Write the second card, not the first

In October 2023 I booked Lorcan to photograph three generations of my family in the garden of a house we had rented for a weekend in Petworth. Fourteen people, one of them my father at 81, who had agreed to be photographed on the strict condition that it took ten minutes and nobody asked him to smile. Lorcan arrived forty minutes early, walked the garden once, and quietly reversed the order we had planned. The oldest people first, on the back step, in the shade of the walnut tree, before the light went and before my father got tired or cold. My father sat on a kitchen stool Lorcan carried out himself, talked about the runner beans in the border for most of the session, and stayed for twenty five minutes. Nobody had asked him to smile. In the last frame he is laughing at something my daughter said while holding his elbow, and his cardigan is buttoned wrong.

The text I sent that night said he had been brilliant with everyone and that we could not wait to see the pictures. He replied with a thumbs up, which is what that text deserved. The card I wrote the following month, after we had lived with the gallery for a week, named the reversed order, the stool, and the last frame with the wrongly buttoned cardigan. He wrote back a paragraph, and the first line of it was about my father, by name. Same photographer, same shoot, same gratitude. One message thanked a manner. The other thanked a set of decisions only he had made, in an order only he had chosen, and he could tell.

That split is the whole method on this page. A card written before the gallery can honestly cover conduct: punctuality, patience, how a nervous person was handled, what got fixed when the weather or the toddler changed the plan. It cannot honestly cover pictures nobody has seen yet, and photographers can spot a card that praises a gallery in advance. A card written after the gallery can do the opposite job. It can name one frame, say where that frame now lives in your house or on your site, and report what other people did when they saw it. Conduct first, pictures second, and keep each card short enough that writing two of them is not a chore.

Send one of these within a day or two, while the shoot is still a shared memory rather than a delivery you are waiting on. Keep it to the day. If you catch yourself writing about how beautiful the pictures will be, stop, because you do not know that yet and he knows you do not know it.

  • You reversed the whole order without making a speech about it, oldest first, on the back step, in the shade. My father stayed twenty five minutes. He had promised us ten.
  • Thank you for carrying the stool out yourself and never once asking him to smile. The not asking is the thing this family will remember.
  • The rain arrived at three and you had already moved us under the awning by ten to, with the group shot done. We noticed the order of those events.
  • You learned fourteen names in the first half hour and used the right ones, including the two cousins everyone else mixes up all weekend.
  • Thank you for telling us plainly that the last half hour of light was the good half hour, and for spending it on the whole group instead of on portraits of the organisers.

Notice that none of these lines needs the gallery to be true. That is their strength and their limit. They tell a photographer that his working decisions were seen by at least one person on the day, which is rarer than he lets on. They do not pretend to be a verdict on the finished work, so they do not have to be written again when the verdict is ready.

Open the gallery before you open the card. Pick one frame and be ready to describe it in a way that could only fit that frame: who is in it, what is happening at the edge of it, and one thing you did not know had been caught. If the gallery numbers its files, quoting a number saves him the hunt, though describing the scene in plain words usually lands better and needs no file list at all.

  • The last frame is the one on our wall now. My father laughing, cardigan buttoned wrong, my daughter holding his elbow. Nobody posed it. That is exactly why it works.
  • I did not know you had caught my mother watching the children from the kitchen doorway until I reached the end of the gallery. She has asked for that one, printed, for her birthday.
  • You put the one of the dog asleep under the table in the gallery between two formal group shots. It made us laugh and then, oddly, it is the one we keep sending people.
  • The back step picture is doing duty as this year Christmas card, which fourteen relatives will now have on their mantels. Your shade decision in October will be looked at all December.
  • Thank you for leaving in the frame where the baby is mid yawn and the rest of us are out of focus behind her. A tidier photographer would have cut it. It is the truest picture of that month we own.
  • Three weeks on, the thing people mention is not the big group shot. It is the small one of my parents holding hands on the step, which I do not remember you taking at all.

One useful extra sentence belongs in this card and in no other. Say where the picture has gone. On a wall, in a frame by a till, on the front page of a site, in an envelope to a grandmother who could not be there. A photographer delivers files into a silence. Most clients never report back on a single one of them, so a card that closes that loop carries information as well as thanks, and information is the part he can actually use.

