How to Become a Photographer

In the role you play for the bride and groom’s wedding day, not only are you their photographer, but you are the one who can artistically tell their story. Storytelling is a large part of what makes your images stand out, and what encourages your couple to buy additional products from you. When the bride and groom make the decision to purchase a wedding album from you, it helps increase your profit and gives you the chance to flex your creative muscles.

Although creating albums can be beneficial, they can also consume your time and can cause frustration for you. As a busy photographer, it can be difficult to add more to your plate than there already is. For you to successfully run your business and fulfill your clients’ wishes, you need an album design workflow that allows you to spend minimal time on the process.

In our Lightning Fast Album Design Webinar with Andrew Funderburg, he shared how you can speed up your album design workflow and create a faster turnaround time. Since he provided so many actionable solutions for a fast workflow, we’ve put together the top 5 tips for fast album design.

1. Shoot for the Design

Although you create the album after the wedding day is over, it is important to keep the design in mind as you are shooting. Think of how you can shoot many images that would work together to tell the story of the wedding day. Also, when you see an image you know is going to be a “Wow” image, try as hard as possible to take the best shots.

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In your photography business, it is important to have established processes and systems that help you maintain your success. As you continue to work with your ideal clients and practice your skills as a photographer, what are some ways you can increase your income by a substantial amount? One way is by optimizing the systems you have in place to help you grow as a business owner, and allow you to meet and book more clients each year. Pricing is one of the most difficult aspects of owning your photography business, but is also one of the best ways for you to increase your profit with your upcoming bookings. Implement these six quick, pricing optimizations for big results.

1. Re-evaluate your Current Pricing

When you started your business, you may have set pricing that fit the goals you wanted to reach at that time. If you have yet to change your prices to match your worth, this is something that can help you increase sales and profit drastically. Since you are usually busy meeting clients or shooting, document the amount of time you spend working on each unique wedding from the beginning of the process until your final interaction with that couple. Adding up the hours can help you see how much time you spend, and then you can reevaluate your current pricing.

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No matter what time of year it is, it’s always a good time to focus on increasing bookings for your wedding photography business. Wedding photographers typically book many months in advance, sometimes even years prior. Because of this, any changes and improvements you make today could take quite a while to be reflected in your profits. We have valuable tips to share that can help you learn how to get more business each year.

When you began your wedding photography business, did you think that most of your time would be spent working on the business aspects of it rather than shooting? From scheduling meetings, responding to emails, designing albums, and ordering prints, there are numerous tasks you are responsible for! Some of these can take up a lot of time, which can result in you falling behind on other tasks (especially during busy season!). As a business owner, it is crucial for you to understand how to find these problem areas, which are also known as bottlenecks. A business bottleneck can be an area of your wedding photography business that is very time consuming and causes you to not accomplish other tasks that are also important. Bottlenecks can also be tasks that are not profitable because they cost more money than they are worth.

Even though it may be common to have bottlenecks in your business, there’s good news – once you spot the bottlenecks, there are ways to manage and eliminate them! Here are some ways to spot bottlenecks, and how you can fix them to focus on the most important tasks in your business.

Identify the Problem Areas

Before you can solve your bottleneck problem, it is necessary for you to identify what specific tasks are holding you back. There may be one main task that add hours to your workflow, or there may be several – this is okay! The most important things is that you take a clinical look at your business and identify all of them. Examine each area of your business, from answering emails to booking clients to adding your Signature Style to images.

Related: Is your turnaround time meeting your clients’ expectations?

You can also take a step back from your business and decide what parts you enjoy, and what parts take you longer because you do not find joy in performing those tasks. Many times, the tasks you do not enjoy working on are the ones that hold you back the most. Make a list of the tasks that bring you pain each time you need to work on them, and document the time it takes for you to work on them as well! This will allow you to see how much time you could save if those tasks were removed as bottlenecks. [···]

When you start your day, what are some of the first things you tackle on your seemingly endless list of things to do? From checking emails to responding to clients and vendors, to planning your next wedding shoot, it can feel as if there is always too much happening at once. On the one hand, it is a positive sign you are so busy; it means you have clients who want to work with you and who help you grow your business! On the other hand, juggling too many tasks can become stressful and overwhelming.

If your focus is not on developing plans to continue growing your business, you may fall behind and miss your goals for the year. Therefore, it is necessary for you to find ways to create systems and plans to help speed up your workflow. These systems will then allow you to spend more time on the parts of your business that generate profit. Here are 9 Time-Saving Tools that are critical for your business and for staying on track.

Download our free Guide to learn about the best shortcuts, tools, and apps for your wedding photography business!

