Why hire a professional photographer?
It’s no secret that anyone can get hold of camera and take some decent shots these days. But why is it often so important to use a professional photographer instead? If you are considering commissioning a shoot with a professional, then here are just a few points which you may want to bear in mind.
It is worth remembering that almost all images used for advertising or illustration purposes have been taken by a professional photographer. Whether you’re wandering around a shopping centre or playing games of online Binguez, the images which you encounter are more than likely to be of a professional standard, even if they seem relatively simplistic. Customers and clients are used to seeing images which are of this level of quality, and if you want your business, organization or product to be able to match up, then using a professional photographer can be important.
Even if you think you have a good grasp of how to use a camera and achieve top quality images, it is worth bearing in mind that a professional photographer will also have studio experience. This includes a good understanding of how lighting will affect an image – something which can have considerable impact on the finish photograph. For images that are likely to be used as marketing materials, this can be extremely important.
Professional photographers are likely to have worked with other businesses and organizations similar to your own, but this means that they will have a good idea what the latest trends are within that area of photography, and can make creative suggestions on how to make your own images stand out from the crowd. Such advice can often prove invaluable if you are looking to establish a brand image. These are just a few of the reasons why more and more professional businesses and organizations can often benefit from using a professional photographer.
PDN’s 30 is out
Since college I watched PDN’s 30 (previously 30 under 30) as the landmark of who to watch emerging in photography. Over the years they dropped the under 30 requirement (which was always loose anyway). I turned 30 this year, guess I still have time….
Kill some time browsing the winners and the amazing work they are producing!
One of my favorites, this Mark Fisher of Fisher Creative image: (not to be confused with any other photographers named Mark Fisher)
Why you should buy a stamp with your logo on it.
See where we're going with this?
Caution, the ink runs a bit.
Friends are great marketing
Is that a tattoo? No, it’s my logo stamp, but it won’t wash off so, yes, it kinda is a tattoo.
How to Pose for a Photograph – Overview of Femfessionals Luncheon
Thanks to everyone who came out to the luncheon today! It was great getting the opportunity to speak to you as well as meet so many wonderfully motivated ladies! Got to love Femfessionals!
As promised, here are notes from today’s speech “Your Face, Your Brand {How to look your best in front of the camera}”
Intro:
Photo of you are everywhere. It’s your bio, your email signature, your LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter profile, you name it. With more and more business happening virtually your online images are there representing you making it more important now than ever to have a great photo. Naturally you want to be well represented! Having the right photo could make or break a potentially strong career move.
There are 2 types of photos we are talking about here, the casual ones that you may or may not know are being posted (the society pages of magazines, or Facebook for example) and the formal portrait (the one you would prepare for and use for bio’s and profile images).
A little about me:
I grew up in a small farm town in NH. Luckily from a young age I excelled at art and found my way to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design where photography found me. Upon graduation, I took the next natural step and started interning for successful photographers who occasion illustrated that being professional doesn’t always mean acting morally. This left me in a conundrum, how was I going to learn everything I needed to know about photography without putting myself in the vulnerable situation that interning required? Hence the birth of my modeling. I am very lucky to have been able to go this route in because it offered incredible insight to what happens in front of the camera as well as behind. Being a model allowed photographers to open up to me about their lighting, camera’s and technique that as an intern I was viewed too much as competition to be told. Getting to be friends with the owner and bookers at my agency helped me learn the in’s and out’s of the business side of this industry. Posing, smiling, and moving were just some of the things I learn how to do as a model, but most of all, being in front of the camera taught me the empathy I have today for everyone that has to go there. I assure you, even as a model being in front of a camera is incline to be somewhat unnatural.
Being in Front of the Lens:
Over the 5 years I’ve been shooting here in Florida, the years of modeling in the Northeast, and even the years of being a student I have learned many things about photographing and being photographed. If there is one thing that everyone takes away from here it’s this: celebrity, model, politician, blue collar, white collar, almost everyone starts out clueless on what to do to take a great picture. Let’s look at celebrities for a moment. We see beautiful women on the red carpets looking amazing in these beautiful gowns, all done up. But let’s look closer….
Not exactly original are they? Celebrities work with professionals who teach them how to stand, smile, turn their heads, and well, look just about perfect for these photos. When you do see an alternative pose on the red carpet often it’s not the photo op moment. When a celebrity is making eye contact, posing for these shots they are doing exactly what they’ve been taught to. Everything is deliberate and practiced. It’s not a bad thing either! This is what we are here to learn, how to optimize our posture, smile, and pose so we too can take the best photo’s possible.
