Our happy and satisfied clients can be our biggest evangelists and provide our most authentic and honest marketing language, so I love to ask them to describe the experience of working with us in their own words. Here’s how I do it!

When do you send this message?

We send this as soon as the album is delivered, so the client has both album and digital files in hand. We want to be sure they can comment on our customer service from beginning to end before we request a review or testimonial.

What does this message accomplish?

This request gathers new reviews for your website, while the client is fresh from their experience with you. Feedback of all kinds is helpful, and we value all of the reviews and testimonials we receive. It gives you an opportunity to learn how others would describe your studio to potential future clients. Learning their perception of your photography business is the single most valuable favor you can ask of your clients. If there’s negative feedback, you have the opportunity to learn from it. And if it’s positive, all the better, and you’ll have the chance to feature these words loud and proud, anywhere and everywhere on your website and marketing materials.

By asking questions, you help the client steer away from the “professional recommendation” kind of review and focus more on the details and the experience in their own authentic and earnest words, which will speak volumes to future clients.

Where should I have the client post their review?

I like to have it come in for my site first, so I can continually refresh the reviews on my website. Then, if I love what they wrote, I can ask them to post to my review site of choice. In addition, if you have a negative review posted online, several positive ones in the same site will help demonstrate that the negative review is the odd man out. You may have a favorite review site that you point them to, you’ll know what works for your photography business.

What does it say?

Subject: A request for you!

Hi YOU and YOU,

By now you have received all of your wedding images and your heirloom album. I hope you’ve enjoyed having me as your wedding photographer! It is important for all of us here at OUR STUDIO NAME to learn from your experiences, and we love to share with other potential clients what it’s like to work with us.

Would you be willing to answer five short questions for us to share with future clients? It helps potential clients when they see all the glowing words from other couples, like you, who can report they had a positive experience!

1. Did you have any concerns about wedding photography before you booked your wedding photographer? Was there anything about having your photo taken that made you anxious or concerned before the wedding?

2. How do you feel about the experience and investment now that your images are delivered and your album is complete?

3. What was your favorite part of working with OUR STUDIO and why? (If you really have more than one favorite part, it’s ok to list them–we most love hearing the specific details that you loved the most!)

4. Did any of your family or friends enjoy their interactions with us, and did they tell you what they liked about their client experience with us?

5. If you were to recommend our business to your maid of honor or best man for HER or HIS wedding, how would you describe the experience?

Thanks again, and I am so appreciative of your time and words on our behalf!

Warmly,

PHOTOGRAPHER

Was this a helpful scenario for you? You’ll find this one and more than 74 other helpful scenarios and email templates in our Wedding Photographer’s Inbox Solution, available in the store at Pencil & Lens!

So you have a photographer to buy for, and the only things you can think of are brilliantly patterned camera straps (no—let us choose. It might not be appropriate for our brand) or that lens mug that we all already have. (I promise. We have it.)  But actually, we photographers can be really, really easy to shop for, so I thought I’d share a few ideas for the photographer in your life.

Photo by arda sava?c?o?ullar?/iStock / Getty Images

1. A massage

I’m not sure what beats our bodies up more—the physicality of hours on our feet at weddings, the weight of our gear on our necks and shoulders at a shoot, or the inevitably bad ergonomics of sitting at a computer for hours upon weeks in our busy season. If you know a photographer, I guarantee you they could use a professional massage. Or seven.

2. A family photo session. Or a couples session. Or a pet session. With a photographer you know they love.

Pay attention, and figure out what photographer makes your photographer swoon. (Ask their photographer friends if necessary.) Then, book that photographer. What matters more to us than photos? Getting them taken by someone who makes our shutter fingers tingle, that’s what. Don’t surprise us with the actual session time (you knew that), and for the love of aperture, don’t try and schedule it when we’re working 18 hours a day (you knew that, too), but make it happen and brace yourself for the incoming hug of joy. You’ve earned it.

3. Their image. Framed and immortalized.

If your photographer has published something they’re proud of, maybe a magazine cover or an assignment that was especially challenging, yet rewarding, they will likely never think to frame it and hang it over their desk. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t. Celebrate them with their own awesomeness, right there in print.

4. Handwarmers/fingerless gloves

No, really. It’s a bizarre but true fact that, when you are editing the hours away on a chilly day, even in a normally heated house or studio, sitting still at the computer can render your hands into frozen claws. Tuck a pair of these cashmere babies in the stocking of your beloved photographer, and bask in the warm glow of knowing YOU GET IT.

