professional wedding photographer Archives

What The Sharing Economy Means To The Wedding Industry

July 3, 2014 by J Sandifer 2 Comments

The sharing economy is disrupting industries throughout around the world! Companies like Airbnb, Relay Rides, Task Rabbit, Uber, Lyft and dozens more companies are changing the way people think and consume.

What is sharing economy?

The sharing economy is a consumer paradigm in which a person is willing to share his or her time or asset with another person. The paradigm enables people to maximally utilize the assets that they own or decide to use someone else’s assets. Airbnb helps people share apartments, Relay Rides helps people share cars, Task Rabbit helps people share their services.

Why does this matter to the wedding industry?

As a professional wedding photographer, you’re accumulating a trove of wedding images. Traditionally, the value of your wedding images has ended when you deliver them to a newlywed couple. Today, if this is all you’re doing with your wedding images, you’re leaving value on the table!

Other vendors need access to professional images of their work now more than ever. In the past other vendors could get by with a handful of nice images on a website. Today, in the age of Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, engaged couples have a heftier appetite for images. Today, vendors need to share a regular stream of fresh professional images on social media to stay relevant among engaged couples. You’re sitting on these images, and you can get something for them.

The current image share paths from photographers to other vendors are fragmented, cumbersome and, most unfortunately, do not enable the photographer to capture the full value of his or her images. I’m fixing this problem with LulaWed.com. Our new wedding directory helps photographers easily share wedding images with other vendors and capture real value from sharing.

How LulaWed helps photographers.

LulaWed allows photographers to upload albums of real wedding images and tag the venue and other vendors who participated. We find the contact info for vendors you tag in albums, email them a link to your album and encourage them to share your branded images of their work on social media.

LulaWed provides easy one click access for other vendors to share your wedding images to their Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook accounts. The images shared are branded with your logo or watermark and lead back to your listing on LulaWed. The end value to photographers is more exposure among unique social media networks and more referrals from other vendors. The end value to the other vendors is they get to share professional images of their work online.

Your marketing dream team.

Imagine if you had a marketing team of 10, 20 or even 100 people working to promote your business to engaged couples. This would be amazing and really expensive! You don’t need a marketing team promoting your business, you need other wedding vendors promoting your business.

Today's social channels allow savvy wedding businesses to build successful online followings across multiple platforms. Sharing your images on LulaWed allows other wedding vendors to market their business and yours simultaneously to unique social media networks. For example, when a couple sees your image shared on Pinterest by another vendor, the couple can click on the image back to your LulaWed listing. You keep all the credit, and you get the referral.

You never know which vendor your tagging will have a huge following on Pinterest.

By a photographer, for photographers

I worked as a professional wedding photographer for the past 12 years in California and Maine. I’ve shot over a hundred weddings and my wife’s current photography company shoots 60+ a year. I understand that brides come and go, but the industry will always be there. Take care of the individuals who can refer you and you will build a business that thrives!

Our platform is designed to require minimal effort by you to get your images shared by other vendors! We’re constantly adding new features and partnerships that make it easier for you to share images with other vendors. Recently we launched a new feature that allows you to skip the image upload process completely when you integrate your blog RSS feed. LulaWed can pull real wedding images right from your blog.

Free listing offer for Tiffinbox readers!

Tiffinbox has been a valued resource to me as a professional photographer, so I want to share the love with other readers. Right now, when you create an Enhanced listing on LulaWed, use promo TIFFINBOX to get 6 months free!

I hope LulaWed helps you get more value from your wedding images. Signup, upload weddings, tag vendors, and let me know how it goes!

Small Business Smarts For Photographers

March 15, 2012 by Jared Bauman 8 Comments

Today's guest post is by Jared Bauman who has built a photography studio in Southern California that photographs over 200 events and sessions annually. In business for a decade, Jared's clients fly him across the world to document their big events. Jared is a Co-Founder and President of ShootDotEdit, the #1 post processing partner for the professional wedding photographer. Known for his business background, Jared has released several educational DVDs and tours the country speaking to photographers about their small business. Follow him on Twitter.

Think Like An Owner

Mention that you’re a small business owner to anyone, and more than likely the response is along the lines of “Wow, you must make a lot of money and have a lot of time off!” Contrary to popular opinion, being a business owner seems to be synonymous with being a jack of all trades and master of none. Being a small business owner is overwhelming, time intensive, and all consuming.

In his book “The E-Myth”, Michael Gerber talks about going to work ON your business, rather than IN your business. By stepping back and watching your business, you learn to develop a system that will work outside of you. Systems don’t make mistakes … Only people do. So by developing a system, you can ensure that your business will run smoothly and effectively, providing the best possible product and experience for your clients.

