I’ve been using ShootQ now for about two months, and I am absolutely hooked.
ShootQ is a tool made especially for photographers to manage their studio. It was created by photographers that know the difficulty of managing a studio while trying to concentrate on their core business of photography. It’s a web based system that works like a software program on a business computer. This system organizes work flow from the first client interest phone call all the way through until the customer receives the ordered photography and completes payment. It’s a great tool to have for any professional photographer and works very well for wedding events.
This studio management tool will be able to follow a client from their first phone call through their whole process of working with a particular photography studio. It allows the photographer to enter in information in one area instead of having interest books, appointment books, billing lists, and calendars to keep up with. ShootQ even sends reminders of when a customer needs to be billed which is an advantage from trying to remember or keep organized records on paper. A professional photographer can spend more of their time on what they do best, taking portraits of people.
The system gives reminders of what a photographer needs to do next, which is very helpful when trying to keep up with the wedding production and to keep the important client, the bride, content and feeling secure and informed.
With ShootQ, less time is spent on the administrative side. Foe me, the studio management system acts as an extra employe. Furthermore, some photographers lose money by not billing on time or following up to receive earned payments. Cash flow is the name of the game, and ShootQ keeps me on track and allows me to see a projected cash flow for the entire year. My photography studio runs so smoothly using this tool that the photographer’s life will have more quality and their clients will feel as though they are working with a well managed business. Many photographers get work by way of word of mouth and having clients happy will prompt them to distribute a studio’s name.
Multiple members of The Pro Photo Business Forum are now using ShootQ, and we have begun a forum which will allow the sharing of custom workflows. Come and join us!
Aric C. Hoek BFA, CPP, Author
PPBF Administrator
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Houston Wedding Photographer, Aric Hoek
Welcome! In this article we will examine album image selection as a value added service. I’ll preface our conversation by noting that there are many ways to approach image selection, such as letting clients select their album images, and there is no right or wrong way. It is about what works best for you, your business and your clients. The views expressed here are generated from my many conversations with photographers over the years.
Furthering the thinking from my last article, which can be found by clicking here, leads me to an organic conclusion that image selection is a value added service you provide for your clients. It will add more value and prestige to your business that ends with a high level of customer satisfaction, which in turn leads to an increased bottom line. To achieve that end result, keep the album as a treasured item for your client and a mobile marketing piece for you, the selected images must be a limited amount of THE BEST OF THE BEST.
Your clients picked you for their photography needs! They truly paid for your art, products and services. Consider these questions; does the typical bride know how to pick out a limited number of your best pictures to produce the most amazing album possible? Is the groom going to be able to help her? Are they going to consider how the images will look on the page? Will they be overwhelmed trying to decide between the pictures you show them? Will they want so many images that you will have to make a collage page? Will a collage page highlight your photographic art? Will a page like that actually be dramatic enough to capture their moment? Is she going to want to slide in pictures from a friend’s point and shoot? How much time will you spend retouching all these images for them?
With a limited amount of your best pictures you are making your album designing experience better. This is because you will not have to retouch “x” number of images, and you will also be able to deliver a higher quality album for them in a quick turnaround time. For instance, when a couple returns from their honeymoon are they ready to take care of their post-wedding photographic needs immediately? Or do they need to write a whole lot of thank you cards? How long will it take them to pick their images? How much time will you allow them to decide on their images? By letting them pick their images you are actually allowing the perceived value of your work to diminish day-by-day. The importance of the album goes down along with opportunities for print sales. Therefore, by providing image selection as a service, you will have the album designed by the time they return from their honeymoon and delivered before they finish their thank you cards.
As a professional photographer you provide the best possible customer experience backed with great services and products in order to ensure repeat business. If they pick their images, how stressful will all this be for you as the photographer and for your client? Is your client going to abide by your rules and regulations to must have and additional images? Forget about all this nonsense affecting your business’s growth. Make the overall album experience easier on you and your client by selecting the images as a value added service. The key to true profitability is efficiency, higher quality products and services, decreased waste, well managed operations, increased perceived value and increased client satisfaction levels.
By providing album image selection as a service, you heighten your service value and prestige, lead to true profitability, take the stress out of image selection, gain back your marketing piece, wow clients and their friends and you will have a great time while doing so, especially since you did not have to retouch 200 images for the album! Next time we will be talking about the relationship between image selection and album design.
Jay Michael Stevens
Forbeyon's Customer Care Manager
Forbeyon is the photographer's sole album destination
Find us at:
website: www.forbeyon.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/Forbeyon
facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Forbeyon-Inc/92723162750
It’s not a matter of if, but when. There is never a good time for your hard drive to fail, especially your primary drive that you store all your weddings on.
That’s what happened to me last week, and I didn’t lose one image.
A back up system is a must when you are a wedding photographer. The images you create can never be recreated. I truly feel the images I create are worth so much more than I charge for them. So it is very important to have a rock solid backup plan.
I’d like to share with you the structure of my back up system before the crash, and how I have now changed my system after the crash.
First, we’re going to refer to this crash as “The Big Crash of 09”. It was quite scary when it happened. All of the sudden my hard drive that I store all of my wedding images on would not mount. Even after transferring the hard drive to all the different computers in the studio, it still would not mount. And after a call to tech support, it was quickly determined that the drive had failed.
My network of computers are all Apple, and Apple has a backup system called Time Machine which backs up all new information every hour on the hour. It really gives you a nice warm and fuzzy feeling. But when it comes time to retrieve that information, you have doubts as to how well the software has been working. You begin to question if the software has been working at all.
With each wedding I photograph, I make a back up of all the images I have created to DVD. I then edit those images down to the ones I want my customers to see, and then I back up those images to DVD. But how do you know that you have backed everything up? Even though my routine is very strict, you always have a nagging feeling that you may have missed something.
I was lucky this time, and everything had been saved using Time Machine onto a very large eight terabyte external drive called a Drobo.
Before the recession started, I had one person working with me in the studio, and because of this fact I had all of the studio images stored on a server for central access. But now that I am working by myself, I find that I really am no longer in need of a server, so I have now changed my backup system, which has added one more layer of redundancy.
Attached to my primary workstation, I have now added two external one terabyte drives, and one eight terabyte Drobo. Inside the workstation are two 500 gig drives.
So, now when I bring my exposed cards in from a wedding my routine works like this. First, I download the images to one of the external one terabyte drives. I then back up the raw captures onto DVD. The second external one terabyte dive is my back up drive, and is an exact mirror of the first external one terabyte drive. I accomplish this mirror using Carbon Copy Cloner.
As I have said, there are two internal drives as well. One is my startup drive, and the second is a mirror of the startup drive, again using Carbon Copy Cloner. This way, if the startup drive fails, I can still operate the computer and album production can continue while I wait for a replacement drive to be installed.
All four of these drives, the two internal 500 gig drives, and the two external one terabyte drives are all backed up ever hour onto the eight terabyte Drobo.
This then is the most solid backup system I have ever created for myself. A double layer of redundancy.
Aric C. Hoek BFA, CPP, Author
PPBF Administrator
Join The Pro Photo Business Forum
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Houston Wedding Photographer, Aric Hoek
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