A place for you to learn, get inspired, and keep up to date with all things SmugMug and photography
This guide covers pre-shoot prep, shooting techniques, and efficient post-production.
Whether you’re being hired to shoot school portraits, local sports teams, or an important event, there’s one thing you need to master (besides your camera) for any high-volume photography assignment: your workflow. This means creating an efficient system for capturing, storing, editing, and delivering files.
High-volume photography involves dealing with a large number of images, so having an efficient system from start to finish will save you a ton of time and effort in the long run. This will result in a happier client, a better pay rate, and less headache for you. The following beginner’s guide offers an outline for developing an efficient system to offer bulk photo services to all kinds of clients.
It’s all about having a plan.
Think about the project in three stages, similar to making a movie: pre-production, production, and post production. Pre-production for high-volume photography includes anything that happens before the shoot, like emails, phone calls, research, and planning. Production is the shoot itself, using your camera equipment to create the images. Post-production is everything that happens after the shoot, including image selection, color correction, retouching, and delivery to the clients.
The best advice for photographers of all levels—but especially beginners offering bulk photo services for the first time—is that the amount of time you put into pre-production will pay off exponentially in the production and post-production phases. Skimping on prep can result in chaos on the shoot day, lots of wasted time during editing, and a confused client.
Pre-production - Before you ever pick up a camera for your shoot, you’ll want to have these items buttoned down:
Production - Here’s where the rubber meets the road. On the day of your shoot, be sure you’re on top of the following:
Post-production - After what is sure to be a flurry of activity on shoot day, here are some things to keep in mind after the fact:
While high-volume photography might sound intimidating, if you put effort into planning and developing an efficient workflow, you’ll be able to offer bulk photo services with a level of confidence that comes with knowing exactly what you’re doing. Producing and executing successful school photography and event photography shoots means happy clients, and happy clients will tell their friends and family about the incredible job you did, leading to more paid work for you. Win-win-win!
We’re always looking for new ways to power the business of photography. In the coming year, there are six key areas we’re focusing on that should give you and your business some jet fuel. Here’s what to look forward to in 2024 and 2025:
We consistently hear that capitalizing on recency and emotion is key to maximizing sales after a photo event. That’s why we’re planning to offer additional ways for you to upload and deliver faster. Whether it’s utilizing new technology like our recent integration with Fujifilm that allows you to upload to SmugMug straight from your camera, or improving the efficiency of your post-shoot workflow, our goal is to help you get your photos in front of your clients as fast as possible.
Marketing is more than just getting people in the front door (or to your homepage), and we’ve got some exciting developments in the works to help you keep your customers coming back for more. First on that list is our recent addition to the shopping experience: When your customers leave an unpurchased item in their shopping cart, we’ve built a helpful reminder email that’s currently driving up to 30% more sales. Next up: we’re working on solutions to increase your average order value (AOV) and let you engage more consistently with customers before, during, and after their shoot.
It’s hard to go anywhere these days without engaging in or overhearing a conversation about AI. Its rapid development is causing this exciting new technology to become foundational in our everyday lives. AI has many relevant applications in the photography world. One very clear example is in image recognition. As a customer arriving at a photo gallery with hundreds, sometimes thousands of images, finding the photos they’re most interested in can be a challenge. That’s why we’re planning new ways to help your customers quickly take advantage of AI and image recognition to find their photos in seconds, which leads to more sales for you.
We’ve already made some large strides in this area in the past year with a modern update to the product selection flow, improving your customer’s access to Packages and Gallery Downloads, providing the ability to purchase Packages on mobile devices, and partnering with a new print lab, Fujifilm. Planned future updates include support for even faster payment for customers via Apple Pay and Google Pay.
It should come as no surprise that in the world of photography, digital is now king. This doesn’t just refer to cameras - digital downloads are far-and-away the most popular purchase option now as customers seek more flexible ways to buy and share photos. Digital files present ease of sharing, flexibility for printing, and a low footprint way to preserve memories for a lifetime. Knowing this, there are a number of ways we plan to improve the experience related to the fulfillment of downloads. When someone downloads a photo from you, it should be easy and fast, no matter what device they’re on.
Understanding sales data can be crucial for growing your business. With over 20 years of sales data and experience under our belt, we plan to provide you more comprehensive insights. The goal is to empower you to make informed decisions, invest wisely in your business, identify profitable niches and optimize pricing strategies - all to ensure you maximize your revenue.
There is a balance for most photographers when it comes to selling photos while protecting their brand and photo aesthetic. Since your gorgeous images speak for themselves, it’s up to you to make sure the words you use on your portfolio website are speaking to a wide range of audiences.
