Business + Marketing
So, you decided to expand and hire associate photographers to support your business, you’ve figured out how you want to brand the team, and you know how you want to price and package what you’re offering. Here’s the last and final step: Creating a seamless workflow within your associate team. It’s essential!
When I first started my team, Laila Chanel, two years ago, I was a one-man operation. I was marketing, booking, culling, outsourcing the editing, finalizing galleries, exporting, uploading and, finally, delivering galleries to clients. Whew! It was a lot of work, but it was worth it.
Slowly over time, however, I added to my team to take some tasks off my plate, one by one.
CULLING
I began with hiring someone to cull. Those hours and hours are the first thing to let go of, if you ask me. You can hire and teach someone to cull for you, or you can pay your associates extra to do it.
If they do this, you still need to have them deliver all of the images to you and back them up on multiple hard drives. You always want to have all of the photos taken from the wedding in your possession in case the client ever needs anything. You are the one ultimately responsible for the images, even if they were taken by an associate photographer; you don’t want to get into a situation where the associate photographer’s hard drive crashes and you’re in a pickle.
Six-Figure Wedding Photography: Avoiding Easy Workflow Mistakes
Regardless of how you achieve this, I recommend this as the first step to a seamless workflow. WeTransfer is a fast and easy way for your team to send images to you.
FINALIZING GALLERIES
Once your culling is out of the way, I recommend finding someone or paying the same person to also finalize the galleries once they’re edited. Even when you’re outsourcing, you should still have someone look over the final edits to make sure they are perfectly color-corrected, cropped, exported and uploaded into your gallery provider.
Your Guide to Achieving Complete Workflow Bliss [INFOGRAPHIC]
I highly recommend CloudSpot, as it allows you to upload the entire wedding gallery into separate folders all at one time. Then, all you have to do is look over the gallery to make sure it’s perfect to send to the client.
MARKETING + BOOKING
This is something I still do myself. I can book brides via the phone in about 20 minutes by using my phone script and send my invoice via HoneyBook (you can get 50% off your first year here).
That’s when my team takes over. My assistant finds the perfect photographer for the couple on my team, connects them, schedules engagement sessions, sends out questionnaires and handles communication once they are booked.
What Does Your Creative Team Really Think About You?
Getting these tasks off your plate one by one will be life-changing! I hope these steps were all helpful on your path to creating the perfect team. Make sure to join my Facebook community, The M Harris Hustlers, to keep me updated on your journey. I’m here for you along the way!
Michelle Harris is a destination wedding photographer and educator based in the Washington, D.C. area. She is the owner and lead photographer of M Harris Studios, owner of an associate photographer company Laila Chanel Studios, and the creator of the wedding photography conference Hustle in Heels.