For a family or newborn shoot, where nobody was at their best

A family shoot is a card about handling, not about art. Somebody was hungry, somebody cried, somebody arrived with a stained top, and the session still produced pictures a family will keep. Write about the handling with the same care you would want used about your own household in writing, which means no jokes at a child expense and no detailed account of anybody meltdown in a card that may be kept or shown to a partner in the business.

  • You waited out the whole feed, the change and the crying without checking your watch once, and still got her awake and cross eyed in the good light. Thank you for the patience and for the timing.
  • Thank you for photographing the spare top as if it had been the plan all along, and for never mentioning the original one again after I had changed into it.
  • You got my son to stand still by giving him the job of telling you when the light on the wall had moved. He still talks about being on the crew.
  • The picture of all four of us on the sofa is the first one in three years where nobody is blinking, escaping or holding a remote control. We have no idea how you managed it and we are not asking.
  • You sent the gallery on the day you said you would, in a week when we were getting very little sleep and had stopped believing anybody estimates. That mattered more than it should have.

Newborn cards need one more restraint. Do not write about a baby body, a mother recovery or a feeding detail beyond what the parents themselves would put on a public announcement. The card may sit in a studio. Keep the detail to the room, the light, the waiting and the picture, and the card stays safe to keep on a desk where the next family can see it.

For a headshot, brand or event shoot, where the pictures have a job to do

A working shoot produces pictures that have to perform somewhere, on a staff page, a book jacket, a speaker biography or a shop listing. Thanks that stop at you were great to work with give the photographer nothing he can repeat to the next client who is deciding whether to book. Name the job the picture went on to do.

  • The headshot went on the staff page last Tuesday and two clients have already used my name in a first email, which never happened with the old photograph. That is your picture working.
  • Thank you for refusing to retouch out the scar. You were right that it is part of how people recognise me, and the portrait looks like me on a good day rather than like a relative.
  • You shot the whole menu in one morning, in a kitchen that kept losing its light, and the delivery listing has stopped getting questions about portion size. The pictures answered them.
  • My book jacket photo arrived with three crops, for the jacket, the paperback and the event programme, and I had not thought to ask for any of them. Thank you for knowing the next three jobs.
  • Thank you for photographing forty staff in two days and getting every name right on every file. Our administrator has written your name in the front of the shoot folder for next year.

If the shoot was for an employer, check who should sign. A card from you personally can say what the session felt like. A card from the organisation can say what the pictures achieved, and it carries more weight if it comes from the person who signed the booking. Ideally both get sent, and they should not be the same card with the signature changed, because a photographer can tell that too.

What to keep out of a photographer's card

A thank you card is a poor vehicle for a request, and photographers get a lot of requests dressed up as thanks. The quoted lines below are the shapes to recognise and cut. Each one turns a card into a task, a negotiation or a permission problem, and a card carrying any of them will sit in a tray while a clean card goes on the shelf.

Thank you so much, and could you just take the fence out of the background of the big group shot?

We love the gallery. Would you mind sending the unedited files too, so my brother can have a go?

Thanks for the pictures, we have put your favourite one on our business page without the watermark, hope that is fine.

You made me look so much younger than the other photographer did last year.

We are so grateful, could you do the same price for my sister wedding in June?

Take them in order. A retouch request belongs in an email, with the frame identified and the change described, where it can be quoted, scheduled and charged or declined properly. Asking for unedited files is a contract question, not a favour, and many photographers do not release them at any price because unfinished work with their name on it is a risk to the next booking. Using a picture in a business without asking is a licensing question; credit and permission are separate things, and a tag is not a licence. The comparison line asks him to enjoy a verdict on a colleague he may share a studio with. And a discount request for somebody else turns your gratitude into a price he now has to defend himself against. Send the card clean. Send the requests separately, in writing, on a weekday.

There is a kinder version of the permission point worth making in the card itself, and it costs one sentence. If you plan to post a picture publicly, say so, name the picture, and tag or credit him the way his own site asks for. That is not a request at all. It is a report, and it is the one piece of business that genuinely belongs in a thank you.

The second shooter gets a separate card

On a wedding or a big event there is often a second photographer, and that person is usually thanked, if at all, in a bracket inside the main card. Dear Lorcan, and thanks to your assistant too. The bracket is a problem because the second shooter did distinct work, often with the half of the party the lead never reached, and frequently at the moments when the lead was tied up with the formal list. If you do not know their name, ask for it. Asking is part of the thanks.

