A photographer's guide to booking & working with LGBTQI + clients

• Hold a full day of heavily discounted mini-sessions for LGBTQ + people in your area. Even better, give them away for free! You could even ask for a donation from the couples and put the money towards organisations championing LGBTQ + rights.
• Put the message out on your social media accounts that you’re looking to better represent all walks of life in your work and offer your services to queer influencers.
• Do social media giveaways (and be specific). Your message could read something like ‘Free engagement session for beautiful queer couples about to tie the knot. Tag your friends!
• Go to a Pride rally! They’re barrels of fun. Bring your camera, take some photos, tag the images, and be the little memento fairy that snaps moments everyone else is too drunk to capture. Bonus: you’re partying your way to embracing the important issues of the day.

Take this as an opportunity to embrace diversity every day (not just during gay pride month!). LGBTQI + photography clients need to see that you’re supportive of their community. This doesn’t mean slapping up a tokenistic gay photograph on your website from time to time. It means regular representation across all channels (content, copy, and imagery) and actually being inclusive and accepting in the way that you act and who you surround yourself with. Don’t just talk the talk, baby.

• Comb over your questionnaires and make sure there are no assumptions about sexual orientation. We live in a pretty heteronormative world, and the dominant paradigm slips in no matter how careful or inclusive you feel you are. Try to look at things from the perspective of an LGBTQI + person.
• Same goes for the copy, contracts, and forms on your website. Language is really crucial and making all couples feel comfortable means flagging any hetero-centred words or phrases.
• Make it a point to talk about your company values somewhere on your website! Because even though you may think it’s obvious, others may not. For LGBTQI + couples deciding who to entrust with their love and their photographs, it can be a really tough decision to figure out who to reach out to. Sparing them the anxiety by letting them know where you stand can make a huge difference!
• Get familiar with your preconceived ideas about gender norms and throw them out the window.
• Don’t underestimate the fact that your business can be a little model for the kind of world you want to live in. It can be healing to yourself and others.

Don’t assume

We’re sure some of you out there were subjected to that lame saying. How did it go? When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me? We won’t use that here. We wouldn’t dare. But one of the biggest mistakes that photographers make is to assume that there are masculine and feminine polarities in all relationships.

Before you completely put your foot in it and try to pose same sex couples awkwardly into traditional gender roles, talk to them! Ask them how they self-identify, how they’d like to be addressed, and take into account height differences (or lacks thereof). If you’re working with couples who are more or less the same height, the traditional straight wedding prompts probably won’t work for them.

If photographing a wedding, don’t forget to get in touch about what they’ll be wearing for the ceremony. This goes back to the gender roles thing, but all sorts of combinations are possible in the magical world of LGBTQI+! There may be a gown and a tux, but there could also be two of either, and little details like bouquets or sashes will be helpful in breaking up the large blocks of colour in the frame.

Putting some effort into getting to know them and throwing your stereotypes in the trash is a huge lesson in life. Deep. But seriously, taking the time to get to know the couple you’ll be photographing will pay off regardless of whether they’re LGBTQI + or not.

Don’t be too specific

Instead of telling them where to put their feet and how to angle their hips and how to hold their hands, try to stick with prompts that are more open to interpretation, like ‘lean into each other,’ or ‘slow dance.’ You’re still welcome to act out a specific shot, but instead of telling one of them to assume one role, just say “I want one person doing this, and the other person doing this” and let them decide between them who does what. Keep things open-ended and give them a chance to act out their natural roles in the positions that feel most appropriate for the two of them.

Work with the personalities

Despite the fact that it’s 2020, and most people recognise love as love, and the equal right to marry has been granted, we still unfortunately live in a world where lots of LGBTQI+ people feel unsafe and experience prejudice on a daily basis. Discuss boundaries and comfort levels with your couple, and be prepared with a handful of poses that accommodate for exuberance or privacy.

Be mindful of PDA. It’s not always comfortable for LGBTQI+ people to kiss in public due to any unwelcome attention. When choosing a location, try to find somewhere your couple is comfortable and feels free to interact with each other and their environment. The more relaxed they are, the more authenticity will come across in the images.

• Ask them about their story! Observe how they interact with one another, and the way that they express affection through their body language.
• Address them by their preferred gender pronouns - obviously! Don’t be afraid to ask them, it’ll indicate that you care.
• When shooting a wedding, make sure to use gender-neutral terms when addressing the wedding party. Like… wedding party, instead of ‘bridal party’ or ‘groomsmen.’
• When getting the group shots, be creative. Don’t get sucked into repeating the same old stereotypical gender posing roles.
• Don’t freak out! Don’t make it a huge deal. It’s ok to be excited but it’s a bit awkward when you make things out to be more shocking than they really are. This is not about you.

This is not about you.Having the honour to capture love in all its forms is probably one of the sweetest perks of this gig. The challenges that arise during an LGBTQI + session will tell you a lot about your preconceived notions and stereotypes, and you might come up against a bit of friction when beliefs you didn’t even know you had get challenged.