Let’s start with Casual Photography:
Everything you learn about casual posing applies to formal photography posing as well. In formal photography you have a photographer coaching you though so you can relax a bit more. But these tips will help you next time your being photographed at an event, out with the girls, or anytime a non-professional is taking your photo.
1. Relax when that camera comes out! It shows if your nervous, stressed or thinking about something negative. I always ask my subjects to think of something that makes them happy.
2. Hold your arms away from your body. Whether it’s on your hip like so many celebrities or relaxed by your sides, squishing your arms against your body will not make them look small.
3. Stand up straight and tall. Imagine someone has a string attached to the top of your head, now imagine they pull that string, your spine should straighten out, your chin should become parallel to the ground.
4. Tipping, tip your hips back from the camera a bit. Not a lot, if over done this will look really awkward but by pulling your hips away from the camera you will flatter your middle and rear.
5. If your sitting, work your angles, almost anyone can have a double chin if they hold themselves a certain way. Pay attention to where the camera is shooting you from and try to look up at the camera and push your chin forward.
6. If your standing and it’s a full body shot, get on your toes. Heels are great for this because they make our legs look longer. By having pointed toes the legs naturally look more toned and longer.
7. Be confident. Keep breathing! It’s amazing how easy something so neccessary is to forget! After your body has gotten into that position take a deep breath and exhale, you will naturally settle into your pose better.
Let’s break down the smile:
A fake smile is easy to spot. We can get scientific about that (A Duchenne smile involves contraction of both the zygomatic major muscle (which raises the corners of the mouth) and the orbicularis oculi muscle (which raises the cheeks and forms crow’s feet around the eyes). A non-Duchenne smile involves only the zygomatic major muscle. “Research with adults initially indicated that joy was indexed by generic smiling, any smiling involving the raising of the lip corners by the zygomatic major…. More recent research suggests that smiling in which the muscle around the eye contracts, raising the cheeks high (Duchenne smiling), is uniquely associated with positive emotion.”) For more see the wiki article. Or we can say it in layman’s terms, if your not smiling in your eyes your not really smiling. In photo’s we can’t hear you, a great way to fake a smile is to laugh out loud. Either at the start of the fake laughter or at the end when you are smiling because it felt silly to do there’s a keeper of a smile in there. This is why photographers are always telling jokes. They catch you off guard and you relax and smile when you hear them. If your at a party though and the party paparazzi photographers are coming around, they’re not usually quite as clever so take charge of your smile yourself and bring it into your eyes!
The Formal Photograph Breakdown:
So your ready to take the step to having a solid portrait taken to represent you. Great! Let’s talk about how to get the most out of it!
1. Know your budget + what you need the photo for. Whatever you have to put towards it, know how much you can afford. You shouldn’t go broke getting this picture but you shouldn’t trust a cell phone camera in the backyard either. Knowing what you need it for, as specific as possible (social media and online bio for company website for example) gives the photographer all the information they need to give you the right price. You don’t want to pay for using the photo in an full page add in Forbes if you don’t need it for that.
2. Find the right photographer for you. PLEASE, look at their websites! Check out their Yelp listings! If you like their work and they are well reviewed give them a call. Ask about rates but also don’t be afraid to tell the photographer you budget if they are above your rates. We are all business people and there are ways for us to work with almost any budget. But don’t let the conversation end there. Ask about retouching, try and just chat with them to see if they have a personality that matches what you want to work with. Ask about hair and makeup, if they have someone onsight ask to see their portfolios. If they don’t what do they suggest for taking care of that. Odds are it will depend with your budget.
3. Find images you like online and send them to your photographer before the shoot. This is how you can tell your photographer if you want indoor or outdoor, natural light or studio light, and what the general mood and posing are of how you would like to look.
4. Take care of yourself leading up to your photoshoot. Drink plenty of water the day before, don’t go to a party and drink and stay out late. Get plenty of rest.
5. Eat! Depending on the time of day we have different food needs. A morning shoot you should eat breakfast before coming, but not something high in sugar that you will have a crash from. If your shoot is after lunch be careful of eating too much for lunch. Odds are 2/3 of what you would normally have for lunch is what you want on the day of your photoshoot. Too many times a large lunch has left me and/or my models, makeup artists, stylists, you name it, feeling tired and lethargic. But absolutely eat something!
