In the past, when shooting film for a client and showing them a polaroid, there had to be a certain amount of trust. Think about it, clients had to really trust that based upon the polaroid they were being shown, they were going to get the images they needed. I am sure it was more than a little scary for them but that was the only way to do it. They had to trust you. I distinctly remember when Photoshop started making it’s way onto client’s computers because that was when clients started saying things like: “I can work with that” and “We can Photoshop that out” etc. (BTW, I love how Photoshop became a verb)
I used to hate to hear that because that meant that I was not accomplishing what was being asked of me by the client. I was close, but not close enough to hear; “Wow, that is perfect!”.
Prior to Photoshop, there was a machine called a Scitex scanner that you could always use if you had to retouch an image. It was a machine that took up an entire room (usually at an engraver or film house), had a highly trained operator and cost upwards of $300 per hour to use. Leaving an extension chord in the background of a shot or worse yet, leaving one of your own polaroids in the shot was a really expensive error that often times would kill your budget if not your profit.
Now that we shoot digitally, clients want to see the back of the camera, want you to zoom in to check for stray hairs or wrinkles or if you shoot tethered like I often do, want to see the images as they flow into your laptop. Showing the client full res images on your laptop can be a good thing if they notice something that is out of place but the trouble comes when you get too many opinions. Sometimes you have to just untether or close the laptop and see if the client really trusts you as they should.
