How to Get Your Photo Styling Tearsheets and Samples

Beside determining your styling rate, a question (& frustration!) I hear alot from Photo Stylists is . . . "How do I get my Styling Tearsheets!?!"  Tearsheets (& samples, photos of your work) are a necessary task to show what, how and who you have styled for.  It’s a necessary “administrative” task that we have to do.  Or, if you have an Agent, they should be doing.  That’s what the commission fee is for. (I have also heard from  stylists and creative who have Agents, that receiving tearsheets via their Agency is challenging as well.) I have found it rare, from my own experience, styling colleagues and the stylists I coach that your tearsheets just arrive in a timely way in your email or mail.  That rarely happens.

Soooo, we need to be SUPER proactive about getting them.  You need to keep track (& oftentimes track them down.)  Receiving your tearsheets, (legitimately & realistically) photos and samples can take time due to launch of product, magazine publishing timelines, catalog release timelines, etc. and who will be sending them to you.  Do not leave the assignment without finding out who will send them. (& you can follow up with)

First, ensure that you have a clause in your Styling Services Contract specifically for receiving tearsheets, photos and samples of your work from the client. Next, the day after your assignment wraps, send that person an email asking when (approximately) when they will be available.  Get the "tearsheet dialogue" going right away.  And follow up when they give you the timeline.

So many Photo Stylists tell me they feel bad and fear of coming across like a pest asking about tearsheets.  Don’t!  This is your work ~ and this is how you get more work ~ by showing what you do!  Please don't be shy about it. Sometimes as a Stylist, you have certain feelings about gettin’ those photos/sample, like:

▪️You don’t want to be known as a Pest.
▪️ I’ll just wait a little longer ~ they will send it.
▪️ Now it’s been too long since the job ~ I probably can’t get it now.
▪️ I don’t know who I should ask for it?  The Photographer? The Client?

I have heard all these "reasons" why creatives and freelance stylists don't pursue the tearsheets "trackdown"   That includes all niches of Stylists, Photographers, HMU, and Models.  We all experience it.

If you need organization for your business, we have Photo and Prop Stylists Workflow Forms in our Business of Styling Shop. It's what I created and use in my styling business. Stylists who have purchased this Kit have told us that the Workflow Forms not only organizes them, BUT it let them know WHAT should be organized and done in their business.


Bonnie ~

Image Credit ｜ Mariah Gale Creative via Reverie.Boston