6. Trust your photographer. The goal is to get a lot of different great options. If your photographer asks you to pose in a way that you don’t think will look good, give it a shot. Having a bad frame is not a bad thing! Being a perfectionist myself I know that I want every frame to be a winner but it’s just not going to be the case. You will blink and you will have a few times that things don’t look good. That is okay! As long as your willing to try new things and pose new ways your photographer will find your best angles and take the best photo possible.
7. Have fun. Your not working, laugh, relax, feel free to do something silly to throw your photographer off! Odds are we’ll all laugh about it and the whole mood of the shoot will stay light and fun.
Conclusion:
Hopefully some of what I’ve said here will be useful. Remember practice makes perfect and so go ahead and get in front of a mirror for a bit. Smile a few different ways, see how it looks with and without a smile in your eyes. Try a few different poses. Perhaps you’ll find a great angle you didn’t know you had. Try it out next time someone is taking your photograph! It’s important to make a great impression with everyone who see’s you and so much is happening today online that we shouldn’t overlook our virtual images! I’m always happy to answer personal questions, and thanks again for being here and listening!
Kickstart
It is harder and harder to keep up with the ever changing world we have access to today. Something amazing could be around for years before you or I ever hear about it. So forgive me if you have, I had too but not really while paying any attention to what was being told to me.
This is an amazing project, I found through my college (Rhode Island School of Designs) alumni LinkedIn group. It seems not being in school slows the passing along of information too. Kickstarter is a website where artists of all types (visual, audio, textual, etc) can pitch dream projects (or projects they just started thinking about) and collect funding for it in return for promises of gifts. If the artist doesn’t reach 100% of his or her goal funding, no one who promised money is on the hook for any monies promised. But if they do reach 100% of their goal they thank you for your faith and support in them with presents that vary based off the level of funding you gave. You dreamed of traveling the world and taking pictures, here you can see if you’ve got what it takes to generate a following of supporters who also want to see what you can create.
The possibilities have the wheels in my head turning…. those long lost projects I hoped to one day make but let me thoughts turn to something else when the actual up front cost of follow through left me staggering for air. It’s like getting a grant from a hundred people who believe in you. HOW AMAZING!?! Then if you find someone and say, “man! I would love to get a print/book/see an exhibition from her/him!” you can donate and if the artist meets their goal you get that as a thank you. I’m sold.
Photography equipment unavailable?
Have you looked into purchasing new photography equipment lately? Your finally ready to buy that Canon 5D mark II? Or perhaps a new lens? Having a little trouble?
Last week I picked up the 100mm Macro 2.8L from B&H, and as with most of my lens and camera purchases I suffered a huge internal debate as to if I really needed to buy this. As I’ve posted before I often rent my equipment from BorrowLenses.com but I’ve already rented this lens before and how many times can I justify renting it before it’s worth buying? So I did it, picked it up. No regrets. Done. If I had heard any of the things last week that have come to light this week I wouldn’t have hesitated as much to buy the lens!
Perhaps it’s because of this recent Canon Lens purchase that my awareness is heightened, or perhaps it’s just because this is a new week, but this week has been the week of where the @#%^! is the photography equipment! Guess I got lucky because I know where all my photo equipment is. But having two of my friend (Matt & Nami) in the market for new cameras I’ve noticed they are having a problem. Come to think of it, everyone is having a problem or will be soon (myself included). And this problem is not getting better or going away, it’s getting worse!
Wednesday night I went to a great talk by Seth Resnick, a Canon Explorer of Light (living the dream Seth…. living the dream.) sponsored by ASMP. He mentions this gear shortage.
Look familiar?
It will only be getting more and more common. Resnick said that after the Earthquake-tsunami-meltdown tragedy Japan’s camera power players Canon and Nikon are both barely running. One of the hardest obstacles for the companies to deal with is frequent power outages at the factories. If you haven’t guessed, this means little to no new production. Resnick was told “if it’s not at B&H, it’s not going to be anywhere” and that delays “could be as long as a year” in getting everything back on track. I would guess that pertains to after the current supplies run out. But it is as bad as it sounds. Already your seeing the only big player selling the 5D Mark 2 is Andorama, and it’s about $200 more than it would be sold for at B&H, if they had it in stock.
Want to play a disturbing game? Go to B&H’s website, search for Canon L series lenses. Looks fine and dandy for the first page, but about 2/3 down the second page the unavailable items start, then continue through the end of the 3rd page. That means about half the L series lens inventory is already gone from B&H till Canon works out the kinks and gets product again. Scary, I know.
