Say it with me: "Done is better than perfect." I'm positive I'm not the only photographer on this planet that lets perfection get in the way of "good" far too often. While the concept itself is one mountain to tackle, becoming a more efficient photographer goes a long way in making the realization of a smooth and functional business a reality. The folks over at KISS Books have reached out to 10 photographers to find out the things they would never do — the things that kill efficiency.
KISS Books is known best for their seriously simple and amazing handmade albums that you can put together in minutes with their full-featured online album designer, but they also run a blog called KISS U, the educational wing of the operation, that runs some great business-related articles from time to time. Levi Wiggins has collected responses from 10 players in the world of photography that are known for their lean and streamlined business practices.
Nathan Holritz would never read his email before noon.
Holritz's advice sounds counter-productive at first. After all, why would you waste those precious 3-4 hours before lunch? What about your email getting backed up? No, it's not like that. He explains that client communication is obviously critical, but even more important is getting a major creative or proactive task done first thing in the day. Once you unleash the email, distraction ensues.
Donal Doherty would never write the same email twice.
This is one tip I need to nail down for this coming year. I use the brilliant Táve Studio Manager for handling my entire business, and I have several automations set up to send reminder and thank you emails, but the system has templates that can be used for everything. Doherty says you should never have to write the same email twice. We work with a lot of the same situations over, over, and over again. Set those up as templates. Don't have a studio manager system like Táve or 17Hats? No problem. Doherty just uses the templates feature built into Outlook.
Daniel C. White would never waste time on social media.
Uh oh. Guilty as charged. Staying focused is the bane of most self-employed people. Being self-employed requires incredible amounts of drive and self-control. Social media is the cheese to the mouse of someone who spends half their day online for business purposes already. Now, Daniel explains it doesn't mean you can't be on social media, but that it has to be 100% productive. He shares his inspirational non-profit work, photos from trips throughout the developing world, commercial photos, weddings, and photos of his family. But he doesn't let it suck him in. The best way to handle it is to determine a task you wish to complete on social media before you even open your browser. Then, complete that task and close your browser. Rinse and repeat.
If your interest has been piqued and you'd like to start down the path of becoming a more efficient and focused photographer yourself, I suggest checking out the full article for plenty more top tips. And hey, check out KISS Books themselves if you haven't already. If you're in the Indianapolis area, you can even stop in for a tour and see the warehouse where they are made 100% by hand from scratch.
[via KISS Books]
Does Daniel C. White mean that promoting his business with social media is a waste of his time, or does he mean he would never kill time scrolling through Facebook mindlessly?
"Now, Daniel explains it doesn't mean you can't be on social media, but that it has to be 100% productive. He shares his inspirational non-profit work, photos from trips throughout the developing world, commercial photos, weddings, and photos of his family. But he doesn't let it suck him in."
I read it as just making sure not to be mindless; to be 100% business oriented.
Keep personal time for personal time. Stay focused on work.
Interesting that looking through the actual article, a good deal of it revolves around not editing your own photos...
In much the same way, a director doesn't actually edit their own movie. But they oversee it, finesse it, and ensure the final result meets their vision. Editing is a time consuming process, and oftentimes, a photographer's time and talent are better focused elsewhere (such as on business development, getting new clients, and... you know, shooting!)
Oh not arguing at all...just interesting given the vast quantity of forum posts and articles (here and elsewhere) devoted to those topics; even for professionals.
Wedding and social photographers in particular would gain an awful lot in farming out the editing process, unless of course they edit every single job different to the last. But I would imagine for most, this is a fairly routine and often tedious process. Back in the days of film, photographers handed the rolls to a professional lab well versed in what was required for such work and they looked after all the 'editing', thus leaving the photographer plenty of time to shoot the next job. No reason why it should be all that different with digital.
Right - that was a trend I hadn't expected when I initially reached out to these efficiency ninjas. They didn't unanimously agree, but it was pretty overwhelming. For wedding photographers, it's a pretty solid idea.
"Daniel C. White would never waste time on social media."
I can see why. You spend years building a following, only to lose it all through Facebook's new for-profit business model. We're thinking twice about building social following on another platform.
I think the author was stating not to waste time outside of business on social media. Facebook is a business and features an amazing ability to target your demographics. Yes, you have to "pay to play" but if you consider earned media value, I'm not sure you're going to beat it unless you have an amazingly active and incentivized email list.
What Scott said. Daniel C. White is a genius when it comes to using social media to promote good things, share inspiration and constantly grow his tribe. He's brilliant, and he's not paying for it with anything other than really great content.
A bunch of these don't make sense for me. I think the suggestions are specific to particular genres and/or markets. As general rules of thumb, not helpful.
That's fair - it was written for an audience mainly consisting of professional wedding photographers who shoot 500-3,000 images for a wedding. For those cats, efficiency is the name of the game.
I shoot corporate events, 700-2500 images in a day.
Is this native advertisement by "Photographer's Edit" and "ShootDotEdit"?
So, when I wrote this...I reached out to a handful of photography efficiency ninjas—two of whom run their own editing companies, because efficiency—and the vast majority of them cited outsourcing as a must. It wasn't scripted at all, and I decided to leave in the direct company recommendations because Holritz & Bauman had already contributed to the article. It was all a happy coincidence. Also, unless you can do a wedding in 4 hours or less, you should probably outsource your editing. :)
I dunno. Editing is an important part of the creative process. So is processing. If I didn't do them myself, I'd feel out of touch with my own images.