Today’s blog post is geared towards all the other photogs out there (or really anybody that just happens to be curious about how we do things for our business.)  We’ve decided to start a new little blog series to share some of the tools that have helped us make our business more efficient (and keep our sanity) over the last few years. One of the hardest things about being a new photographer is figuring out how to run the “business” side of things. Sure, maybe you can take pretty pictures, but what about the rest? We learned a ton from reading other photographer’s blogs, attending conferences and knowing some awesome photogs that were totally open and willing to share with us, so we thought it was about time we started to do the same.

We have learned a lot of things in the last 3 years that could totally help out someone else who’s trying getting a handle on things.  Now keep in mind, we’re not saying that all of the tools we use will work for everybody, they just happen to work for us.

First on our list of awesome Photo Biz tools . . .

ShootQ is an online studio management tool that’s designed to meet the needs of photographers.  We refer to ShootQ as our office manager cause it pretty much does all the work a real live office manager would do for us!  It contains our contact list, accounting information, client records and a ton more.  And the best part?  It’s all online so we can access it from anywhere, even our iPhones.  It’s an A-MA-ZING program and we were up to our ears in outlook folders, excel spreadsheets, file folders and lots and lots of paper before we had ShootQ.  Now we’re so much more organized and can lend a nice nod to the environment since our studio is almost entirely paperless :-)  Here are some of the features that we use the most:

Calendar Management & Appointment Scheduling

ShootQ syncs our personal and business calendars so we can have an easy snapshot of what we’ve got going on and what’s coming up.

When we need to set up a meeting with a client we can actually send them a meeting request by defining just a few easy fields.  Then the client can choose what date and time works the best for them.  It factors in any conflicts on our calendars and only allows them to choose from our available dates and times.  So much easier than trading dozens of emails back and forth just to schedule one meeting!

Email Templates

I love writing the same email over and over again, don’t you?  I THINK NOT!  ShootQ has made us a ton more efficient when it comes to keeping our inbox under control and streamlining our correspondence.  We just set up a bunch of templates and then do our emailing from within the ShootQ interface.  Every email is tracked and linked to the client or lead, which is extra nice with there being two of us.  This way we don’t both accidentally email someone about the same thing!  A simple click of a button now creates the email we used to retype every time.  After applying a template, you can still customize the message based on your relationship with the client or any specific questions they have.  Using a template is just a great way to avoid having to retype all the standard info over and over again.  The templates can even be designed to fill in the name of the client and other important details for you :-)  ShootQ takes such good care of us (sigh).

Lead Management

When ever someone inquires about our services through our website or blog, the ShootQ contact form automatically sets up a lead profile with all the wedding/session details and alerts us via email so we can go check it out and respond to them.

The lead tracking section of the site allows us to categorize each lead, track our correspondence and set up reminders to follow up with them after a certain amount of time has past.  Easy peasy :-)

Shoot Details

Once a client books us, their lead profile is converted into a client profile where all the information for their wedding/session can be kept in one place.  Contact info, notes and correspondence, workflow tasks, package and billing information and even other vendors related to their shoot can all be accessed from one easy place.  There’s A LOT of information to keep track of for every client and this flawless system makes it so easy to make sense of it all.

Client Sites, Surveys & Contracts

Every client gets there very own password protected client site where they can update information about their wedding, track the progress of their album, make payments and interact with us in a variety of ways.  The very first thing they do on this site is sign their contract & pay their deposit.  No more waiting for contracts or checks to come in the mail!  It’s all in one quick, easy, online process that’s super convenient for us and for our clients.

We also use the client sites to send surveys.  These surveys are an easy way for us to gather information for planning a couple’s engagement session or confirming all the logistical details, portrait list and schedule for the day of their wedding.  There’s even a handy feature that asks our wedding couples to enter the contact information for their other vendors.  When they do, it’s automatically entered into our ShootQ contact list, making it really easy for us to connect with their vendors before and after their wedding day.

