A tall, confident, handsome, muscular, good-looking man goes into a tailor.
He says “I’d like a suit.”
The tailor says “Certainly sir, I’ve got the very thing.
He gets the man to put it on.
The man says “The arms are too long.”
The tailor says “Just bend your elbows and crook your fingers.”
The man does it.
The tailor says “There, the sleeves look perfect.”
The man says “But the shoulders are baggy.”
The tailor says “Just hunch your shoulders together and bend your head down.”
The man does it.
The tailor says “There, the shoulders look perfect.”
The man says “But the trousers are too long.”
The tailor says “Just bend your knees and squat down.”
The man does it.
The tailor says “There, the trousers look perfect.”
So the man pays for the suit and hobbles out of the shop.
And he limps down the street looking like Richard III.
Bent over, hunch-backed, dragging his feet,
Two men are watching him from across the road.
One says to the other “Look at that poor bloke, don’t you feel sorry for him?”
The other man says “Yeah but what a great tailor. Look how well that suit fits him.”
I think that joke sums up our business at present.
The original idea was to get a suit to make the man look good.
But in the end, the man was contorted to make the suit look good.

Read the whole thing on Dave Trott’s blog (he’s supposed to be this legend from the advertising industry, amazing writings on that blog)

My thought after reading the piece: this what happens in the wedding photography industry. People come up to me and said they want to be shot like this and this, but when you get to know the person, you know that the style (or the suit) does not fit them.

Worse, photographers that make the client to do his style and his way of shooting, just like the tailor did with the poor man.

Great photographers (and great tailors) work the other way around: they see the client, and they help bring out the best of her true self in front of the lens, not someone’s else, or not what’s currently popular.

Thus the true personality captured, thus making it an honest portrait, thus making it a great, powerful photograph.