Spring is here, so we’re sharing a series of Best Business Practice posts featuring the team of ACEs. Get to know them and learn tips and tricks that will streamline your studio this season! As any ACE will tell you, you can’t do it all. Successful photographers understand this, which is why they partner with advisors and trainers who help them stay organized! This week’s featured ACE is Will Jacks, a guy who grew up wanting to play centerfield for the St. Louis Cardinals, but wound up preserving wonderful moments as a photographer. As he says, “I deal in happiness, and I couldn’t be more grateful.” Q. What’s your primary area of photography and when did you start shooting full-time? Will: I began my career as a photographer in 1997. I didn’t know what
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Best Business Practices – Part 4
Spring is here, so we’re sharing a series of Best Business Practice posts featuring the team of ACEs. Get to know them and learn tips and tricks that will streamline your studio this season! As any ACE will tell you, you can’t do it all. Successful photographers understand this, which is why they are masters of time management. When building your business systems, use these time management tips: 1) Automate: Don’t waste time on monotonous tasks! Automation is as simple as creating template email responses to FAQs, automating invoice reminders, or setting up a standard workflow that you follow for each shoot. If you’re wondering how to start automating your studio, ShootQ is a great tool to help! It automates client correspondence, aspects of your workflow, and your other administrative processes. 2) Create a
Best Business Practices: Part 2
Since Spring is here, we’re sharing a series of Best Business Practice posts featuring the team of ACEs. Get to know them and learn how their tips and tricks will streamline your studio this season! As any ACE will tell you, the reality is you can’t do it all. Successful photographers understand this, which is why they begin with a clear vision for their business. Start by asking “Why?” The most valuable question you’ll ask throughout the lifetime of your business is “Why?” When you’ve established a clear purpose and goals for your business, frequently asking yourself why you do what you do will hold you accountable to your overall vision and keep your business on track for success! So, why do you do what you do? First identify
The Art of Automation
There was a time when every automobile was built by hand. Today, there are only a handful of manufacturers that put their cars together one at a time, but those cars are so ridiculously expensive that few of us will ever sit in one, much less own one. The reason we can all afford a car today is because of automation. Automation is also the reason that there is incredible consistency in the quality of any line of cars. There are too many wedding photographers who want to build their photos one at a time, the old fashioned way. They want to create perfection in each one, but that kind of old-fashioned thinking leads to either unsustainably high prices, or unacceptably long turn around and absolutely no
5 Ways Workflows Saved my @$$…and could save yours too!
Since Spring is in the air, we’re kicking off a series of Best Business Practice posts from the tried-and-true team of ACEs. Get to know them on The Photo Life and learn how their tips and tricks can help streamline your studio! I’ve tried my hardest to keep a mental to-do list. Laying in bed at night, thinking of all of the things that need to get done and promising myself, “Yes, I will definitely be able to remember this in the morning if I just make the list into a rhyme.” And inevitably, so many of my to-do’s were to-forgotten’s! Business can be overwhelming, especially when working with numerous clients over the course of the year. You are in charge of keeping track of new
Stop Wasting Time, Money and Energy in Your Business!
Leeann is a ShootQ Accredited Consultant or ACE. Contact her to schedule a custom ShootQ consultation! It’s 2012, and a new year is here! A new year naturally brings changes, goals, and new adventures. Typically, as a business owner, the new year also brings a time to examine your business and asses how you can make changes – it’s a great time for improvement! One way to approach change in the new year is to look at the way you do things in your business. Everything – from emailing to editing to shooting – is a process in your business, and every process inherently contains waste. There’s no getting around it – whether you are wasting time, money, or energy, there is always room for improvement. Not sure where
Backup and Archiving Demystified Part 1
A Scary Tale of Loss and Tragedy Imagine it is late one evening, a cold wind is howling outside your window and you have been chained to your computer, editing all day, feverishly working on customer images to meet a looming deadline. This might seem like the scary part of the story, but it’s not. You have worked on hundreds of images during the day and BAM! your drive fails. Insert scream of terror here, this is the scary part. If you are working on a single drive now the weeping, pounding on the table and wails of despair would begin. Eventually your tears would dry and you would be faced with the cold hard reality that you will need to restore the files from your backup. Which means those
A Little Love Note about Outsourcing
Have you ever wanted to hand-deliver beautiful canvases to your clients instead of shipping them? Or send little love notes to your clients after a shoot telling them how great they did? Meet Erica Schneider, a San Diego based photographer, who shares her story of moving from stress to sustaining personal client relationships. In the midst of a busy 2010 wedding season, I found myself completely overwhelmed with editing shoots. Struggling to keep up with thousands of images a week, I began to loathe sorting and dreaded editing even more. I was stressed, busy and unable to focus on the aspect of my business I most wanted to focus on – customer service. I longed to have enough time in my day to send little
I’m Not an Editor! A Case for Outsourcing.
Let’s be clear: I’m not an editor. I was never trained to be an editor and I only know what I’ve picked up through various workshops, manuals, and online training. But, like many photographers, I tried to be for awhile! My editing style was somewhat consistent, but always based on “what looked good that day.” I was falling into the never-ending pitfall of purchasing the latest and greatest actions to “play” with my photos. While it sounds like fun (and sometimes was), the images on my blog and my website were starting to look very inconsistent. Plus, I had no idea whether an image was bright because it was a sunny day in my office or because I had done something wrong in post-production. In
Lightroom Speed Tip 1: Labels and Collections
In this video Adobe Lightroom tutorial, Jared explains how he uses color labels in connection with smart collections to speed up process of selecting and delivering images for various purposes. Join Jared Platt for Office Hours on November 1, 2011 at 10 AM PT for a discussion on Workflow Speed Tips in Lightroom. Also, don’t miss Jared’s lectures and Lightroom Intensive Workshop at PartnerCon in San Diego November 7-9, 2011. About Jared Platt Jared Platt is a professional photographer and photographic educator. He studied photography at Arizona State University where he earned his undergraduate and masters degrees in Photography. He teaches college photography courses as well as workshops for professional photographers and provides online education for photographers and photo enthusiast throughout the world.