Workflow (Task Management)

I’m a total checklist person – mostly because I’m naturally pretty forgetful!  The only way I’ve found to combat my forgetfulness is to be very organized.  Before the days of ShootQ we would spend hours creating tasks in Outlook for each of our shoots so we wouldn’t forget to do anything.  It was horribly tedious, difficult to share between both Ryan & I and a huge waste of valuable time.  ShootQ allows you to create workflow templates with all the typical tasks related to every shoot.  We have one for portrait sessions, weddings, engagement sessions, album production and a few others.  You define how many days/weeks/months, etc. a task should occur in relation to a shoot or booking date and ShootQ does the rest. During the process of booking a new client we apply the appropriate workflow and BAM!  All the tasks are created for us.  No muss, no fuss.  And every day when we log in, there is a lovely little preview of what needs to be done and what’s right around the corner so we never miss a beat :-)

Seriously, we don’t know how we were getting by before investing in ShootQ.  It has made our business better in a thousand ways.  We’re more professional, more organized and can provide much better customer service to our clients because of it.  And for us, it’s worth every single penny.  Now in case you’re wondering, ShootQ didn’t ask us to write this post.  I’m sure they don’t even know about it, but we feel so strongly about what they’ve done to help our business grow, that we felt inspired to share it with you.  We highly encourage you to check them out – just click the link below and take a tour!

If you have questions about how we use ShootQ feel free to leave us a comment or email us.  Or if you have another photography related question you can ask us over at our Formspring page.  Thanks for reading and we really hope that you found the information helpful!

View Portfolio | Become a Fan | Contact: studio@simplyknotphotos.com

This is something that we’ve thought about doing for a while now and have finally gotten around to actually doing it.   We really love answering people’s questions about us, whether it’s business related, photography related, or just something about our personal lives.  So we’ve set up the perfect place to do just that . . . our new formspring.me page!  We got the party started by posting the link on our Facebook pages today and we’ve been having so much fun responding to all the great questions!  Keep them coming everybody!  If  we haven’t answered yours yet, it’s because we got a TON of questions already. We’ll get to answering them as quickly as we can so make sure you check back to see our responses.  Click the button below to visit the page!

And since every post is more fun with a photo, here’s a quick shot of Molly that we grabbed today.  She just got a haircut yesterday and was just begging to show off her little pink scarf :-)

View Portfolio | Become a Fan | Contact: info@simplyknotphotography.com

Yesterday our friend Melissa Jill wrote a blog post about using back button focus to achieve the sharpest possible images. Because she shoots with Canon equipment, she posted a link to a thread on Open Source Photo that talked about back button focus for Nikon equipment. What’s kinda of funny about that thread is that it all started because we couldn’t figure out how to make this work on our Nikon cameras back in 2007! Wow, things have changed a lot since then! Denise and I have been using back button focus for years now and it has made a huge difference in the way we work.

By separating the act of focusing with taking the actual photo (shutter release), it allows you to choose your focus point, lock it in, and have the ability to recompose your image without refocusing. For all you Nikon users out there, here’s how you can set it up in camera because unfortunately it is not the default setting. These settings should be pretty much the same on the D300 & D700 and possibly the D3 model.

Separate Your Focus & Shutter:

Step 1: Go into your custom settings menu

Step 2: Select A (autofocus)

Step 3: Select A5 (AF Activation)

Step 4: Choose AF-ON only

Now, you can use your AF-ON button to set your focus and the shutter button will only release the shutter. Once your focus is set you can release the AF-ON button and reframe the shot. By separating those two functions, it allows you to be more creative and think outside the box when it comes to composing your images. It also, helps in getting the sharpest possible photos.

Lock Your Center Focus Point:

We also used to manage our focus location by moving the focus points all around with the dial. When your camera has 51 focus points, this method is slow and frustrating. Once we started shooting with back button focus, we locked the focus in the center by turning the lock focus dial to the L position and never touched it again. This part of the set up isn’t required to use back button focus but we have found that it works well for us and simplfies the process even more.

Now you can simply put the subject in the center, lock in the focus, release the button and have the freedom to recompose them in the frame. If any of our fellow “Nikonians” have any other questions about this, feel free to leave us a comment or send us an email. Hope this has been helpful!

NOTE: Based on the comments below, we thought it may be helpful to add a quick note about a few common questions:

1) If you’ve set all of your camera settings as we’ve described above, but you can’t release your shutter, try changing your Focus Priority Selection (Custom Settings, Autofocus).  If it’s set to focus priority you will probably have some issues getting things to work right.

2) Using back button focus does take a little practice.  If you’re images are turning out soft when you release the AF-On button, you may be inadvertently changing the distance between you and your subject.  You can only recompose the shot after locking in the focus – if you move too much (take a step forward, lean in closer, etc.) than your focus will need to be locked in again.  You have to be mindful of this at first, but knowing how much you can move does become second nature after using it for a while.

3)  BBF works in either AF-S or AF-C mode.  We shoot in AF-S because we feel like this setting produces more consistent results, but others have said the same about AF-C.  We’d suggest that you try both and see what you’re more comfortable with.

View Portfolio | Become a Fan | Contact: studio@simplyknotphotos.com