While art patrons and loyal followers may want all the details about your photos—like inspiration, location, and how you Got the Shot—some consumers passing by may simply be looking for a perfect piece of art for their home or office. This second audience is often overlooked, and connecting with them is what we’ll be talking about today.
Photography shoppers often know which room of their home or office they want to decorate, but they may not be sure what to put there. Fortunately, you know just where your photos will look their best. By tweaking your gallery names (or creating specific, purpose-built galleries), you can guide customers to help streamline their decision-making—and ensure they get your best work for their needs.
For example, you could build galleries by room and function in the household: “Kitchen Compliments,” “Office Decor,” “Living Room Centerpieces,” etc.. As a bonus, you can even subdivide these by types of decor to give you an SEO boost and refine customer choices even further. (e.g. yourdomain.com/kitchens/farmhouse or yourdomain.com/kitchens/modern.)
Want to lead with aesthetics? Easy! Just swap the order and group your galleries first by style, then by room. Either way, you’ll be guiding your customers to the gold.
Once your customers arrive at a chosen photo, don’t stop there! Hit them with the power of words one more time by providing a tailor-made description of the photo and setting: “With this photo on your kitchen wall, you’ll practically hear the crash of waves and feel like you’re on vacation every morning.”
Many photo website builders like ours here at SmugMug allow for unique descriptions for categories, galleries, and individual photos—not to mention easy tagging for simple search. If you’re not already a customer, click here to try us for free.
Does your photography fit best in the documentary or adventure category? If so, your albums might be better suited to include straight-forward titles and descriptions, like the Who What and Where. We know getting creative with naming can be fun, but it’s important to remember your audience, and if you shoot strictly landscape, it might be smart to stick to location titles to better help your customers find what they’re looking for. It’s also a good way for potential customers to find you! For more information on clever ways to help customers find you using words, check out our guide to SEO for photographers.
Looking for some new ways to raise funds to support your camp facility and campers? Below you’ll find a few unique ways to keep campers engaged year-round, bring in additional revenue through the activities they already enjoy, and reach new potential campers and parents without breaking the bank on marketing.
Here are three ways to make money 365 days a year for your summer camp through photography:
Camping is about comradery, learning, and self-discovery. Help your campers remember the fun they had last summer while getting them excited about coming back next year.
When you use a photography platform like SmugMug, you’re able to create unlimited private and public photo galleries. This means your camp can create themed folders by cabin, club, theme, age groupings, and the season or year the camper attended.
From here your campers can upload their favorite memories to share with their friends and family back home. Parents can also buy digital downloads, prints, and countless keepsakes to cherish their campers’ summer memories.
Another great way to earn off-season revenue is to offer photo editing courses and workshops to campers throughout the year. With SmugMug’s unlimited photo storage, campers can easily upload their edited photos to galleries to show off their skills.
Contests and challenges are also a fun and easy way to get your campers excited. Put on a holiday-themed photo contest or create photo challenges for your campers, asking them to utilize an editing or shooting technique you taught in a course. Then you can offer the submitted photos in your camp’s SmugMug print shop for proud parents to buy.
For off-season camp revenue, sales are a no-brainer. Boost print and fun photo gift purchases by running a sale or two throughout the year. Make sure to have one around the holidays – it’s when most parents are looking for easy and thoughtful gift ideas.
By offering special discounts and promotions during key times of the year, you can turn heartwarming moments into lasting keepsakes. Remember to create a sense of urgency with limited-time sales: you can drive more revenue while keeping the camp spirit alive all year long. SmugMug makes it easy to manage these sales and offers a seamless purchasing experience, ensuring that your campers' memories are treasured forever.
The options are endless for ways you can use photography to make more money for your camp, especially during the offseason. You only need a bit of creativity—and a photo hosting, storage, and photo selling solution like SmugMug. Click here to try us free today.
Already followed our recommendations for creating your brand on your SmugMug site? If you're a Power or higher user, we've got another easy way for you to elevate your site's branding. No more boring 404 pages—dress them up with a dash of your personality. It's a simple way to let visitors know they're in good hands.
Customizing your built-in system pages is a subtle touch that can add a bit more character to your brand and, with some clever SEO writing for your SmugMug site, might even give your traffic a little boost. Ready to make your site uniquely yours?
Here's a concise list of system pages you can tweak to match your style. These pages won't appear in your Organizer, so save this reference or keep our handy help link nearby for future styling sessions.
To see these pages on your site now, replace “nickname” in the links below with your SmugMug nickname.
Tip: Add a friendly text box to ease visitor frustration and encourage them to reach out for help.