1. Canned Responses for Emails

Working with clients and vendors means much of your communication happens through email. Instead of writing individual emails that have the same copy, utilize Gmail’s canned response feature. Creating canned responses for emails is essential in saving time during your daily routine. Try this tool for multiple emails you send daily, such as informing clients about the status of their images. Once you create and save your canned responses, all you have to do is select the template and the correct copy appears in the email draft. Using this tool can save hours of writing and sending emails, which allows you to accomplish more of your tasks during the day.

Image Compliments of Style & Story Creative

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As a wedding photographer, you are consistently busy with marketing to ideal clients, booking weddings, and completing your day-to-day tasks. When you are overwhelmed with constant due dates, it can be difficult to see yourself reaching your long-term goals. Since your business relies on regular updates, it is important for you to schedule in time to work on certain areas that will help you grow. That’s why we’ve put together a list of quick fixes you can use to improve your business. These are simple tips you can start implementing today.

Increase Brand Awareness

In your photography business, it is important to stay top of mind with potential clients who are in the process of looking for a photographer. There are many channels you can use to increase your brand awareness, including using your blog and social media. Though you may be busy at many points during the year, blogging is an essential part of your business. When you receive your images back from a photo editing company, share them on your blog. Once the images are on your blog, post messages on each social media platform you use. Whether you only use Twitter and Facebook, or you include Pinterest and Instagram into the mix, you should reach out to your clients through these networks. Make sure to tag your clients, and other vendors involved, so the post gets shared on various pages. The larger your reach is, the more likely it is you will share your content with ideal clients.

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As a wedding photography business owner, you spend months working side-by-side with your clients and providing them with great service leading up to the wedding day. Once wedding is over, your work is still not over! In fact, when it comes to providing your couples with a great experience and turning them into raving fans of your business, the work is just beginning.

By ensuring that your current customers are delighted and thrilled by you and your services, you increase the chances that they will continuously rave about you to their friends and family. This can lead to referrals and more bookings for your business. Here’s how to create raving fans from current customers.

Surpass Expectations

Leading up to the wedding day, you know the importance of responding quickly to emails and constantly helping your couples out whenever possible. After the wedding, it is crucial that you keep that same mindset and work ethic with your clients.

When it comes to delivering their images to them, continuously keep them updated on the status of their photos. More importantly, under-promise and over-deliver on your turnaround time! A common question for clients to ask is, “How long does it take for you to deliver the images to us?” When this is asked, be sure to give a realistic deadline, and then surpass it. An easy way for you to accomplish this is to send your images to a photo editing company, such as ShootDotEdit. [···]

As a wedding photographer, it’s necessary to book more clients each year to grow your business. But have you ever wondered how to book the weddings that you want with the current wedding images that you have?

In our Skyrocket your Bookings with just your Images Webinar, wedding photographers Amy and Jordan Demos discussed how to utilize the images you already have to grow your business. With your own images, you can book more clients and increase your overall profit. Together they discussed how to use compelling images to aid you in creating dynamic content for your website and blog. They also shared effective photography strategies to enhance the imagery within your galleries. Here are the top 5 tips to skyrocket your bookings.

1. Shoot Your Photos Like You’re “At the World Series”

Having the right mindset is an important factor when it comes to increasing your client bookings. During every wedding, always give your photos your best, creative effort. Regardless of the venue or your client’s budget, shoot your photos as if you were you were hired to shoot for the World Series. This will bring you closer to your goals, and over time, will increase your profit and bookings. When Amy and Jordan flipped their mentality to think like this, it was very powerful for them. When you shoot every wedding as if you are shooting for your ideal client, you will begin to attract more of your target market to your wedding photography business.  [···]

With over 2 million weddings occurring in the U.S. each year, there is no shortage of couples for you to photograph. With an abundance of weddings happening each year, you have the luxury of determining who your ideal clients are and focusing on shooting those weddings. Once you determine this though, how do you properly market to them?

When it comes to your marketing efforts, 80% of it should focus on couples who are engaged. Glowing with happiness, these newly engaged couples are soon going to be planning every aspect of their wedding, from the color scheme to the music selection, to the photographer. They will have several photography options, so it is important that you stand out! It is crucial to continuously give to your target market that is recently engaged. Provide content that is relevant and helpful, and prove to them that they can trust you. Here are a few ways to use your content to attract engaged couples to your photography business.

Solve their problems

As a wedding photographer, you are an expert in all things relating to the big day. Because of this, you should create useful content that will help assist engaged couples in their journey to the wedding day. To determine the topics you should focus on, do some homework – what are some subjects that your past clients wished they had known during their engagement process? Are there problems that you can help them overcome or tips you can share that will make certain processes simpler? [···]