Keep the second card shorter and make it about access. The second shooter usually gets the candid material: the guests arriving, the parents before the ceremony, the children under the table, the uncle who never sits for a portrait. Name one of those frames and say how you know it was theirs, from the gallery order, from where the lead was standing at the time, or because they told you on the day. A short card that proves you know which pictures came from which camera is worth more to a second shooter than a long one that thanks the team.

Do the same, in miniature, for an assistant who carried lights, held a reflector or drove the kit between venues. One line, in their own envelope if you can manage it, naming the thing they did that you actually saw. Assistants are building a career on days like that, and a named card from a client is a thing they can keep and, later, quote.

Short lines that still name a picture

Short is fine. Vague is not. A one line card works when it shrinks a fact instead of a compliment, so spend your single line on the frame, the order change or the delivery date, and let the warmth take care of itself.

  • Oldest first, on the back step, in the shade. It worked. Thank you.
  • The last frame is on our wall. Cardigan wrong, father laughing, perfect.
  • You never asked him to smile. He did anyway, in frame after frame.
  • Gallery on the day you promised, pictures better than the day felt. Thanks.
  • The dog under the table made the gallery. So did you. Thank you.
  • Three crops, one morning, no fuss. The staff page finally looks like us.

Read your line back and ask whether it could go, unchanged, to a caterer, a florist and a driving instructor. If it could, it is not about a photographer at all. Swap the compliment for the frame and the line usually gets shorter and better at the same time, which is a useful trade when you only have the inside of a small card to write on.

A worked example, from one text to two cards

Here is the message I actually sent on the night of the Petworth shoot, more or less word for word.

Thanks so much for today, you were brilliant with everyone and we all had a great time. Cannot wait to see the pictures, no rush at all.

Three faults in two sentences. Brilliant with everyone says nothing about anyone in particular. A great time was not quite true, since my father had endured the first ten minutes and my daughter had wanted to be inside with a book. And no rush at all, kindly meant, told a working photographer that his delivery date did not matter to us, when in fact half the family was asking about the pictures by the following Friday. Here is the card that replaced it, written once the gallery had been open on the kitchen table for a few evenings.

Lorcan, the gallery came on Tuesday and we went through it twice, once fast and once properly. The order you chose in the garden is the order the pictures work in. Oldest first, while my father still had patience and the shade was on the back step. He stayed twenty five minutes and he is laughing in the last frame, cardigan buttoned wrong, with my daughter holding his elbow. That frame is going on the wall in the hall, and my mother has asked for the doorway one for her birthday. Thank you for the stool, for the names, and for never asking him to smile.

The second card is not longer by much. It is later, and it is about pictures instead of about a manner, and every sentence in it could only have been written after that gallery, about that afternoon, to that photographer.

Turn it into a group card

A family shoot, a wedding and a staff shoot all share one awkward feature. The person who booked the photographer is rarely the only person who wants to thank him, and a card signed by one organiser on behalf of fourteen relatives or forty staff says less than the same card carrying one line from each of them. Ask each signer for a frame rather than a sentiment. Which picture of you, which moment you saw him handle, which person in your group he put at ease. Fourteen lines about fourteen frames is a document. Fourteen signatures under one compliment is a receipt.

A group ecard with multiple signers makes collecting those lines practical when the group has scattered back to four towns by Monday morning. One link goes out, each person adds their own line and names their own frame, and nobody has to post a paper card round the family. You can create a card online in a few minutes. For a shoot that was itself a gift, the ideas in free thank you ecards cover the send it today version, and the general guide to what to write in a thank you card takes the same conduct first, evidence second split to other recipients.

Two neighbouring occasions come up often alongside this one. Families booking a shoot around a new baby usually also need what to write in a baby shower thank you card, where the same rule applies and the detail to name is the gift in use rather than the gift in general. And a photographer booked for a graduation day sits next to what to write in a graduation card, which is a card about a result and a next step rather than about a party.

The small test print of the back step frame is still leaning against the kitchen radio at home, trimmed a quarter inch too tight on the left, so my father's left shoe is missing altogether. I have a full size print in the hall, framed properly, with both shoes. I keep meaning to throw the test print away. It is the version I look at while the kettle boils, and the missing shoe has become part of how I remember that afternoon, which was also missing a few things and worked anyway.