When we first started our photography business, I wouldn’t have really called it a business. We honestly had no clue what we were doing. We originally learned how to work a camera when we were running a fashion blog a few years back. We never had any intention of starting a photography business. It really fell into our laps. I (Chelsea) was asked to take Hannah’s wedding photos because I knew how to work a camera, and we were trying to cut costs as much as possible. Then, before I knew it, I was asked to take photos at another friend’s wedding and then another and another. I brought Hannah on very quickly because I realized I couldn’t do this on my own, and more than that, I didn’t want to. Before long, it was a business– at least in the simplest of terms. We were providing a service and getting paid for it.

Fast forward a few months, we suddenly had multiple weddings on our schedule, and we were researching like mad women trying to figure out how we were going to run a legitimate business. How were we going to deliver our client’s images? How were we going to communicate with them? How were we going to keep up with all of the small tasks that we needed to do? How were we going to edit photos faster? And maybe most importantly, how were we going to get paid?

Speaking of getting paid… you may wonder how we used to go about collecting our fee. Well, there were too many times in the very beginning of our business where we’d be 8 or 9 hours into a wedding day. We were exhausted and 100% ready to go home, but we would have to find the mother of the bride, interrupt her in what she was doing (dancing, talking, having fun) and ask her for our check. One time, we actually had to follow her outside to her car in the freezing weather so she could find her checkbook. It was NOT our proudest moment. After that, we knew we HAD to find a way to collect payments in an easy, non-awkward manner…

Enter the software that now helps us run our business:

Honeybook

Honeybook is the number one lifesaver that we have in our business. It’s an online software that was specifically designed to help creative entrepreneurs like photographers, wedding planners, and many more run their businesses. It’s where we keep up with all email communication with our clients, allows us to send files and questionnaires back and forth, and it’s now how we get paid. No more awkward asks like before.

PhotoMechanic

This is a one-time payment, downloadable software that helps us cull our images faster. What does “cull” mean? Culling images is simply where we go through our entire card of images we took at a session or wedding and select the best of the best. That may sound easy, but when you have thousands of images to click through, it can take an extreme amount of time (hours!). PhotoMechanic allows us to speed through this process so we don’t sit behind our computers longer than we have to and allows us to get images to our clients faster. Win, Win!

Trello

This is a simple and FREE online software that allows Hannah and I to keep track of all the tasks we need to do for the week, month, year, and beyond. We have a shared board that we can both keep lists of tasks on and check them off as we finish them. It keeps us both organized and allows us to know what each of us has completed even while we’re working in our separate homes.

There are many other software programs we use in our business that we will continue to share on our blog. Don’t make the same mistake we did in the beginning, adopt some of these programs now so you don’t struggle to find a workflow like we did.

-Chelsea