5. Time

Every photographer in the wedding or portrait business could use a little more time between Sept and Dec. While you can’t buy time, you can provide a babysitter, a house cleaner or even a virtual assistant. Really. The person who provides any of these? YOU WIN AT LIFE.

6. Food

One of the most irritating things I re-discover every fall when I’m down the rabbit hole of editing is that I need to eat each day, and my family does as well. I adore food, but when it comes down to deadline time, I wish snacks, meals, groceries, indulgences and useful food items could magically appear just when I need it without thinking about it. YOU CAN BE THE MAGIC. And if you do, you are the HERO. Grocery deliveries, homemade meals or cookies, a subscription to a meal service or even a meal-kit service for a week…whoa.

7. Inspiration

We love looking at pretty photos, for the most part. And we love inspiration. Most of us even love stories about the human condition, since we are so frequently intersecting with it. Get us the Vanity Fair portrait book. Or something inspiring by Annie Liebowitz. Or National Geographic. Or the HONY book.  Or a book about a trip we dream of taking. Or a subscription to Outside or Vogue or Vanity Fair—think of something that makes us think or laugh or oooh, or this app providing ALL THE MAGAZINES? No?  Then maybe it’s just People magazine!

8. Relaxation

Many of my busiest fall days have me dreaming of enjoying the simplest things in the quieter winter to come. Super cool new coffee mugs. The coziest lap blanket. Tea that sounds too good not to try. A box of these chocolates to savor or a tin of the best hot chocolate I’ve tried. The book everyone tells me that I should be reading. An expansion pack for this game. A seasonal, piney bath addition like this one. I’m willing to bet this list would satisfy many a non-photographer as well.

9. Home Decor

Dressing up our homes is probably the last thing on the agenda for most photographers during their busiest days. If you know them well enough to know their taste, what about a fabulous seasonal wreath, silhouettes of baby’s first year or a new set of seasonal pillows? Or maybe a luxurious and sparkly set of flutes  shipped with a bottle of Prosecco to celebrate the last client task of the season?

10. Cool tech-type stuff

The custom equipment at Lumi is just amazing–from custom stamps to vinyl decals and embossers–perfect for personal or business needs. If your phone is in danger of being touched by others (say, sticky-fingered toddlers), you can always sanitize it with a quick blast in this tool. And if you are the photographer/human that just can’t keep track of keys, this tracking fob is elegant and useful.

Want to up your selfie game? What photographer doesn’t appreciate a well-lit selfie? Use this iPhone case with built-in lighting for your next closeup! And to go with that, every photographer will want this pocket reflector, for their selfies and latte shots!

If you’re always texting and always taking your gloves off…this text fingertip product might be just what you’re looking for!  And if you, like me, are a firm believer in printing photos, this handy mobile pocket printer will be your favorite thing ever. If you think the timelapse feature on your iPhone is the best thing ever, you’ll want this to make your timelapses awesome. And finally, this awesome orange portable charger is always in my camera bag at a wedding, since by the time I get a chance to text a hello message home, my phone is usually almost dead.

11.  Shortcuts
See above re: time. You can’t really buy time, but you can help your favorite photographer get things done faster. Outsourcing is a huge help here.  Check out the store at Pencil & Lens and pick up a copy of the email templates that suit them most, saving them COUNTLESS HOURS.

Another place to outsource? Photo organization. If the photographer in your life manages all the family photos too, they could likely use some help them with some expert photo organizing from my MyLovesnap. This company can do it for you (really!), can teach you WHAT to do and can help you if you insist on DIY-ing it. Contact them for their special Pencil & Lens friends service packages, and start enjoying your photos. You’re welcome.

NOTE: Some links above are affiliate links, which help us keep our pencils sharp! If you enjoy reading this blog, thank you for supporting it through your online shopping.

I am long-time user of Photo Mechanic, made by Camera Bits, and if you are photographing, well, just about anything, I highly recommend using it to download, backup and cull your images. I’m not an affiliate of PM, and I don’t get any income from sharing this link, but I’m a huge believer in this program and find it the best way for me to save time with culling.

Photo Mechanic is a highly sophisticated program used by photographers all over the world, and no doubt many of them are using PM to its full capacity. I only use it to download, backup and cull my images, so this workflow does not touch on stars, sorting, colors and renaming, all things you can do with PM. Google Photo Mechanic workflows for more on those areas!

Before you start, go to Preferences in PM and set it up in a way that makes sense for you. For example, my default view is by Capture Time but for some photographers, it might make sense to sort by File Type or Serial Number or Lens—all options in PM. Also, if you shoot in RAW, which you likely do, opt for the “Enable RAW rendering” and allow “use embedded JPG for speed” so that your images take no time to render.

