Living The Dream: Simple Tricks to Make Your Life as a Wedding Photographer Easier

Everyone wants to have their dream job and be able to do it with ease. Right?

These simple tricks for wedding photographers will make your gigs feel fast and fun!

Photographer: Mountain Gatherings

The First Steps

First off, let’s talk about email responses. Wanna be fast and efficient in keeping your inbox organized? Then make sure to include the name of the couple, your business name and the date of the wedding when you reply to interested clients. 

Why so?

Well how many times have you wasted countless hours searching through your inbox to find an email that seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth? This simple trick of adding that info will make sure that you can easily search through your busy inbox at a later date. Future you will thank you for doing this, trust us! 

Better still, it’s also great practice to shows the couple that you are invested, because you’ve taken the time to craft a very personal email for them, rather than just firing out a generic response. 

Win-win!

Tech is your friend

Being a photographer is a neverending to-do list. From the countless things you have to organize ahead of each shoot, you have your client management to take care of, as well as managing deadlines for your post-production process. If you’re writing everything down on scraps of paper to try and stay on top of everything…stop. Download an app to help you instead.

“Todoist” is an amazing app that acts as your personal assistant for those days that your feeling overwhelmed with all of the tasks on your plate. Pop all of your tasks (recurring or otherwise) in there, and it will help you to work through things systematically. Plus, you’ll never have to worry about forgetting something again.

Staying upto date

Speaking of having all your information right at your hands, let’s talk about ways in which you can keep yourselves up to date with your work timeline. 

If you aren’t a fan of calendars or scrolling through your notes to see when your next gig is, how about taking a screenshot of the date as soon as you put it into your device, then setting it as a background on one of your smaller devices like a phone or a tablet. 

While it might not be that aesthetically pleasing to have a timeline as your background, it at least puts your most pressing timelines and info at the tip of your nose. This could just be necessary evil if organization is really not your forte, perhaps. 

Photographer: Lauren White

Work in sprints, not a marathon

Don’t worry, it’s not just you that keeps tabbing over to Facebook to scroll through the same posts every 10 minutes.  If you sometimes find that your productivity lags during your post-editing process, maybe it’s time to rethink how you’re actually working. 

Studies show that it’s far better to work is short bursts rather than in long stretches of time. Take breaks at regular intervals, say 10 minutes every hour, and push yourself as hard as you can to stay focused during your ‘active’ time. 

When it comes to your rest time, then take it seriously. Step away from your computer, grab a coffee, clear your mind. That way when you get back to your desk your mind will be fresh enough to hit the ground running again.

Blogging is everything

When it comes to after the wedding, when you want to share your work with the world, it’s time to think about your blog preparations. Are you currently stuck with writer’s block trying to find the words (and the time) to create new posts? We hear ya, it happens to all of us. 

Don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis. Instead, have you ever considered having the couple write a little blurb about their wedding for you?

Yes? No? Maybe?

Well, if not, it’s time you did. It’s the perfect way to help you fill out your own blog with fresh, regular content…plus, the couples will enjoy it as well. 

After all, who doesn’t love reflecting on the most magical day in their lives, all whilst being celebrated in the spotlight?

Create habits

When things feel like work, we have to exert a certain amount of willpower to psych ourselves up for it. It’s just one of those psychological oddities of the human nature. No matter how much we love what we do, as soon as we call it work, it feels like a chore.

This feeling of having a laundry list of ‘chores’ each day can make us really inefficient. The trick to overcome that is to turn those chores into habits. 

Though it’s hard to be consistent in this line of work, try to find ways of creating consistency to what you do. 

For example, perhaps you could decide to answer all your emails every Tuesday and Thursday morning between 9-11AM. Every week. No excuses. After time, it will just become a habit that this is what you do. No more procrastinating or finding excuses to do something else on your to-do list. 

Once something’s a habit, you just do it without thinking. Kind of like showering or brushing your teeth.

According to recent studies it takes around 66 days to actually turn an action into a habit. So when you decide what you want to do, be really dedicated to stick to it. Trust us, your willpower will need all the support it can get!

Photographer: Paula McManus

Be true, be you, and keep it simple

See how easy these tips are?! Great communication with clients and organization doesn’t always have to include tons of papers, excessive calendar reminders, and files on the drive, but rather the simple life hacks that make the job a little bit easier. Most importantly, always remember to stay true to yourself and your work needs, and everything will fall into place.

Written by:
Dirty Boots & Messy Hair Team

Connection is what it’s all about. Feel free to reach out to us with any comments or questions you might have, even if it’s only to say hello. If it wasn’t for our beautiful community, this place just wouldn’t feel the same.

Photographer Tips
17 Dec 2018

2 Comments

  1. […] Struggling to find the time to fit everything in as a solo creative? Here are some simple hacks to speed up your photography workflow! […]

  2. […] more tips about how to make your life as a professional photographer a little bit easier, check out this blog on making your jobs feel fast and […]

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