What to do off the wedding season?
Wedding photography, unlike other types of photography, is a seasonal business, as most of the orders come from spring to autumn. For many photographers it is a hard time as it brings no earnings, yet it also has some advantages. Off the season one may rearrange his/her business and spend more time promoting his/her own brand.
A list of ideas of what you can do, below:
1. Ensure greater visibility on the web, publish your works in new places. When organizing the wedding of their dreams, the brides seek inspiration on many popular blogs, such as: https://junebugweddings.com/wedding-blog/ and other similar. Publication of finished materials (reportages / engagement sessions photos / wedding sessions) in such places is a perfect opportunity to present yourself to a wider audience. It is about the people from outside of the community which you have managed to gather on your profiles in social media. If you only show your photos on your own blog – you only reach people that already know you.
In my view, this game is about a continuous acquisition of new fans who would later become my clients and invest money in my photos. It is worth to use Google to search for wedding blogs on which it would be good to publish your works. Look through first 10 search results for the entry “wedding blog” in search of pages that match your aesthetics.
https://www.openlearning.com/u/barnes-qdj9qt/blog/WhatToDoOffTheWeddingSeason/
2. Organize your own blog entries
Read the posts you uploaded some time ago. Start from the oldest ones (perhaps they contain some typos). Maybe some photos do not longer match the image you want to promote on the web? The overview of presented photos is particularly important as most couples will review your photos “cool”. So far, you are just another photographer from the Internet for them.
Remember, that at the first stage (those potential clients) had not (yet) fallen in love with your work. I bet some of your posts were made in a hot-head mode. That’s normal. The photographers have an emotional attitude to their photos. When you finish that – check the archives too. It is quite possible that there are some stories among the unpublished ones that deserve public presentation. It is a good idea to refresh the old posts by re-working the photos (if you think that you have made progress in this respect recently) or add new captions to old photos.
3. Overview of the tools you use
During the season there is no time to search for novelties and test alternative tools. Who does not know that: “it’s September and the clients from June did not get their photos yet”.
Instead of watching another series on Netflix you may look the Internet through to find better or cheaper solutions. That’s exactly how I found Photonesto (www.photonesto.com), a stunning gallery of photographs which unlike the others, does not require subscriptions and costs me absolutely nothing out of season. Moreover, the tool itself is fully professional and really easy to use.
That is why I highly recommend you to visit their webpage, www.photonesto.com. If it comes to other tools worth recommending then check the Photomechanic (https://home.camerabits.com/), a tool for super fast photo selection.
4. Sending the photos out
Today, every single company has a fan page on Facebook and Instagram. We all need a big number of photos. A photographer has plenty of them. Choose some favorite companies
from the last season and send them some shots from the weddings on which you had worked together.
5. Joint photo session
You are usually shy. You are wondering how to make some contacts with great wedding industry companies. The easiest method would be to organize a joint photo session. The
photographs that you take would then go forth. That would be something like the legendary “2 in 1”. You will make some new connections and at the same time you will promote your
photos in a viral style.
6. Wedding fairs
Perhaps it is worth to log out from the Internet for some time? Wedding fairs may be a perfect place to acquire a large number of customer in a short time. There is no better
occasion to perform a training based on the conversations with the clients. During just one day you will take several dozens of them.
7. Meetings with other photographers
Meeting other people working in the same industry may be inspiring. The network among the photographers may be of great importance in the future. There are plenty of opportunities in which it turns out to be useful. It is a good idea to take part in various types of photographers meetings or other events organized by large companies offering the equipment.
8. Take part in workshops / conferences
I am sure you already do it. Apart from the knowledge itself – taking part in wedding photography courses means a large dose of energy for the upcoming wedding season. The best ideas are born while listening to other photographers. In recent years, the training offer has been really extensive. Sometimes it’s even hard to chose.