Tip: This page comes already linked in our ready-made designs; it’s great for adding content boxes to make browsing easier, like the keyword cloud, map, and timeline search.
Tip: Consider using a keyword-cloud content block on your Browse page to give visitors a more visual way to explore your photos.
Tip: Add a title/text block that invites visitors to contact you for password assistance.
Tip: The search-box content block is also available for any page on your site.
Some core content on a few pages is untouchable. For instance, the password field on a password page is firmly set. How can you tell? When you mouse over them in the Customizer, a little lock icon will appear. (Check it out above.) Don't worry; there's still plenty of room for customization magic elsewhere.
Once your pages are perfect, don't keep them hidden. Add links to them in your site's navigation to make browsing a breeze for anyone stopping by to admire your photos. (Not needed for the 404 and password pages—they’re covered automatically!)
With those links in place, you've finished creating a fully branded experience across your entire site.
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Have examples of creative system pages you’ve created? Share them with us on Facebook, X, or Instagram.
Photographers, are you ready to elevate your branding strategy? Let's dive into watermarks and discover how to leverage them effectively on SmugMug.
First things first, what exactly are watermarks? Watermarks are customized graphics or text that you can overlay onto your photos. They serve as a visual stamp, asserting your ownership and brand identity. You can apply them to all your photos on SmugMug, but we never place them on your original files. This means your watermark will never appear on downloads, prints, or keepsake items clients purchase from your galleries. But they travel with your photos online as part of our secure photo sharing.
Watermarks are available only to Portfolio and Pro account holders on SmugMug. Power users can use external programs like Lightroom for watermarking, but this means your original file will contain the watermark so it will also appear on anything purchased from your site.
Why bother with watermarks? Beyond adding a professional touch, watermarks reinforce your brand presence. Whether you're selling your photos or showcasing your portfolio, they ensure your name remains prominently associated with your images. And once you set up watermarks in your gallery settings, SmugMug automatically applies them to new photos as you upload.
Ready to craft your signature stamp? You can create text-based watermarks directly in SmugMug.
If you want to step it up a notch—say, using your logo as a watermark—fire up your preferred image-editing software (such as Photoshop) and unleash your creativity. We recommend starting with a transparent PNG file of around 1000 x 2000 pixels for optimal versatility. Apply it the same way you would a text-based watermark, but select Image as the watermark type instead. You’ll be prompted to upload your new watermark and then can adjust its opacity and location until you’re happy.
Stuck? We have a comprehensive step-by-step tutorial about how to make a sample watermark file on our help pages.
Navigate to your Selling Tools tab to access all your branding tools, including watermarks. This centralized hub allows for easy management, editing, and removal of your watermark collection.
To apply your watermarks to your photos, look in your gallery settings under the Photo Protection tab. Or drop in to the Organizer to watermark several galleries at once!
Need to refresh your branding or make adjustments? No sweat. Simply upload your updated watermark, configure its settings, and apply the changes within your gallery settings.
Addressing the perennial dilemma of landscape versus portrait orientation, consider experimenting with square or corner watermarks for a cohesive aesthetic across all image types.
Think of them as siblings—watermarks for your digital portfolio, printmarks for your physical prints. Both serve as customizable branding elements, tailored to enhance your visual identity, but only printmarks show up on the images your clients order. And printmarks, unlike watermarks, are limited in size and where they can appear on the photo.
Great ideas for printmarks include event dates, your handwritten signature, team names, and graduation years.
Strike a balance between visibility and subtlety to ensure your watermarks complement rather than distract from your captivating images.
Dive in to SmugMug’s built-in watermarking tool and embark on your branding journey with confidence! And remember, our dedicated Support Heroes are on standby to assist you every step of the way: click here to reach out.
Now go forth and leave your mark on the world of photography!
SmugMug users photograph everything: be it weddings, cats, races, mountains, architecture, or cat races, there’s room for you on SmugMug. And we’ve got great features built in to every account type to help take what you’re shooting to the next level. Here are a few recommendations for SmugMug features that can boost your site, depending on what you love to shoot.
If your adrenaline gets going when the competition does, you probably have a number of galleries with exciting photos. Stay in the game by staying organized and ensuring every subject in every photo can be found.
If you’re putting your business online, there’s a few things we recommend to help impress your client base. Whether your profession is photography, graphic design, architecture, or something else—SmugMug’s great for businesses of all types.
It may be tough to keep track of which time zone you’re in, but you can always remember where you took those photos with a few SmugMug features.
Stay closer to home? Photos capture important memories for you and your family, but you don’t want those photos falling into the wrong hands. Your favorite memories should also be easy to find for the feels.
