Calendar for clients to veiw availabilty and/or poss schedule own appointments??

[Rebekah5280]

Yes, I'm making a lot of money right now. Yes, I have too much on my plate. Which is why I'm in the process of meeting with business advisers and restructuring my business.

When I started, I was thinking I would have a few client's per month, but I am crazy busy. Word has spread and I'm averaging about 2 referrals for every client I see. I can't keep up any more and I need some relief. Until I get all my ducks in a row and can hire an assistant, I need to figure something out now.

I can do 7 per week. This is easily managed.
I can do 1 wedding per weekend with 2 regular sessions per week.
I can not keep doing what I'm doing because all I do it edit. edit edit edit edit edit edit edit. I stay up until 2 in the morning editing, I wake up early, get the kids to school and then I edit edit edit edit edit... Its insane.

 

[Rebekah5280]

I jacked my wedding prices up for this wedding season to help brush some people off, but it really hasn't worked. lol I think I may need to raise my prices even more to help thin out my clients list.
But, again, this is why I've hired business advisers who will help me re-evaluate my business and see what I need to do to have a manageable business.

 

[Big Mike]

Firstly, good for you. You are surely doing a lot of things right, for your business to be taking off so well. But of course, there are all sorts of growing pains to deal with, and you certainly have to be careful that you don't get burned out.

I'm from a decent sized small town and my photography business is priced in the middle of the crappy and the well-established photographers in my area.

I see that you mentioned raising your wedding prices...that's good. But maybe raise all your prices...by a good margin. Think about it like this...if you double your prices, you could loose half your clients, and still make the same income...and do half as much work. (but as you are seeing, raising your prices will often get you more clients, this is rather common with photographers in your situation).

I can not keep doing what I'm doing because all I do it edit. edit edit edit edit edit edit edit. I stay up until 2 in the morning editing, I wake up early, get the kids to school and then I edit edit edit edit edit... Its insane.

Again, this is not uncommon. I've heard and seen this from many photographers, especially at the point where their business is taking off. Some let it get too far ahead of them, they get burned out and their workload gets piled up and they end up taking 6 months to finish up a wedding or portrait session.

I've mentioned it already, but you should seriously consider hiring out at least some of your editing. I know that most photographers (especially small business owners) consider the editing to be just as much a part of their final product and their style...but something has got to give. So maybe you need to ask yourself, which is most important to your creative process. It would even be an option for you to hire another photographer, and then concentrate more on editing and sales.

I know some photographers who (for a while) outsourced their Raw processing & color correction. Leaving less editing work for them.
But if you could find someone to do your editing, who has a similar style, or something that works for you...then why not?

Yet another thing to look at, is how efficient is your workflow. For example, are you good at nailing your lighting and exposure, so that your images don't need those things corrected? Many 'long-time-pro' photographers have developed a shooting style that specifically reduces editing time.
Then there is your editing workflow. There are as many different workflows, as there are photographers...but there are certainly many ways to streamline the process and cut down on your workload.

You seem to be going about it the right way, bringing in some outside help. And we are here to help as well.

 

[kathyt]

Firstly, good for you. You are surely doing a lot of things right, for your business to be taking off so well. But of course, there are all sorts of growing pains to deal with, and you certainly have to be careful that you don't get burned out.

I'm from a decent sized small town and my photography business is priced in the middle of the crappy and the well-established photographers in my area.

I see that you mentioned raising your wedding prices...that's good. But maybe raise all your prices...by a good margin. Think about it like this...if you double your prices, you could loose half your clients, and still make the same income...and do half as much work. (but as you are seeing, raising your prices will often get you more clients, this is rather common with photographers in your situation).

I can not keep doing what I'm doing because all I do it edit. edit edit edit edit edit edit edit. I stay up until 2 in the morning editing, I wake up early, get the kids to school and then I edit edit edit edit edit... Its insane.

Again, this is not uncommon. I've heard and seen this from many photographers, especially at the point where their business is taking off. Some let it get too far ahead of them, they get burned out and their workload gets piled up and they end up taking 6 months to finish up a wedding or portrait session.

I've mentioned it already, but you should seriously consider hiring out at least some of your editing. I know that most photographers (especially small business owners) consider the editing to be just as much a part of their final product and their style...but something has got to give. So maybe you need to ask yourself, which is most important to your creative process. It would even be an option for you to hire another photographer, and then concentrate more on editing and sales.

I know some photographers who (for a while) outsourced their Raw processing & color correction. Leaving less editing work for them.
But if you could find someone to do your editing, who has a similar style, or something that works for you...then why not?