Think of how much time we waste each day. Imagine if you weren’t the owner of the business … But merely just an employee. What would the owner think of how you spend your time on a daily basis? Are you working just to get things done? Or are you going to work and acting like an owner, working on tasks that only an owner can to grow and advance the business?

Determine the tasks in your business that only you can do. Spend time developing a system at your studio. It takes a lot of effort. But, by creating a manual for your systems and operations, you’ll be on the path to working ON your business, rather than IN your business. And this is where you’ll experience all of the freedom that small business owners dream about.

Efficiency

As small business owners, we are responsible for every part of our business. Most days, we juggle email, phone, calendar, billing, editing, production, IT … All in addition to our busy shooting schedule!

Because of this, becoming hyper-efficient at the tasks we are required to do becomes imperative. If we HAVE to do the task (reference the previous entry for more on that), then we need to perform the task as quickly and efficiently as possible. This is the only way we’ll be able to spend our time growing our business, rather than just operating it.

Here are some great tips for becoming more efficient in your daily tasks:

1) Set up Drafts and Rules in your inbox to handle frequently asked emails. Typically speaking, most of the emails we receive … We’ve answered before. Save your answer as a Draft, and next time you get that same email, copy it over as a response. Add a personalized intro and close, and send it off!

2) Utilize Rules to sort through emails that you can delay for later.

3) Utilize shortcut keys. Apple has a well-developed set of shortcut keys, along with Gmail. Shortcut keys can shave minutes off of your daily activity, but these add up to hours each week. You can see what that adds up to each year.

4) Take advantage of software like Text Expander to further reduce duplicated time.

5) Maximize your usage of a To Do list app, like Wunderlist or Things. Tasks that can be handled quickly (under 2 or 3 minutes) should be taken care of right away. Anything else is placed on your to do list, with a defined due date.

6) Much of this seems mundane and somewhat extraneous. However, if you can maximize efficiency on day-to-day tasks, you leave yourself able to do more of what you love…. And isn’t that what we all got in this for?

Pricing & Packaging

Pricing. It’s often the last thing we think about as photographers. We focus on our website, our branding. We pour over reviews of the latest gear, and try to learn how to light for every situation. Email monopolizes our time, and fulfilling client orders takes up our off days. And yet, pricing is one of the most important pieces of our small business.

Believe it or not, there is actually a science behind Pricing. From the beginning, you should set your goals BEFORE you construct your pricing. Do you know how much you want to work? Do you know how much you want to make? All of these things should be taken into consideration as you construct your pricing.

Confusion is usually the main reason prospective clients don’t book. Confusion enters the picture when the pricing is introduced. It might be confusion through the structure of the pricing, and they couldn’t find a package that suited their needs. Or maybe they were interested in an album, and there were just far too many options. Maybe they didn’t see an engagement session anywhere, it wasn’t in the packages, and they couldn’t find it on the a la carte list.

Simplifying the pricing process gives you a huge advantage when it comes to booking.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

1) Have an odd number of packages. This gives your pricing a “natural middle” point, which naturally guides your clients towards certain options.

2) Whenever possible … Less is more! Reduce the number of options available.

3) Don’t show them the whole menu. Save the details for later.

At the end of the day, keep it simple, and remove confusion at all costs. This will ensure you give yourself the best chance of booking the wedding, and working with the couples you really want as your clients.

The New Wedding Guest

March 14, 2011 by Richard Esposito 93 Comments

This guest blog is by a good friend and fellow Connecticut wedding photographer, Richard Esposito. In addition to being a photographer, RE as he is known, is also called upon to teach efficient workflow systems to other photography studios. To some lucky ones, he plays mentor. His Emmy (yes, that EMMY) not withstanding, RE is starting to reconnect with his video side and bringing true fusion to discerning clients getting married all over the world.

Needless to say, a lot has changed in the world of photography over the last 5 or so years. Remember film? Using the same camera for more than 3 years? Just about every professional photographer is using a digital camera that gets replaced with a newer, better, version after one year of use. It's become a rather expensive hobby for amateur's and a financial burden for some professionals. With technology getting better and especially cheaper, we've all seen a new type of photographer emerge. Call them what you will, uncle Bob, cousin Carl, or “I have a friend that took a photography class in college.” This is the new competition. And they are getting cheaper than the cost of the camera. I've heard of a number of professionals that have sold everything they had and closed their doors for good. We can't compete with free, or “I'll shoot your wedding and hand you a disc for $500. I know I seem to be getting off topic, but it's leading to our newest issue. You are not the only photographer at a wedding anymore.

