So you recently started a photography business and it’s taking off! You’re booking all these weddings or sessions and things are going great. Then you shoot those gigs and find yourself buried under a pile of never-ending editing! Staying caught up with editing and feeling like you are spending your whole life behind a computer screen is something that I know a lot of photographers struggle with. But what if I told you that with a little bit of fine-tuning and discipline, you could streamline your workflow to where you could finish an entire wedding in one day?!

When I first started my business, I knew that having a fast turn around time was something that was important to me. I didn’t want weddings and sessions to gather dust as they waited to be edited and I wanted to be able to go above and beyond what my clients expected! So over time, I perfected and streamlined my workflow so that I can now cull AND edit an entire wedding in ONE day!! I know it might seems crazy, but I promise that you can do it too! Here are some tips and tricks that allow me to get through my weddings and sessions quickly! 

1. PUT IT IN YOUR CALENDAR
This may seem like a silly tip, but I promise it’s important and will make it so much easier to get through your weddings and sessions as quickly as possible. When I have a wedding on a Saturday, I know that I want to have it finished and blogged by Wednesday. And I know that in order to do that, I need to have at least ONE full day to do that. So that means that I am not scheduling any sessions, outings, etc on that following Monday or Tuesday. If I can keep both Monday and Tuesday free, that’s even better! If I weren’t intentional about scheduling that time to cull, edit and blog these weddings, I would be pulling my hair out trying to get it done around everything else I have going on! Scheduling days to get it done helps me to focus just on that task and get it done! 

2. PHOTOMECHANIC
If you are a photographer, Photomechanic is a MUST! There is simply no better tool out there that will allow you to cull through those big RAW files with such speed! It would probably take me 5 times as long to cull a wedding if I was using something other than Photomechanic. For example, if you are culling in Lightroom, each photo takes a few seconds to load before you can see the non-pixelated version. In Photomechanic, there is literally no wait time- it is instant! So when you save even just 3 seconds on each image for a wedding where you are culling through 4000 images, that’s over 3 hours saved!! So do yourself a favor and start using Photomechanic for your culling! You can even try it for free for 30 days! 

3. CREATE A CUSTOM EDITING PRESET
Now that you’ve culled those images at lightning speed and imported them in Lightroom (or whatever editing software you use), it’s time to edit! As you edit each image, you’ll probably notice that you are applying very similar edits to each image. So why not save time and create a preset! This way you just have to click that one button to apply those same edits and just tweak as needed! This will help you to get through your editing MUCH faster! 

4. MAKE DEADLINES
Being your own boss is great, but one downside is the lack of accountability and deadlines. When you don’t have that person to report to, it can be hard to stay motivated! And I know that with most of the people that have a hard time turning images around quickly, it’s more due to a lack motivation than a lack of time! I know that motivation is certainly hard to muster for myself sometimes too! So by setting my own deadlines, it has made it much easier to get through my weddings and sessions quickly because I feel like I have no choice but to get it done! For years I have been blogging my weekend weddings on the following Wednesday. So it is now at the point where my clients and followers expect those weddings to be on the blog on Wednesday. So they are now acting like my boss and holding me accountable to get them done! So if you don’t have a schedule like this for your weddings or sessions, I would definitely recommend trying to set a specific amount of time that the photos need to be done and blogged by so that you can have that extra motivation to get them done!

I hope these tips will help you to streamline your own workflow and get out from under that pile of photos to be edited! Here are some other posts you may find helpful too! 

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DIY Styling Boards

7 Steps To Take Your Business Full Time

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