Susie and I love photography. We love the technical aspects, the artistic aspects, the clients we meet, and building a business. We love all of it and we want to do it a long, long time. But when we sat down at the end of December and started planning for 2012, we felt overwhelmed. We foresaw a lot of life changes in each of our family’s personal lives in 2012. I, for one, worried about keeping the momentum going. So we set our number one priority for 2012. It wasn’t about growth in our client base or improving our photography skills or higher sales averages through better product offerings (although each of those were goals).

It was to life-proof our business.

We had to figure out how to make our business sustainable through both planned and unexpected life changes, while keeping priorities of family and service to others first in our lives. Our first action item under the goal of life-proofing our business was to make procedures for *everything*. We had to codify our process of packing for a consult – to filling out SEO information on a blog post – to ordering new business cards – dozens and dozens of procedures. This way, if John and I adopt a fourth child this year, I can respond to an inquiry during a 2am feeding without thinking at all. Or when Susie and Akie attend their long-anticipated family reunion this year, I can handle any aspect of the business that is usually under her domain without sending texts like, “911 – need the password to our credit card processor?!!?” Its all in our binder :-) And now, if things really go haywire in 2012, or any other year, we can even hire someone to handle certain aspects of our business, because everything is laid out clearly.

After a lot of discussion and work (especially on Susie’s part), we printed the first official copies of our Life-Proofing the Business Binder. Many of the procedures and processes that we could think of are developed, printed, and neatly encased in water-proof page protectors. Several are left to do, but this is a great start.

As we say on our About Us page, we love our families, we love photogrpahy, and we want to keep doing – and enjoying! – both for a long, long time.

If you have any questions about this, or if there are any particular procedures or processes that you’re curious about, feel free to ask. We’re happy to share more! And PLEASE share any systemizing you’ve done to streamline your business. We are always looking to grow in this area!!!

I am trying to navigate the world of social media, and I must admit, sometimes I get a little overwhelmed with all the ways and social media platforms out there!  Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, Google+,  Blogs, and all the other places someone can get involved in.  There are different ways to use and interact with people through each of the above, and sometimes it seems like you’re learning something new every day!  One thing I have found consistent throughout each one, though, is that there are certain etiquette guidelines that I’ve found are helpful to remember no matter what I’m doing online.

1)      Stay Positive – It’s important when you’re using Social Media to not use it as a platform to complain about how horrible your life is, and what is going wrong.  People like to hear about good things, not that the world is falling.  Staying positive not only helps your friends think positive, good thoughts, but it’s good for you as well.  :)

2)      Don’t spam your friend’s walls. No one likes spam. [Well, unless you’ve just hiked 5 miles over the mountains in the mud and rain and have nothing else to eat…but, that’s beside the point.]   Don’t post status updates, or tweet dozens of times a day, or you might find yourself being un-followed or unfriended.  [are those even words?]

3)      Be active.  It’s much more fun to be involved in a media where people are active.

4)      Treat others as you would like to be treated.  Be respectful.  Be nice. Remember the saying, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”

5)      Be yourself.  It’s nice when people are able to get to know you a bit more through social media, and it’s not just you posting things that others have said or sharing what others have posted.  People like to get to know you.

If you have any more tips, I’d love to hear them!!

-Susie

An Atlanta-based lawyer-turned-photographer recently published an article entitled Why I Tearfully Deleted My Pinterest Inspiration Boards that has been burning up blogs and facebook boards.  The article outlined why she believes Pinterest is on shaky legal grounds and that pinners are violating copyright laws.  Late last week, she followed up with a post complimenting the founder of Pinterest, Ben Silberman, who called her and spent over an hour discussing the content of her post and the future of Pinterest.  You can read that article here.  Susie sent me these articles last week, and independently we began to carefully walk through the points and balance them against our own judgment and conscience.

As Christians, Susie and I both believe that we are bound by laws, so we take posts like this seriously.  However, for various reasons, when we discussed our conclusions, we agreed that we didn’t feel legally obligated to abandon Pinterest as a source for inspiration and sharing.  Pinterest is clearly a new concept and I suspect that some interesting discussions between Pinterest and photographers will play out in courts over the coming years.  When making judgments, the choice of precedents will be carefully chosen and debated.  It is possible that Pinterest will be shut down, but equally possible that, if necessary, they’ll amend their guidelines or procedures, and all will be well.  In the meantime, no suits have been brought against Pinterest, and not even any grumblings against them.  Most people are *thrilled* to have their work pinned, which makes this is a very different case than that of Napster, for instance, which was clearly an assault on the livelihoods of musicians.

While my conscience was clear on my legal obligations, the article did convict my conscience a bit on the golden rule.  As a photographer, what do I want pinners to do with my photographs?  Easy.  I want them to pin them!!!  Also, I want them to pin them with credit.  I’ve been really very lazy about giving credit to other photographers.  I’ve told myself that if people really want to know, they can click the picture and go back to the original site (which is true) and that no one else credits the photographer whose work they’re pinning (which is also true).  But the golden rule – not to mention Pinterest’s guidelines – dictate that I give credit.  So, that’s why I’m starting our Pinterst boards over.  And this time, giving credit where credit is due :-)

I love lists and processes.  I don’t think I could function without them.  My daily “planner” is a notebook and I am always making lists of what I need to get done.  It helps me keep my head on straight, and then I don’t get stressed out trying to remember everything.  I even have a list of 12 things I need to do or check every day taped to my desk.  Anyway, all that to say, our business is really based on processes and procedures.  With Becky and I both working together on weddings, and splitting up workflow, Excel is our best friend.

We’re starting to get into engagement session season [yay!], and we have our engagement photography workflow all written out.  Of course, this is always a work in progress, but it gives us a really good game plan so we know what we’re doing when we get into these shoots.  Scheduling, shooting, and editing lots of engagement sessions can get overwhelming if you don’t have a game plan, but if we have processes like this, it makes it much easier!

Here’s where we start:

About a Month before the Engagement Shoot

-Talk to Bride & Groom about the look and feel they want for the shoot, discuss possible locations
-Create Pinterest board with ideas for outfits and locations
-Send Pinterest board to Bride & Groom
-Discuss what outfits they’ll be wearing for the shoot
-Choose location(s) for shoot
-Schedule shoot

Day Before the Shoot

-Make sure all necessary permits are in order for shoot
-Clean Camera equipment
-Charge all batteries – camera and AA for flashes
-Check weather
-Confirm time/location with bride & groom – go to plan B if necessary
-Make sure copyright form is signed

Engagement Photography Workflow

-Import Photos to Photo Mechanic
-Sync Camera times if needed
-Cull Photos [blue if chosen]
-Rename all chosen photos
-Move all blue photos to Chosen Folder
-Move all rejects to rejects folder
-Import all chosen photos to Lightroom
-Edit photos in Lightroom/Photoshop
-Export editing photos as High Res
-Sharpen High Res Photos [Run action in PS]
-Export edited photos as Low Res, sharpen upon export
-In LR – Choose photos for blog post [red] and export as Low Res
-In LR – Choose photos for submission to blog [flagged]
-In LR – Choose top 10-15 for portfolio and export as High and Low Res
-Export LR Catalog and put in Client Folder
-Upload High Res Sharpened Photos to Client Ordering Site
-Blog post on Couple
-Submit Shoot to Blog

And that’s it!  Once we get that done, we can actually still have stuff to do, like order photos and design engagement guest books.  But that’s another post for another time. :)

Happy Tuesday!

Susie