Gone are the days of capturing a sea of guests with genuine emotion on their faces. Now you have to give an elbow to Aunt Clair who's blocking the aisle with her Digital Rebel in hand as the bride makes her grand entrance. I used to love capturing guests emotion during the first dance, parent dance, even the toasts. But now my subjects are a handful of guests with point and shoots held up blocking their faces, or the tops of everyones head because they are looking down at the back of the camera to check the photo they just took. My favorite moment so far was a photo of the bride going down the aisle from behind. Everyone in front of the bride has their cameras up, everyone that the bride has past is still facing the back of the church with the heads down looking at the back of their camera. Very few people stopped to enjoy the moment of a father walking his daughter down the aisle on her wedding day. I did have a beautiful photo of a bride coming down the aisle with great emotion on her fathers face. However there were hues of red and green across them both thanks to all of the focusing beams from guests cameras. That's an instant black and white! The cake cutting has become my favorite time now that I have no room to move around thanks to the crowd of people and cameras. It's amateur suffocation.

You are not the only photographer at a wedding anymore.

Just when you feel good that you are getting the job done, you're in the zone, there's a tap tap tap on your shoulder. It's Aunt Clair again, Rebel in hand, suggesting “that’s a nice photo of the flower girl over there. Look she’s spinning around! Hey girls look over here!” Well Claire, if you didn't just interrupt me I would be photographing that, but now i missed it so you can talk to me about it. While trying to capture an emotional father daughter dance, someone will walk up close to them and say “Hey, over here!”, completely interrupting the moment just so they can get a photo with their faces smiling at their camera. They completely missed the point. Welcome to a world where lighting, composition, creativity, and emotion don't matter to a wedding guest. All you need is a persons face looking at the camera.

Many of us put out a little slideshow of images at the wedding reception. It's been a great way to show guests your work and generate some business, especially with the reception venue. It also satisfies the instant gratification generation of guests. I've gotten home from a wedding and checked a clients Facebook page to see that she has already been tagged in photos that Uncle Bob took at the wedding. I can't compete with that. I hand out event cards at the reception with the website and password to see the photos “approximately 8 weeks after the wedding.” One night, after seeing the slideshow at the reception, the grooms step father comes up to me with his iPhone and has my online viewing website loaded. He said he couldn't get the wedding. Hello! I'm still photographing it! Really?! Many times I have guests say “Great! I'll check them out tomorrow.” Tomorrow? Let me hand you a few thousand photos, have you review and edit them and see how fast you get them all up. Let’s factor in that it's the end of the wedding season and you've just done 2 weddings per weekend for the last 8 weeks.

It's no wonder that professional Photographers are having a hard time competing with amateurs. We get in their way, we don't know what we’re doing, it takes forever to get your images, and we really expensive! If you think it's expensive to hire a professional photographer for one day, the emotional cost of hiring an amateur lasts forever.

The Price We Pay

So how do we convince an engaged couple to spend $3-10k with a professional? According to Market Watch, wedding photographers are the most overpaid jobs in America, saying “Total work for each wedding is generally a sit-down consultation combined with a single day spent following the happy couple. While equipment costs and film development must be covered, thanks to digital technology such costs have been heavily reduced. Unfortunately for the consumer, photographers do not offer any reduction in price for missed photos, amateur shots, or other mediocre work product.”

So let’s talk briefly about what it costs to be a professional wedding photographer. My second photographer here was looking to buy his own equipment. Just to start off with the basics he was up to $8,000. Imagine the cost of what I carry. Oh, and I have to insure all of it. Then there’s vehicle expenses, commissions for running credit cards, equipment repairs, I spent $1200 on postage this year (postage!!!), continuing education, computer and software upgrades, hard drives, hard drives, hard drives, it costs to make albums, some of us pay staff… I really could go on. Oh wait! providing for my family? Putting food on our table and the discount outlet clothes on our back? A professional photographer doesn’t have a “real job” during the week so we have to pay our own health care for our family, save for retirement, and hope for a weeks vacation that comes out of our pocket. I did 25 weddings this year and my expenses were double the average 2 person family income in Connecticut (according to census.gov).

For the other side of the story, the International Society of Professional Wedding Photographers did an awesome survey of photographers recently. I know when I started my business, everyone I knew thought I just worked weekends and did nothing during the week. We have a great lifestyle of taking photos, traveling, and partying.

Here’s reality: 70 hours a week through our 6-7 month season and 40 hours a week off season. There is no mention in here regarding time with family, charity work, and taking any time off. Only 12.2% off our time during business hours is spent taking pictures.

If I didn’t have the expenses that I have, or spend this much time getting everything done, I’d be out of business. I’d have to get a full time job and just do photography on the weekend. I’d be your Uncle Bob.

Update from Seshu: Since publishing this blog post above, there have been other similar posts out in the interwebs: