s2e3: my favourite tools as a brand photographer

transcript

Hello and welcome to Let’s Shoot Together, a photography podcast by me, Anna Considine from Studio Gently. I’m a newly Edinburgh-based branding photographer working with kind and creative kin across the UK, and this podcast is for gentle photographers everywhere. If you’re looking to jump into brand photography or a fellow brand photographer looking for tips, this podcast is for you! Welcome, welcome, welcome!

INTRODUCTION

I’ve divided the tools into four categories: photography, client experience, marketing, and systems. Some of these are an investment for your business, but some of them have free or very low-cost options, and I think all of them have saved me heaps of time and stress in my day-to-day. Let’s get started.

NARRATIVE SELECT

We’re jumping right into our photography tools and starting with a bloomin’ fantastic photography culling app. Before finding Narrative Select, I did all my culling in Photoshop. It was a clunky process because I couldn’t review more than maybe 50 photos at a time, and there were no tools to help me out. Narrative Select lets you review your raw photos and ship your favourites to Lightroom, with AI tools that show you how in focus your subjects’ faces are and how open their eyes are. It can even filter all the blurry and closed-eye shots out of view with just a click. You can rate and tag the images just as you would in Lightroom and when you ship to Lightroom Classic or CC (I use Classic), it’ll retain that data for you while you edit. I’m a chronic overshooter so Narrative Select has saved me heaps of time, and I’ve got an affiliate link if you’re looking to join.

SUNSEEKER

Next, let’s talk about a small but super important app for planning photoshoots. Sunseeker is a lifesaver: it’s a simple app that lets you type in a location and then displays a chart of where the sun will be on any date you choose. It lets me decide which rooms of an Airbnb to shoot in during the morning and then the afternoon and see when golden hour will hit for shoots months down the line. Previously, I’d used Google to work out the sunset of a shoot, but Sunseeker gives you way more information, and it’s mega helpful.

LENS PIMP

Last for our photography tools on the list is Lens Pimp. I’ve used Lens Pimp three or four times to hire gear, and I’ve been blown away. They’ve sent orders out early to allow for bank holidays, called me up for a welcome chat with my first order, and just offer a robust service all-round. They’re now my go-to any time I want to hire a camera body or lens for a shoot or before purchasing, and I’ve been so dang impressed.

If you’re a paper planning lover, just like I am, I highly recommend giving Ponderlily’s collection a browse. I’ve used them for my work planner for the last three years, and I’ll be purchasing my 2023 from Ponderlily too! Their range is made with sustainability in mind, using as many eco-friendly production methods as possible while delivering minimal designs I adore. If you’d like to shop Ponderlily with 15% off, you can use code STUDIOGENTLY at checkout.

DUBSADO

We now move on to the next category of tools, in a section I’m calling “Client Experience”. Dubsado is my CRM tool, and I honestly can’t imagine my business without it. If you want to give your clients a luxury experience just like I do, a CRM like Dubsado is the way to go. It allows you to create client portals, where you can customise their design and even their login password, and house all their documents, forms, invoices, and contracts for a shoot. Just as crucial, you can set up canned emails and create workflows to automate some of the communication that happens with every new client. It’s really helped me uplevel my business, and if you use code “studiogently” (lowercase), you get 20% off your first month or year. I love Dubsado, and it’s saved me hours of back-and-forth emails thanks to their workflows and scheduler to book client calls; it’s fantastic.

PIC-TIME

Next in our client experience section is Pic-Time, the platform I use to host my client galleries. Back in the day, I’d send clients their photos via WeTransfer or create very unsexy Google Drive folders – yuck. My last platform was Pixieset but I left when a client ​​​​let me know that their photos were being resized across their width (rather than their longest side like Lightroom) when they downloaded web-size images. I was super frustrated because it meant that the size of their files was inconsistent and Pixieset told me they had no plans to change it. Enter Pic-Time, which offers the same great visual experience with proper sizing options AND even some marketing email workflows. I think a gallery platform has helped give the “wow” factor to my client journeys, and I love that Pic-Time is very easy to use. I have an affiliate link for them in the show notes if you’d like a month free, but I highly recommend it for both great design and a fab user experience.

CANVA

Now we move on to my marketing apps! First up is Canva, a great platform to help you design just about anything. It has heaps of pre-made and customisable templates for social media posts, presentations, business cards, leaflets – you name it. I’ve used it for my clients’ shoot plans for the past year, and I love it, and I’ve recently started using it to spice up my Instagram posts too. Canva has a social media scheduler (I use Planoly because I found Canva’s a bit basic) and even video editing options that I’ve yet to explore. Even so, I’ve found it beyond helpful in up-levelling my client docs and social posts. I recently asked my graphic designer Sarah to make me some custom templates for Canva, but if you are on a budget, their free and Premium options are a good starting point.

FLODESK

My second marketing app recommendation is the lovely Flodesk. This is the platform I use for my email newsletter, and I just can’t say enough great things about them. I used to use Mailchimp and found it clunky, ugly, and frustrating that they charge more as your list grows. With Flodesk, their designs are beautiful, intuitive, and a pleasure to use. I now love sending my newsletters and I’ve had multiple folks ask me what provider I use because the design is just that dang good. If you’d like your first year half price, you can use my affiliate code STUDIOGENTLY (all caps) or click my affiliate link, plus, you’ll get $19 every time someone uses your link.

NOTION

My last section for you today is called “Systems and Organisation”, starting with Notion. I almost don’t know where to begin with Notion because I use it for everything, not just work! It’s a workspace where you can create to-do lists, calendars, databases, kanban charts, whatever your heart desires. I use it to store lists, make client notes, review my marketing, and just about anything. Notion has a very generous free plan, and it’s well worth diving into some YouTube videos to help you get familiar with it; this is one of those recommendations that my followers have DMed me to say thank you because it’s that dang good.

TEXTEXPANDER

And last of all is the tool that sparked this whole list, TextExpander! Now THIS is the tool that I get the most mad about because so few people I know use it and yet everyone would benefit from it! ​​ lets you create Snippets, so that every time you type an abbreviation, it expands it into any text that you’ve filled in previously. For example, I have a Snippet that turns “anco” into my fairly long name, Anna Considine, as well as lots for URLs I link all the time, phrases I say a lot (like “I'd love to help” or “no problem”), and templates for documents I make often, like podcast scripts. TextExpander is a bloomin godsend ​​and it will even tell you how much time you’ve saved each month! This month, which included a week off, I saved an hour and a half, but it goes up every month as I think of more Snippets. TextExpander is currently less than £4 a month but it’s a game changer; please do consider downloading it if you haven’t already!

OUTRO

And there you have it! If you enjoyed this show, please subscribe for more and leave a review on your fave podcast platform so that more people can discover Let's Shoot Together. You can share this episode with the hashtag #letsshootogether and tag me on @studiogently, so I can repost you!

If you’re looking to explore systems and tools in your brand photography business, I do have a couple of mentoring slots available this month, so do get in touch at anna@studiogently.com. Get ready for another fantastic interview episode next week, and I hope you have good things ahead of you, wherever and whenever you are! Take care, and let’s go shoot together.