Social media is great, but you never know how long your content will be relevant online. Build one forever home on SmugMug and use it to share to all your social-media outlets.
We hope no matter what you shoot or how long you’ve been with SmugMug you’ve discovered something that’ll give your site that extra oomph. What features have you made the most of?
Pictures tell stories, but sometimes the story is bigger than the frame: crazy moments, behind-the-scenes secrets, you-had-to-be-there experiences. A photo blog offers the perfect opportunity to share those stories with the world. But managing another site or customizing it to match your main site is a tedious task. So why not keep it simple and keep your blog where your photos are—on SmugMug?
This step-by-step guide will walk you through everything you need to set up a photo blog on your SmugMug site.
First, you’ll want to create a folder to contain all your future blog entries and name it something simple, like “Blog.” This will not only help you keep things organized, it will also give your blog a shorter, readable URL. This makes it easier for your visitors to remember, and it can also boost your search-engine optimization (SEO).
You’ll need a place to upload the photos you’ll be sharing in each blog post, but you don’t want this gallery to live within your blog folder or else the gallery itself will show up on your blog landing page. We recommend naming the gallery something that relates to your blog, such as “Blog Photos,” and using the Organizer tree to drag the gallery close to your blog folder. This will help keep things organized as you add more content to your blog in the future.
If you don’t want this gallery to be discoverable in your site’s navigation, change its accessibility setting to Unlisted. This will keep the gallery itself hidden from view but allow the photos within it to be seen when you add them to a new blog post. Have a Portfolio or higher plan? Encourage more sales of your blog-worthy photos by making the gallery Public instead and creating a pricelist for it.
Now that you’ve got your new gallery, it’s time to fill it with photos! Upload photos for each blog post as you go, or upload several photos at once for blogs to come in the future. For an extra SEO boost, title and keyword your photos after you upload them.
Now you’re ready to blog! Create a page within your blog folder for a new post and select from one of the available layouts to kick things off with ease. Want complete control? Choose the Custom page option for full reign.
We recommend making the page Public and filling in all the page-settings information for the best SEO, but at a minimum you’ll want to enter an eye-catching title. Your title will automatically create a custom URL for the page, but you can change the URL to anything you want. Keeping it readable and informative will help search engines and potential visitors get a great idea of what they’re in for before they even click the link. And if you add a feature image, a thumbnail will appear alongside your blog’s search results.
Now that you’re all set up, it’s time to design your blog. Navigate to your new page and open the Customizer to reveal all the goodies available for your blog post. Drag and drop different content blocks onto the page to craft your perfect post. These are just a few ideas on how to use the blocks to bring out the best of your blog:
Photos, slideshow, or carousel.
Show off what the people came for: your photos! You’ve got several options in the Photos category to display your images in style. Drop in Single Photo blocks to maximize the size of your work and fill your page with large, beautiful images, or drag in a Slideshow or Carousel block for a more compact display. Want your visitors to be able to fill their screens with your work? Buy a photo? You can choose how you want your photos to react when clicked: open large in a lightbox, take the viewer to a gallery or different URL, or keep it as is.
Text, HTML, and CSS.
Use Text content blocks to fill in the story between your photos. For additional styling, use the HTML and CSS blocks for more control over how text and other content appears on the page, like we did for the sample blog at the top of this article.
Title.
Title content blocks are a great way to break up text on the page and give your visitors strong entry points into the story behind your photos. Use them as subheads to chop up larger blocks of text or highlight photo captions. We recommend using at least one at the very top of the page for the title of your blog post.
Separator.
We love this underrated feature for creating clear boundaries and visual breathing room. You’ll find it under the Design category of your customization options, perfect for giving your page a polished look.
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For a finishing touch, don’t forget to invite your readers to join the conversation!
Comments.
Even if a conversation is happening on social media, it can be nice to give your visitors the option to leave direct comments on your blog post. Add the Comments block to give fans one more way to communicate with you. We offer a moderation option so you can review all comments before they’re posted to your site. To enable this feature, visit your Account Settings > Stats > Comments section and click on the Details button. You’ll see a checkbox in the upper right of the following page to require comment approval.
Photos are in. Story is written. Design is polished to perfection. Your post is ready for its debut! Once you’re ready, click the green Done button in the upper right-hand corner and select Publish Now. Still unsure? Try the Preview button instead to get a glimpse of what your visitors will see before the post goes live. Or if you’ve written posts for future release, choose the Save for Later option after you click Done. You can come back to the post later and publish whenever it’s time.
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Ready to start your own photo blog? Share it with us on Facebook, X, or Instagram! Or if you’ve gotten stuck somewhere, our Support Heroes are standing by.