Yet another thing to look at, is how efficient is your workflow. For example, are you good at nailing your lighting and exposure, so that your images don't need those things corrected? Many 'long-time-pro' photographers have developed a shooting style that specifically reduces editing time.
Then there is your editing workflow. There are as many different workflows, as there are photographers...but there are certainly many ways to streamline the process and cut down on your workload.

You seem to be going about it the right way, bringing in some outside help. And we are here to help as well.

I outsource on occasion during my peak season to Vital Edit, especially if I have back to back weddings. They are great and just do my basic corrections, and then I do the rest.

 

[Rebekah5280]

I've never considered outsourcing my editing. That is definately something that I will look into.

I've got my lighting and my exposure down to being correct about 80% of the time. I purchased some more powerful flash units so with them I should be able to get my average a lot better.
Mainly what I do currently with editing is color corrections, take the background lighting down and soften shadows on my subject, then sharpen and crop. I'm at about 3-5 minutes per picture.

With my new flash units I will be able to eliminate the step of burning out my background by bumping up the light on my subject. Which is about a 1-2 minute process per picture that I would be cutting out.

 

[Big Mike]

Yes, if you can get away from having to make edits specifically to subject only or background only, that can really cut down on edit time.

What software are you using?

 

[Rebekah5280]

Photoshop.

 

[Light Guru]

If you hire right you could hire one person to do phones and to do the basic adjustments on the images.

 

[kathyt]

Photoshop.

This might be problem #1. Lightroom would be your best friend. My average wedding gallery is about 650 images. If I spent 4 minutes on each image that would be almost 44 hours spent editing one wedding. That is about 7 times longer then it should take. Lightroom has a way to adjust one image and then sync the rest of the images in the same lighting situation. Huge time saver.

 

[Big Mike]

Photoshop.

Well now we have an easy time saver for you. Get Lightroom (and learn how to use it). I wouldn't be surprised if Lightroom could help you cut your editing time down to 1/2 or even 1/3 of what it is now.

 

[Rebekah5280]

I may give it another try. I tried it once and lost a bunch of images (corrupted my files). Of course I had back-ups, but I swore it off and haven't looked back. lol

I'll give it another go I guess. :/

 

[Rebekah5280]

Photoshop.

This might be problem #1. Lightroom would be your best friend. My average wedding gallery is about 650 images. If I spent 4 minutes on each image that would be almost 44 hours spent editing one wedding. That is about 7 times longer then it should take. Lightroom has a way to adjust one image and then sync the rest of the images in the same lighting situation. Huge time saver.

That is a lot of images! I only take on small weddings, my average coverage is 4 hours. I usually end up with around 400 and then whittle it down to around 200 to edit. But, I only do long edits (3-5 minutes) on about 40 of the pictures. The rest are usually just crop, contrast and color correct = 1 minutes-ish.

 

[Big Mike]

Another time saver, may be to take a different philosophy about it. For example, do we really need to fully edit all the images we show to a client? I know several photographers who only do basic corrections before the clients get to see them, and then it's only the ones that get ordered as prints or in albums that get to a finished state.

Are you selling prints/products etc., or selling the files? Lots of pros & cons either way...

Also, it could be something as simple as being a harsher critic of your own work, and delivering fewer images to the client.
For example, if you do a 1 hour family portrait sitting, how many images are you shooting? editing? showing or delivering to the client? If your giving them 100 files/images....that's a lot of work. But if you weed out the 'only OK' images, could you cut that number in half...or even less? That would be a lot less work, less time etc.
A lot of photographers seem to be worried that they will choose the wrong ones, and that the client might like these ones, or those ones best. That sort of thinking isn't good.

We need to remember that we are the experts and that they are hiring us, not only to take the photos, but to deliver what we consider a great product. So in my mind, part of that service is imposing my 'professional' opinion about what is a good photo and what isn't. Therefore, I only show/deliver the very best of the best. Sometimes that's only a few images out of hundreds that I shot...but that's a lot better (for me) that editing and delivering 80% of the shots I took.

Of course, it depends what we're doing. A wedding will have many moments that you are documenting...so it can be many images. But for a portrait sitting (or wedding formals)...no need to give more than one of each pose/group.

I'm sure that some (or much) of this doesn't directly apply to you...but hopefully all this brain storming can help you a little.

 

[Designer]

FWIW: there was a thread on here a couple of days ago where a couple of entrepreneurs were begging for editing work. They quoted $1 per image as I recall. Look them up.