How to be MORE Productive as a Photographer

Business Productivity Hacks that you Need

Time is money, as they say! So how can you be more productive as a photographer and save time in your photography business?

Don’t you want to save more time so you can focus more on your business or spend more time relaxing?

In this tutorial, Amanda Campeanu shares her top tips for productivity as a photographer.

Business Photography Tips to Save You Time!

Save Time in Your Photography Business Tip #1: Gmail Tasks

Task lists are handy no matter who you are! But especially for the busy photographer, tasks you can easily set in an app help your productivity. 

If you use Gmail for your mailing system, it’s easy to have the Tasks tab open next to your email or your calendar for easy entry. You can enter a new task, set a date and time, and even include other people to share the task with.

This way you don’t miss anything and you never have to leave the page you are on to access your to-do list!

Save Time in Your Photography Business Tip #2: Use Email Templates

If you send the same emails to clients for different business activities, then you need to use templates! Email templates auto-fill in whatever you have saved into the template.

Email templates save you so much time re-typing emails that you send often! This is especially helpful for responding to clients, sending contracts, and booking shoots. 

Set up a template of an email for any touch point from your inquiry, booking, and follow up process!

You can open Gmail, go into settings and Advanced settings to enable templates. Then when you type an email, you can choose to save it as a template and use that template for your next email.

If you don’t use Gmail, other mailing systems should have similar template saving abilities.

Save Time in Your Photography Business Tip #3: Get a cheap phone tripod for BTS filming

Behind the scenes content is super useful for social media content. These days reels and other short video content are very helpful marketing tools and will help you grow your followers.

When you are taking photos for clients, set up a tripod with your phone mounted and just film the whole process from start to finish.

This way, you have a lot of extra content you can use to turn into YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, TikTok’s and more.

It’s very easy to get a small, compact tripod like this one similar to the one used in the video. Bring it with you on your shoots to save yourself time and energy trying to get content to post!

Save Time in Your Photography Business Tip #4: Easily Copy & Paste Edits in Photoshop

If you use photoshop, this hack will save you so much time!

When you have a gallery of photos that all need to be edited the same so they look nice and cohesive, it would be a pain to have to edit each one individually.

Instead, you can edit one photo and then copy and paste the edits into the other images.

In photoshop, while editing the image you want to copy from, hold down shift and then right click over the layers you’ve edited.

Then select Duplicate Layers from the list, and choose the next photo in the gallery you have open. 

Now all the same edits will apply to the second photo and you can fix up small edits but save so much time. 

Save Time in Your Photography Business Tip #5: Use Photomechanic for Sifting Images

With huge image files, it can take your computer a long time to process all of the images. Your machine might seem super slow or just not even load all the files. 

Try using Photomechanic to be able to upload all of your large image files to then cull the ones you don’t need. Then you can save only the final images you want to go edit in your editing software.

This is a time saver because this app is much faster with large amounts of image files and will help you sort through the initial batch.

Save Time in Your Photography Business Tip #6: Premade Meals 

This hack is more of a life-hack than a photography business hack specifically. However, if you’re running a photography business you know how busy your schedule can get!

If you buy pre-made meals from the grocery store or even have meal kits premade delivered to your house weekly you can save a lot of time. No more meal planning, spending time cooking, grocery shopping, and they are all pre-portioned.

This hack can save you time both physically and mentally not having to think about what you’ll do for meals.

Save Time in Your Photography Business Tip #7: Use matte spray on reflective surfaces

If you are photographing products or surfaces that you don’t want to reflect light, try spraying them with a clear matte spray.

This will save you time in editing trying to get rid of those reflections and also in lighting because you won’t have to try to avoid those reflections.

Work smarter by utilizing time-saving hacks to be more productive in your photography business.

These tips are simple to apply and can save you so much time.

Want to improve your photography skills? Check out this comprehensive guide!

Which of these productivity hacks will you use in your business THIS WEEK?

Comment below!