PDN has some great reading on it and recommends a VERY useful site is www.nowinstock.net where you can see who still has inventory.
Guess if anyone is sitting on used equipment, the time to sell it for the max amount is just about here. Or if any of my readers are on the fence about purchasing new photography equipment just the rumor of this being true should move you to get it while you can. Good luck everyone. Now all we can do is wait and perhaps be a little more careful with our equipment.
How long does it take to break set?
After photographing 13 pieces of jewelry and 2 designer shoes, the studio takes exactly…
and
to clean up.
Now it’s time to retouch…..
Epic postcard for Kate Benson Portraits
If you a member of Femfessionals Miami you’ll be seeing these next June when I am the guest speaker for the monthly luncheon. These events are so much fun and a great way for women to network with each other. I’ll be speaking about how to pose and not to pose when being photographed.
Kate Benson on Yelp
If your Mondays are a little tough to get through and you need a distraction I just listed Kate Benson on Yelp and would love to get some reviews.
Thanks if you find the time!!
http://www.yelp.com/biz/kate-benson-photography-miami
New Logo
Michael Rossi is amazing, he created this new logo for KateBenson.com. I am so in love with it!! Thank you a hundred times Michael! This should be live on my main website sometime today.
Something to aspire to!
Getting inspired!!
These are blogs that put other photobloggers to shame. I imagine keeping up with these blogs alone take all the photographers time! If only one day I could travel the world to take pictures, then play with them in retouching and post them to my blog for a living. *sigh* A photographer can dream can’t she??
Stuck in Customs -wow, wow, wow, Trey Ratcliff way to be dedicate! He promises to put a new photo on every day and keeps that promise (claims to only miss about 10 days a year). Somehow, between traveling the world to take pictures, giving speeches + interviews, playing with all his fun Nik software tricks, he sits down and creates (from what I can tell) a substantial post with a photo. The real kicker, the photo’s are really really good! Most photographers would be happy to create a shot like that a month, or a year even! Trey just whips them out every day.
Durham Township -Kathleen Connally, showing us the way to look around you to find amazing photos. She’s not traveling the world like Trey, she driving/walking/exploring around her town and county showing us how beautiful photos can be taken without paying for those plane tickets. Although she doesn’t post every day (we can’t all be like Trey) she posts a lot. Check out the photo information, she isn’t shy about letting us know what she’s shooting with and doing to each picture to get the images to look like that! It’s a great learning tool, and she has motivated me to purchase a new lens or two.
And just for fun, Stumbled Across This Gem -It’s not always about pretty pictures, sometime it’s about resources. This list of helpful links includes photoblogs, creative sites like Cheapshooter.com and more. It’s from photography-colleges.org and called the top 100 photography blogs, very cool.
What’s your favorite photoblog?
Contracts, ASMP, and Caroll Michels
In the ideal world, there would be no war, everyone would have food to eat, and we would never need contracts. Although I have a few amazing lawyers who have offered to help me whenever the time may come, I try not to bother them with a contract for a new client or selling arrangement. Let’s face it, if we are doing what we are suppose to we should be constantly writing and sending out contracts. I realize that it is a time consuming task. However, if you need help writing an artist to gallery contract, here are a few of the resources I used which may be helpful to you as well.
#1. Anyone interested in being an artist really needs to read Caroll Michels book, How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist, Selling Yourself Without Selling Your Soul. It’s amazing how glamorous being an artist, a photographer, a singer sounds before you get into what being an independent business owner entails!
#2. Photographers, you need to join www.asmp.com -if you’re not a member yet; you really aren’t doing what you should be. The American Society of Media Photographers is “A trade association which protects and promotes the interests of photographers whose work is for publication”. The resources here are valuable to photographers of all walks of life, not just publication/editorial photographers. Every intern I have, and photographer friend I make I encourage joining. The membership isn’t that much to start and being a member offers you discounts at places like B&H, Livebooks, and more. On the website, photographers post sample estimates, another section has bad contract examples that teach you what words to stay away from! But really, this is the most helpful group I’ve joined. Experts travel around the country giving lectures on the business; the site has a seemly infinite amount of resources!
#3. Use the web wisely! I searched the better part of a day to find and read contracts that were posted on the web to help artist not get screwed. A few that I liked are, http://www.enchantedcreek.com/Art/Contracts/artist-gallery.html -this sample contract is for an artist and gallery consignment agreement. I used this contract, along with http://www.docstoc.com/docs/21100400/ArtistGallery-Consignment-Agreement and www.clackamasartsalliance.org to get what I needed.
