We are all in the same boat – there never seem to be enough hours in the day! We are in the middle of wedding season, and it’s summer, and our three kiddos are out of school. I often get to the end of the day and think – where did the day go?! But what if I could share some time saving tips for photographers with you that could help you get back an entire day of your week?

Do I have your attention?!

Time Saving Tips for Photographers

Streamline Your Workflow

How many times have you sent out (basically) the same email to different clients?

Don’t re-write it every time, create a draft folder, and have a list of “most sent” email templates ready to send out the next time someone inquires about a specific service/product/event.

We don’t realize how much time emailing clients actually sucks up – having these draft emails ready to go has totally given me HOURS of my life back every week!

And this streamlining doesn’t just have to be for your emails – how can you apply that to how you interact with clients, administrative tasks that need to be done, etc?

Organization Nation

Have you ever gone to look for that “one picture” you took at that “one place” on that “one day”?

Yeah, us to!

It is very frustrating to need an image, and not know where exactly it is, so I am a big fan of naming your folders!

You can see from the screenshot below that I have my work broken down into several different folders. A year folder (currently 2017), then Family, Personal, and Business sub-folders, then individual sub-folders within that folder organizing sessions by type.

Bulk Blog

It can be very intimidating to bring up a new, blank blog post and feel the pressure of having to deliver killer content every day!

Take some time to pre-blog and build up a few “reserve” posts so that when it comes time to post your daily/weekly/monthly blog, you aren’t scrambling to figure out what you are going to blog!

And if you need ideas on what to blog (and when), check out this blog post outlining my blogging schedule!

Time is Money: Edit for Speed

I have no problem telling people – I am a lazy photo editor.

Most of us didn’t get into photography because we love spending hours upon hours editing in front of a computer screen. I think a lot of us can agree that this is one of the less fun parts of being a photographer.

In today’s digital age, it is too easy to have the “spray and pray” attitude: take lots of pictures, and one of them is bound to be good. But that inevitably leads to more work after the session because now you have to cull through 70 thousand photos (bleah!).

So for me, I would rather take my time and try to get the photos as technically correct as possible in camera. That way, when I actually bring the image into Lightroom or Photoshop, there is less time I have to spend editing each image.

Honestly, that is probably one of my top time saving tips I could share with you!

Gear Head

Here are some tech tips, in no particular order:

•  Invest in a fast computer (worth it’s weight in gold!), and consider investing in a second screen
• Max your computer’s memory, use an SSD drive, replace your DVD drive with an SSD drive (for laptops)
• Avoid your hard drives going over 50-70% full (performance really degrades after that)
• Hire someone to help you retouch images (this will totally give you your life back and isn’t as expensive as you might think!)
• Use auxiliary software such as SteerMouse, xGestures, Cinch, and SizeUp (this doesn’t speed up your photo editing, but everything else around it such as emailing and browsing)
• Use a gaming mouse and program some keyboard shortcuts into it

Need More Time Saving Tips?

We offer one on one mentoring, put together free events for photographers, and you can always { Contact Us } for anything you need – even if it’s just a friendly face to say you’re on the right track!