the pro Photographer’s Workday
Experienced pros know how best to organise their time in the studio, for maximum success
Sometimes the schedule of a busy working photographer can seem hectic and fluid, with little discernible common day-to-day structure. However, while adaptability is advantageous, and although different fields require variable tasks, most professionals work to an underlying common workday template. Creating a routine is one of the most fundamental skills of any successful business and a studio is no exception. The primary objective for any pro is to convert customer enquiries into booked assignments, thereby justifying investment in advertising and prospective client engagement. Once a suitable strategy for doing this has been implemented, the next objective is to increase client throughput, to maximise use of the resources available. This is often best achieved by keeping the studio gear ready to use, so that minimal time is spent altering setups between shoots. The added benefit of this is the impression of efficiency conveyed to clients. A widely used strategy to ensure these points is to start the day with essential administration, to address the client-centric aspects of the studio. During the course of a busy day, it may not be possible to make new bookings and answer prospective customer questions, so making people aware of this early, to arrange contact time, can help to make better use of troughs in the day’s workload. Although it will be necessary to adjust lighting, modifiers and backgrounds throughout the day’s shoots, spending some time arranging parameters that are common between shoot types, to form a default setup, will mean only minor alterations to fit subject requirements are needed once the photo session begins. Splitting morning and
afternoon shoots by category is another useful pro tip and an area that many new studio photographers fail to correctly organise. Group together similar shoots so that a set change is not necessary, improving your image creation per hour. Having a morning and afternoon period gives you a time buffer to absorb any modifications to your setup, so that they do not encroach into your photography. Leaving shoots too close is a focal point for problems to arise. Construct a schedule that works for you and align your photography and business management skills.