How to Add Capacity to an OC Wedding Photography Business without Additional Employees

Business Articles | June 25, 2009

Orange County photographers work in an industry which is extremely competitive. In order to succeed OC photographer needs to add capacity without the restrictions that come with employees.

You own an expanding Orange County photography business. You are working long and hours and still struggle to keep up with the growing demand for your service. You don't want to be stretched too thin with the result being lower quality of work. You also want to spend more time with your family. You decide you need to hire some help, but have heard of all the headaches associated with managing employees - payroll, benefits, additional liability, inflexibility etc. In addition, you don't know if demand will continue to grow. You'd hate to hire someone and then later find you'll have to let them go.

If you are an OC photographer in this situation your concerns are valid. Before you hire an employee you should consider other options that can expand capacity. Often, these other methods are simpler, allow you to retain greater control and are less expensive than hiring employees. This article suggests several non-employee capacities expanding measure a photography business owner should consider.

1. Increase the hardware capacity of your computer information system. If your system is slow to bring up images, post images to the web, run macros, or apply your Photoshop or Lightroom changes, you can greatly expand the work you can do with an efficient information system. Find the bottle neck to your system and expand that bottleneck. Do your computers run out of memory? Add RAM. Are you using an external scratch disk? Add an internal drive to use as a scratch disk. Are you spending an enormous amount of timing copying images back and forth between the web and different computers? Invest in a network or a faster network if you already have one.

2. Increase your ability to multitask by utilizing two computers. Studies have shown that those who work on two computers are able to accomplish more than those who use only one computer. When one computer is busy, the photographer can work on the other. When a computer is rebooting, running a batch process or loading images to the Internet it can often leave the photographer waiting for the ability to perform the next task. With two computers, a photographer is able to start one working on a task and immediately begin another.

3. Use services that can perform common tasks. Services exist for OC photographers which will perform photo selection, color correction or photo book creation. Utilizing these services can help a photographer reduce the number of hours needed to complete each photo session, allowing the photographer to shoot more sessions.

4. Before hiring an employee, consider raising your prices. This may have the result of reducing demand and hence the workload - which is exactly what a busy photographer is looking accomplish. Profits will likely not fall. Increasing prices should increase margins by enough to maintain current levels of profitability.

Expanding a photography business can be a wonderful challenge. However, before taking on the responsibility of hiring employees, a photographer should consider the above capacity expanding techniques.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

After beginning her practice in Murrieta, Vanessa started an office in Newport Beach and became an Orange County Photographer. She expanded her services to Laguna Beach, Huntington Beach, Irvinee, Dana Point and San Diego.

Vanessa now works as a Laguna Beach Family Portrait Photographer. She also teaches classes on technique and business practices to other Orange County Wedding Photographers.