For my needs, none of the 3 contracts did the trick just right. So I created a hybrid of the 3, added and changed what I needed to customize it to fit my selling relationship. I suspect most galleries have a contract ready to go. But being ready to help your client who may not have one, but wants to sell your work is always a good idea. Remember, in the world of freelance photography, it’s about giving your clients what they are asking for and keeping their lives as easy as possible while doing it but if it’s not in writing you’ve got no guarantee. It’s not fair to ask your clients just to trust you, a contract gives them piece of mind as much as it give you piece of.
Pricing your work
It is so hard, when you start out there in the world of freelance to price yourself. In 2004, when I graduated from RISD I wanted to jump into working as a full time freelancer. Forget about interning and assisting, why would I want to give away myself like that? Well, a very good reason to do it is there is a lot more to freelance photography than taking pictures. I wish it wasn’t so, I do. But unfortunately it is the way of the world. You need to learn the biz and one piece of advice no photographer is going to give away is how much they charge. But through assisting and interning a photographer will let you inside their secret world of business.
So you get that phone call, someone wants to hire you and wants a quote. It’s a job you are crazy excited to do, and to be honest, you would do it for free just because you are that excited. But that is the #1 mistake you can make! If you don’t put a value on your work, no one else will. So you know better, you know if you offer your services for free and are hoping the client will be excited and think ‘what an amazing person to work with, they’ll do it for free!! I’ll always work with them!’. When really, a serious client is thinking, ‘oops, free? Hmm.. I thought this photographer was really amazing and now I’m not sure. Why would they be doing this for free? What do they know that I don’t’ or ‘oh! I guess this photographer isn’t as experienced as I was hoping. I don’t want to take a risk like that with this shoot.’
Yet even giving a client pricing that is way off market will also leave them thinking your not experienced and can scare them away.
I know how it is in the beginning. Your hungry! You want to have these jobs because it will be building your book and getting you on the right track towards doing this full time. In the words of experience with this, don’t do it! There are many different types of clients out there, and in the same way there are all kinds of levels of photographers. Working with the wrong type of client, especially in the beginning can throw off your whole business plan and mean you end up doing damage control for years!
Friends of mine often get in touch with me because someone wants them to do a HUGE job for them and they are asked to give them a quote. I remind them, it’s not very many times you quote someone and they take it without any problems. A lot of people, especially in 2009 are looking to cut corners but still get everything done. Always, if you hear your client sounding disappointed in the quote see if there is a way to make it work for both of you.
On the flip side of that, there are people who are way off base with the value of photography today. I had one guy want to buy some images from me, license them for 2 years to use in international and domestic adds, make prints of them, etc. He said he was looking for full usage for 2 years, exclusively. It was for quite a few images and I had not been asked for this kind of usage. I looked at stock sites and did a lot of research to find out what the value of these images would be. It was a high number, and I knew he wouldn’t pay it. But that is what the images would make if I sold these rights through those stock sites with that usage. We sat down, had a meeting. I gave him my number and he said he was thinking $100 for the images with those terms. There was no way to negotiate because the prices were so far away from each other. I walked away from that meeting, quickly!
This is a client you don’t want. This is the kind of client that hasn’t made any decisions about what he wants to use the images for/in and just wants to have all options available to him, but also has no idea of the value of an image. You can’t work with a client like this. I never could have given him the images for $100. If I had, it would have been unfair to all of my other clients who are loyal to me and agree to pay fair prices. Other opportunities for those images have come along and they have made me money. Much more than what he was looking to spend. A lot of people intentionally take advantage of younger professionals and despite my age, I look young and have a surprisingly established business for being under 30.
So before you give your quote, look everywhere for rates. Even if it’s the strangers places, like a reputable stock site with the licensing and usage plugged in. But don’t undercut yourself! And be careful how you quote! Again, interning and assisting full time with an established photographer is a great way to hear how they negotiate and handle rates!
Flying with Photo Gear
Ever tried flying with your camera?
Ever tried flying with your camera, laptop, lighting, modifiers, hard drive, tripod and the rest of your gear?
