it work came before the word. He heard about the house and the art at the first meeting, and he made two pieces for those walls. He showed them finished, beside the photos the couple was already getting.

Measured against this lesson, the cost is the part to watch. Two prints nobody asked for are two prints you pay for. So make them only when a client has told you about the room. Keep it to one or two, as Shah did.

Why saying nothing after the client asks goes wrong

Imagine a newborn photographer named Greta Holm who has learned not to pitch. Large portraits of families with older children hang on her studio walls. Mrs. Ferreira brings in her two-week-old daughter for a session.

While Greta settles the baby, Mrs. Ferreira looks at a portrait of a family with three children on a beach. “Do you photograph families too, as the children get older?” she asks. The next baby is due in 20 minutes. “I do,” Greta says, and she goes back to the baby.

Mrs. Ferreira waits a moment for more, and none comes. She does not ask again. A year later, she books a first-birthday session with a photographer from her mothers’ group.

Greta’s mistake was stopping at the yes. Mrs. Ferreira had done the hard part, which was asking. Greta left her with no first step, so the question went nowhere.

The version that works answers in a sentence and then invites the decision. “I do. That family has come back every summer since their first was born,” Greta says. “If you’d like to do the same, I’d see you again for her first birthday, at your house. There’s no need to decide today.” Then she goes back to the baby. Mrs. Ferreira books the first birthday before she leaves.

How to show your work and let the client decide

1. Choose three or four finished pieces of the work you want more of. Put them where clients will see them while you work. That might be the wall behind your backdrop or the table where you meet. Show only work whose clients have given permission. The number is the course’s suggestion. With a few pieces, the client judges only your best. For example, a headshot photographer who wants family work can hang three family portraits behind the backdrop, as Lee does.
2. Keep the slideshow, the price list, and the collections closed until the client asks for them. For example, a senior portrait photographer meeting a family about yearbook photos leaves her tablet in her bag.
3. When a client asks about a piece, answer in one sentence about the people in it and when it was taken. Then ask about the client’s own family. For example, a fine-art photographer can say, “That’s a woman and her mother at the house where she grew up. Where is your family happiest together?”
4. Once the client has asked about the work, invite the decision in one sentence. Say what the first step would be, keep the “if,” and give them a way to say no. For example, a pet photographer can say, “If you’d like one of Bramble, I’d come to the house on a Saturday morning. If not, I’ve loved meeting her.”
5. Hand the client one thing to keep, such as a card printed with the piece they asked about. Leave the package list out. The single card is the course’s suggestion. It keeps the work in front of the client at home, and nothing on it asks for anything.
6. When the client comes back to ask how it works, give one fee for the whole engagement in a sentence. If two kinds of portrait would both suit them, show both and say which you would choose. If they ask for it in writing, open the proposal with what they told you. For example, a family photographer can say, “It’s a morning at your house and one large portrait for the hall. The fee is $6,000.”
7. You can show a past client a piece made for their house. Do it only when they have told you about the room. Keep it to one or two pieces. For example, a wedding couple might mention the long wall in their new dining room. Their photographer can show one print sized for it with the album.

Next: You will see why a wealthy client wants to know what happens to their photos before they hire you.