The most important preference to set, however, if you plan to use my method, is to go to Preferences, go to Preview, and click on the “Tag is changed” box under “Automatically advance to next photo when:” This will save you THOUSANDS of clicks over the course of a job, and MILLIONS of clicks over the length of your career as a photographer who culls their own photos. Seriously. This little nugget is the BEST THING EVER. It doesn’t sound like much, but it means that you don’t have to advance manually through EVERY image in a job. Once you pick one, it advances to the next one AUTOMATICALLY!

Here’s my whole ingest and culling process:

1)  Insert card or cards. I use stacked card readers, so I ingest all cards at once from a job, if there is more than one card. Choose “ingest” in Photo Mechanic.

2) In the “ingest” dialogue box, choose your card or cards in the upper left. This was the tail end of a commercial job I did yesterday for a local market. Under “Primary” in upper right, I chose the folder on my working hard drive. Under “Secondary” in upper right, I chose a location for my backup copy. Once this card is ingested, I will have three copies on site: the card, and the two copies I ingest through PM. Then, I’ll have a fourth on my Time Machine within 24 hours, and a fifth in the cloud via Crashplan, also within 24 hours.

3) I check off the “incremental ingest: copy new photos only” box, so I don’t ever end up with duplicates. I also apply the IPTC stationery pad data to photos, which is the business data that I apply to every photo I ingest. I also choose to “unmount source disks after ingest” so that I know when a card is complete, helpful when you walk away and leave them ingesting. I don’t “rename ingested photos as” because I rename after the images are exported in Lightroom.

4) Once the images are ingested, I view them in a “Contact Sheet”–a PhotoMechanic option under the File menu. When the images are ingested, a new Contact Sheet is opened up, but if I am not culling them right away and had closed that window, I’ll choose the New Contact Sheet option under the File menu, and navigate to the images on my working drive. Once I have the contact sheet open, I’ll double click the first image to make it huge, so I can cull quickly on my large monitor.

5) Here’s the magic. Click on the “T” if you want the image. Click on the forward arrow if you don’t want it. That’s all. Tag all the images you want to keep, and click past the images you don’t want to keep.

Note: This doesn’t take into account categories, color tagging, number ratings, star ratings and more. Photo Mechanic can do this all brilliantly, but I don’t use it for those things at the culling stage. I simply want to mark the images that I will send out for editing, or that I will move into LR for editing, and this is the fastest way I have found. I can cull a wedding in an hour this way, or a commercial job or portrait session in about ten minutes or less.

6) After culling, it’s time to sort out the rejects, and move the rest to Lightroom. I’ll go to the top of the PhotoMechanic page, and choose “Untagged” in the drop down menu.  Untagged images are the rejects. I take the untagged images screen, select all and drag them to my Rejects file for the job. See below for the list of folders I keep for a job, so you can see where they go.

 

7) Then I go back up to the drop-down menu in PhotoMechanic, and choose the “Tagged” images. Those are the ones that now live in the “1_Originals” folder, and they are the ones that I will bring into Lightroom.

8) Open your catalog in Lightroom, and import these images! You can just select and drag the thumbnails, and if you are on a Mac, you can drag them to the LR icon in the dock. When finished color-correcting them, I export them to folder “4_HighResJPGS.” I usually dump the Rejects when the images are delivered, knowing I have a full set of originals on my backup drive and elsewhere, should I really need to dig for one.

It’s a pretty simple workflow in PhotoMechanic, but it works for me! When I have PM open, to cull quickly, I set my awesome little red magnetic timer for one hour, shut off the phone and all other distractions, and get to work. I don’t let myself get out of the chair or do anything else til the job is culled, and you’d be amazed how fast you can cull when you do that!

Good luck with your culling, downloading and backing up!

If you’re a working photographer in any genre, you’ve probably had requests like these:

“I need a new head shot, how much is it?”

“I need some product photos for my Etsy shop, can I hire you?”

“My office wants photos for the new website. Can you send over a proposal today?”

“My restaurant needs photos of food for marketing. Can you do that?”

COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY BUSINESS BASICS
If you’re reading this far, you’re interested in taking jobs like the ones above, but may be wondering how it all works. For example, head shot pricing. Should you charge by the head or by the hour for head shot? What about the little details, like who pays for the makeup artist, the seamless background or rental lighting gear, you or the client? What, exactly, are they getting for their fee? And finally, is your bid professional and profitable?