Optimizing your photography website for SEO is simple. Whether you’re trying to sell more prints, attract new portrait or events clients, or simply get more eyes on your work, you can do it by following a few simple steps.
Content is what search engines use to identify what's on your page. Although some search engines like Google use natural-language processing to try to understand what each word means, the more specific in text you can be the better.
Your easiest SEO win starts here: go through your website and find headers, page titles, and blocks of body copy, and review them for simplicity and clarity.
Instead of saying, “The stunning skies over mountains in Utah’s national parks,” in a gallery description, maybe say, “Art prints of the mountains and sky in Zion National Park.” Both will tell a visitor similar information, but the second version is easier for a search engine to understand, making your page that much more likely to be found.
As you’re reviewing your content, also look for opportunities to build internal links. These are the linked words or phrases on most websites that help guide a user to the information they’re looking for. For example, your “Art prints of the mountains and sky in Zion National Park” might add an internal link to “Art prints” that leads to a catalog page, where users can browse the products you offer.
The keywords you use for these links help your visitors find the pages they’re looking for, and search engines use them to determine what each page is about. But be careful not to link the same words to two separate pages. This will cause confusion for search engines and potentially your customers.
Search engines will also look at the amount of links pointing to each page on your website. The more links you assign to a specific page, the more important a search engine will think it is. This gives that page more priority, so make sure your main galleries, signature shots, and business-generating pages are linked to from as many places on your site as possible.
Just like the copy on the page and internal links, wording matters on your images and galleries. Naming your images includes the actual name of the file, the title, the caption, and keywords.
These elements are used both by browser helpers for people with disabilities and search engines to understand what the image is about. A lack of image titles, keywords, and captions makes it harder for a search engine to understand what the image is, so the search engine will likely choose another photographer’s work to display.
Your words matter here as well, especially regarding genre and location. If you're selling a print of The Vessel in NYC, name your photo, “fine-art photo of The Vessel building in NYC.” If you're a sports team photographer, name a photo, “Soccer team group photo New Orleans.” Including specificity in your naming and keywording will go a long way toward getting your work found.
The naming and structure of your galleries also contributes to your site’s SEO. Start with the overall theme on a folder, then add niche galleries underneath.
For example, you could create a folder called Assateague Island Photos that houses all your favorite shots from this specific place. Inside this folder you could build galleries like “Assateague Beach Photos,” “Assateague Island Wildlife,” and “Camping Photos on Assateague Island.” If you make wildlife a folder, too, you could even build subgalleries for the island's famous inhabitants, like wild horses.
By naming your folders and galleries, you ensure your visitors and search engines both have a clear understanding of what's on a given page. As you add copy and internal links, you’re also providing easy navigation to help people find the exact shots they’re looking for.
Tip: Don't erase your EXIF data. Google and other search engines can use this information to determine where a photo was taken and verify the photo is actually of the area claimed in the title, filename, and caption. When uploading to SmugMug, we keep your EXIF data intact by default.
Google's My Business is a free service that helps Google understand what you do. You’ll want to create and verify your account, then make sure you fill out every field possible when registering for this service.
Make sure to define the area you serve (statewide? A few counties? Just in the city? Be specific!), list out the services you offer, and add hours of operation.
The more complete your answers are, and the more often you update your listings, the more chances you have for your business and photography website to show up in local search results like “portrait photographer in Tulsa” or on a map as someone is looking for “holiday photographers near me.”
For that second example, you can amplify your SEO by building a dedicated holiday page on your website, then updating your My Business listings with your new service, and even a discount if you’re a SmugMug Pro subscriber.
Once you have content that defines your pages, your images are named and keyworded, and your account on Google My Business is complete, you need to build what SEO experts call authority. This is how trustworthy or reputable your site is considered and can be done through citations and backlinks.
A backlink is a link from an external website to your SmugMug website. It’s important to make sure these links are naturally occurring and come from a trustworthy website like your local news, trade publications, other businesses, or niche blogs.
Often, professionals looking to increase their SEO will collaborate with each other, trading blogs and features to drive traffic to each of their sites while building authority. This can also be done through PR outreach to local publications and news outlets when you have something big to announce!
For example, if you’re hosting a workshop on wedding photography, you could ask a wedding blogger to give you a shout-out on their blog, reach out to venues and vendors you partner with and ask them to list you as a resource, and let the local news know about your event.
Just be sure you’re not spamming links to your website on forums, blogs, or irrelevant websites—these will get you penalized by search engines. If you look for natural fits for your photography, you’re likely to find lots of opportunities to connect.
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These four simple steps will help you get found by search engines and customers alike, so get to it and good luck!
