OC Wedding Photographers Create Greater Value for Clients with Efficient Operations

Jun 15
08:02

2009

Stephen Honda

Stephen Honda

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Orange County Wedding Photographers should focus on creating more value for their clients.

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With the expanded use of the digital camera and PC,OC Wedding Photographers Create Greater Value for Clients with Efficient Operations Articles a number of people have entered the Orange County photography business making the industry ultra competitive. Increasingly, Orange County wedding photographers need to add value to their offering in order to remain competitive. An efficient backend operational system will help a photography business owner add value to his package.

An efficient system allows for more time performing creative, high value added tasks such as shooting in new and interesting location, matching the client's personality with an appropriate set and performing graphic design work. Most photographers entered the business so they could do this kind of work. Thus having more time for this type of work not only benefits the client by allowing him to receive a greater amount a the photographer's creative talent but also improves the photographers quality of life by allowing him to spend more time on what he loves.

Having an efficient operation adds value to the client's experience by giving the OC photographer more time to be responsive to the client's desires and requests. When a photographer is not bogged down with operational tasks he can respond more quickly to client requests.

Establishing an efficient operation is not something that is done overnight. The process of streamlining is an ongoing activity. The following are three suggestions on where to begin:

1. Use metadata tags to organize pictures. If a OC photographer is still using files to organize his images, he us both spending more time and hard drive space than is needed but will also be stuck with a system that is less flexible. Using metadata tags a photographer can add numerous tags to a given picture. By contrast he can put a file in only one folder.

2. Allow for online viewing and proofing. While many clients will want to work directly with the photographer in choosing images, some people prefer to choose their images from the computer in the comfort of their homes. Doing so will free up some of the photographers time.

3. Create macros for frequently completed tasks. Is there an email that goes out to virtually every client? Create a macro that will write and send the email out with two clicks of the keyboard. Do you often do the same tasks over and over again in Lightroom or Photoshop? Create macros for these tasks as well. Creating these macros takes a small investment in time, but they will make your workload much lighter and allow you to perform the same work in the fraction of the time.

Creating an efficient operational system will free up time for a Orange County photographer to perform more creative high value work and thus add value to his client offerings.