It sucks. We all, even if have never had the opportunity, can agree that although sounding glamours, traveling with all that stuff is just a headache. We can always rent the gear when we get there, if of course we’re going somewhere that is an option. Even then though, is it really worth giving up the comfort of using your equipment to have the discomfort of traveling with it? Forget about the international issues. Making sure you have paperwork for any equipment that looks new so you won’t be accused of buying it over sea’s and required to pay taxes on it, again. Trying to debate how much you can get away with bringing on board with you verses (shutter) checking in your gear cases. The homework of just figuring this out takes an insane amount of time. So luckily there are some other options! The one that I am most excited about is Southwest Cargo. I’m a big Southwest Air fan to start, so their cargo shipping really gets me excited. Of course it’s really not an option for international travel but totally worth looking into for domestic shoots. www.swacargo.com there are photographers who swear by this. You can ship it before you go, it’s a whole lot faster than UPS and cheaper than regular mail.
I highly recommend looking into it!
Pruf Reed UR werek.
Remember junior high? How you had to hit spell check after you wrote an essay? How about when you were doing your math homework and gave it that little once over to catch any mistakes? Although we would all LOVE to repress those memories a little longer there is an important lesson in them: proof read your work. Just because we graduated junior high, high school and some of us even college doesn’t get us off the hook for double checking what we do.
Sometimes it’s a little easier. For example if your sending out your resume of COURSE you’ll check your spelling. But do you take it any further than that? Do you actually read it out loud to hear how it is going to sound to someone reading it? If you recognize the importance of sounding intelligent in a resume than wouldn’t you also recognize that any email there after to that client is equally important. Take the time, read your email out loud. Most email hosts have a check spelling option but if you hit the wrong key and managed to still spell an actual work (although not the word you wanted) spell check is not going to catch it. Reading it back to yourself is.
Then there are harder places to double check, like your images. If you are creating a series of pictures you need to make sure any retouching you’ve done stays consistent throughout all of them. Don’t saturate the crap out of you sky in one shot and then leave it be in the next if they are part of the same story. If it’s personal work for yourself or work for a client, this is a very good habit to develop. If possible, use a program that let’s you open all the images in one window and see how they flow together. I love using Bridge for this. You can hold down the command key and select multiple images to be viewed at once. I do this for all my editorials. This also creates an amazing editing tool. Often I take a photograph out and replace it with another to see if the story is stronger that way. I’ve even gotten into the habit of taking screen shots of the edit and sending it to the editor I’m working with. It’s fairly normal to have 6 or 7 different takes on the story before we settle on the strongest layout.
Yet, if the images weren’t edited to look like they fit together this process wouldn’t work. Of course an image that doesn’t match the others in color and tone is going to create a stumble in the story. All the shots we consider putting into the fashion spread are given a quick retouch so we can edit fairly. See this example,
When you haven't retouched both images.
When you have retouched both images.
If your deadline/due date for an assignment isn’t due right away, finish it early and come back to it a few days later. Check to see if you still like the edits you made in post production. There are a lot of times I will get excited about something and then realize two days later it just doesn’t work.
Even when you have a client and you’ve shots 500 images for their website, go back and check. Although at the end of shooting, loading, and retouching 500 photo’s the last thing you want to do is see any more of it, force yourself to do it. You don’t want your clients thinking you are sloppy and there’s the chance that someone else isn’t going to catch your mistake either (if they are doing anything with your images odds are they are sick of them too). Worse case scenario, your careless mistake ends up published somewhere for the world to see.
So take a few extra minutes, a half an hour late without any mistakes is going to save your client more time in the end and will help you build a better reputation as a professional.
A little piece of advice about your phone.
Turn off your cell phones when you finish speaking with a client! Then lock your phone, yes lock it, before you put it in your pocket.
Actually, it’s probably not a bad idea to do this after speaking with anyone. As we’ve all had to learn the hard way once before, either through being on the receiving end of that phone call or on the sending end, no one likes pocket dials. If you keep your clients information anywhere in your phone, those tight jeans may just end that relationship. I’m not saying you talk trash about people, of course you don’t! No one does 
It’s just that it is highly unprofessional to call a client and not have something to tell them relevant and important, so a pocket dial of you singing to “Don’t Stop Believing” at the stoplight is really bad. Equally bad is the assumption that your client hung up their phone so you don’t have to hit end on yours. Odds are if you were going to say something about a client it would be right after you finished the conversation where they wanted you to shot what!?! and for how much!?!?!?!! So if you were nice to them on the phone about it, suck it up and be nice about it after, at least until you make absolute sure your phone is hung up.
It’s not about taking trash, this is business people and everyone needs to vent once in a while. No one is going to blame you for it, unless you make a stupid mistake and get busted.
PS. watch out for cheek dialing, many a private phone call has been interrupted with a cheek dialed conference call.