In order to grow your photography business, you need to get beyond bad habits. In this video, I share six bad habits I see photographers making in their businesses. Once you understand these bad habits, you can knock them down and move past them with education and tools.
Transcription was done by Descript‘s automated transcription services which means it’s an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain spelling, grammar, and other errors, and is not a substitute for watching the video.
Let’s talk about some bad habits that photographers have when it comes to their photography businesses. Hey, this is Scott Wyden Kivowitz, a storyteller with a camera and talking about all the things photographers like you and I are thinking about in this video, we’re going to be talking about bad habits that so many photographers have when it comes to their businesses, but before we get started, click that subscribe button below right now because I published new videos every Monday and Thursday whenever possible. You don’t want to miss it and karate kick, they notification bell so you’re notified when the next video goes live. What happens if you’re out in the field and you’re making photos and all of a sudden you just, that’s why I get a macro to a warranty on all of my equipment. Thank you Mack worldwide warranty for partnering with me on this video.
If you need a warranty for your photography equipment, check out Mack worldwide warranty, which actually covers accidental damage like that one bad habit, we all have them. Bad habits like, like not formatting your memory card before you start a new session or not backing up your memory cards after a session or not having proper workflows for what you do with your memory cards after you are done with a session or not having good workflows for the editing process. There are so many bad habits that photographers have, including sticking your elbow up, which we all do. Check out this video for the proper way to hold a camera. So many bad habits. We all have them. We all do them. Sometimes we learn from them. Sometimes we don’t. Hopefully if you’ve ever had a backup disaster you’ve learned from that mistake, but let’s talk about some bad habits in your photography business.
The first is procrastination. This is something that so many people suffer with. This is basically, instead of you editing your client’s work and delivering it, you’re doing something else like watching television or listening to a podcast or doing anything but getting the work done. If you weren’t productivity techniques, just Google it and you’ll find a whole bunch of different techniques to improve your productivity. But one thing that I can tell you is to close the door, put on headphones and get to work. Just ignore everything else. Even if you have to tell your family will leave me alone. I really want to get one of those on-air lights for outside my office. Wouldn’t that be really cool? Every time I hit record, all of a sudden the on-air light goes on. That would, that would be cool. Number two is the lack of schedule.
You know, you’ve got to do all these things and you’ve got to plan your session. You’ve got to do your session, you have to edit your session, you have to deliver the session and so on and so on and so on. If you don’t have a good schedule, then you are going to be just a cluster of a mess and I recommend getting a good schedule. Using something like Google calendar is a very basic and free way to do it. If you use square to accept payments from clients, you can now use square appointments for free and connected to Google calendar and accept appointments for freeing and have all of the tied in with invoicing and everything. It’s kind of streamlined so well if you want, if you need a square account, just click the link in the description below and you can use my referral link.
I do get a little tiny cut of that if you sign up, but it’s free for you to sign up and try it. So check out square. The next is the lack of direction for your business. If you got started doing portrait work and now you’re doing still life products and then you want to go and do something like, I don’t know, cars or airplanes or whatever it is, you don’t have a direction for your business. So you need to come up with what you actually want to do with your business, with your photography business, what you actually want to photograph for a living, and that will help everything else of all these other bad habits will help. Coming up with a direction will help you come up with a game plan for everything and by the way, coming up with a direction for your business and will help streamline your photography website which can help you increase your leads and then in turn your customers.
Now another bad habit which if you’re just starting out, I totally understand, is bad equipment. You need quality equipment to make quality photos. Yes, you can get by with a very low-end consumer base, digital SLR and a Kit Lens and you could do that for some time I been there, we’ve all been there. It’s okay, but when your business is growing, you need to kick it up a level. You need to have better quality equipment. The camera you’re using is not as important as the lens or using the glass is the most important part. If you’re going to invest in something as your business grows, invest in better glass. For example, if you’re going to use a 16 to 35 Lens, that’s a f/3.5 to 5.6 lens that comes with your camera and you can upgrade to something like an f four straight lens or an f 2.8 straight lens or even a private land that’s a 1.4 you are going to see drastic improvements in the sharpness of your, of your photographs, both in the center of your subject and the edges.
You’re also gonna see better bokeh, better depth of field and so on, better color rendering, all because of better class number five is not having a website in this day and age, every single business on this planet should have a website. If you don’t have a website for your photography business, you’re missing out. Do not use Facebook as your website. Do not use Instagram as your website. There is something called content ownership. If you click on description, the link below, there’s an article that I put together, content ownership, definitely check that out. Make sure you have a website. If you want to listen to a podcast all about photography websites, check out the WordPress photography podcast with me as your host. Now I’ve mentioned about procrastination and then being productive and when it comes to putting away the procrastination and becoming productive, this is the next tip.
Take breaks. You need breaks. I have workflows for everything. Everything in my life I have workflows for and when it comes to making the videos, I tend to batch produce my videos. I batch record them at batch, edit them my batch, upload them in batch, schedule them and so on. In fact, the last three videos that you have watched have all been recorded on the same day. You might notice that the shirt is the same. Two of them were done at my desk and this one is done in my studio set. And while I’m very productive, I need to take breaks. So when I’m done with this, I’m going to take a break. So there are six, six bad habits that photographers make in their photography businesses. There are much more. I would love to hear from you. What mistake are you see photographers making their photography businesses. So leave a comment and share with me those mistakes that you see. Thanks for watching. Thanks for subscribing. See you in the next video.