Photos below by Doug Levy. See more at www.douglaslevy.com

A “HOW-TO” FOR COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHERS
Boston commercial photographer Doug Levy hosted a private group seminar last week, teaching photographers about working in the commercial market. Doug took their questions and answered them in a 90-minute session loaded with demos, resources, information and action items. And while only eight photographers got to sit in and ask their questions, the rest of you can learn from it, too: the seminar is going on sale this week exclusively for Pencil & Lens customers.

In this 90-minute video, Doug discusses his experience in the commercial market, covering these (and many more) topics:

•  How to reach (and book!) new markets for your photography – from the small mom-and-pop business on the corner to multi-national Fortune 100 companies.
•  How to price work commercial work accurately.
•  What are the software options for managing quotes and licensing for these types of clients?
•  Social media: do you need it, and what should you be posting?
•  Educating the client on the licensing they want and need.
• Do you need a separate commercial website?
• Working with non-U.S.-based clients.

WHAT DO WE GET?

• A private link to download the 90-minute video seminar loaded with the information you need to grow a photography business in the commercial market. (Note: this seminar doesn’t cover lighting and shooting techniques, this is purely a discussion of the business side of commercial photography.)
•  The RESOURCE GUIDE FOR COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHERS, a PDF guide linking you to every commercial photography business resource Doug mentions in the video, as well as his list of recent favorite business books, tools and podcasts.
•  And, if you purchase this virtual “starter kit” for commercial photography between Tuesday 1/26 and Friday 1/29, you’ll also receive a download of two of Doug’s actual client bids, a local advertising job and a large head shot job.

WHAT IF I’M ALREADY DOING COMMERCIAL WORK?

This seminar has lots of strategies for growing and marketing yourself as a commercial photographer, which can apply to a new commercial photographer or someone seeking to expand their client base. But don’t take our word for it, hear what seminar attendee and experienced commercial photographer Hillary Block had to say about it!

I’M IN. WHERE DO I GET IT?

Doing Business with Business: Working in the Commercial Market will go live in the Pencil & Lens shop at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, January 26 (EST), and will be available for the introductory price of $50 through Friday, January 29 at 8:30 a.m. (EST). After Friday, the price for the seminar and guide will be $75.

Can’t wait to get started? You can download Doug Levy’s commercial photography business resource guide for free by requesting it here!

It’s no secret that I love using technology to get ALL THE THINGS done—the way I see it, we have to do THE THINGS anyway, so why not use the technology of our time to make things easier, simpler, faster and less boring?

I could write about apps and technology and streamlining and automation on my photography blog, but I have a feeling that anyone reading this blog–most likely a photographer running their own business–will have a little more reason to enjoy and use some of the things I’ve discovered.

So off we go, a new and occasional series of blog posts on Organizing your Digital Life here at Pencil & Lens. Have a suggestion for an app, a website or a digital tool that you can’t live without? Get in touch and let me know all about it!

The basics

1. 1Password

If you’re still using your dog’s name and your birthday for your passwords, writing passwords in your Notes app or on a sticky note next to your monitor, it’s TIME for 1Password. This handy app works on your computer via browser add-on, and asks your permission to capture the UN and PW of any new log in you create, or, you can even ask it to make YOU a new unbust-able password. It’s not like you need to remember it, you’ve saved it in 1Password. Then, next time you’re faced with an empty log-in page, click your 1Password tool bar, and it will automatically fill in your UN and PW, after you’ve entered your one, overall password. 1Password is also great for storing other important information that need encryption, like software keys, bank account info and your credit cards. Yes, you can save your credit cards into the “wallet” feature, and click a button to fill in the relevant info when you are shopping online. (Really.)

2. RescueTime

Want to know EXACTLY how much of your life you lose to answering email messages? Ask RescueTime! This app will tell you just how a week’s worth of computer time breaks down, from websites, including social media sites, editing, emails and more. RescueTime will tell you how many minutes (or hours!) were spent on Lightroom, Photoshop, Facebook and more…and will send you a handy report each week with the results, like it or not.

3. Leechblock

If you POSSIBLY find yourself spending too much time on one site or another during your workday (shocking, I know), you can police yourself with Leechblock, a web app that literally blocks your access to a site for a designated period of time. I use it to block out FB for most of the workday. Other than a quick peek in the morning and afternoon, FB is off limits to me , since I can get very sidetracked, even if I clicked over for a business purpose.

These are just a start, but looking forward to continuing the conversation. Can’t wait to hear what apps you can’t live without!