If you like dealing with children of all ages, doing a family session is usually one of the most beautiful reports that a photographer can do throughout his professional career and if he has also seen the protagonists grow up through different photo shoots, even better. But when it comes to managing this type of reportage, a series of problems usually arise for a family photographer that we want to help you solve today.

As the most difficult problems for a family photographer to solve are usually more related to the management of the business than to the execution of the photographic reportage itself, today we want to give you a hand and shed some light on all those obstacles that you may encounter in your career as a professional family photographer.

Do you want us to help you solve the problems of a family photographer?

What are the biggest problems for a family photographer?

When organising a family session, the photographer has to gain the trust of the children, look for a suitable location or setting, empathise with the families and be original when photographing each moment that the different members of the family will offer. If you really like this discipline, with a good training and a bit of practice, you will have no problem in being a fantastic family photographer.

The problems for a family photographer come when he has to learn to manage his time with clients, find ways to offer a more professional service and try to find more time to devote to expanding his photographic services.

Next, we are going to give shape to 6 of the problems of a family photographer that can cause you the most problems and then we will show you 2 business solutions from Arcadina that will help you to solve all of them in one fell swoop.

1# It’s a session that saves me during the slower months but I can’t take the time to meet with clients to request a photo shoot

This is one of the most classic and common problems for a family photographer. As a general rule, this type of professionals usually have other types of main reportage, such as weddings, communions or Christmas sessions, for example, which they spend a large part of the year on. For the rest of the year, they usually offer children and family sessions from which they also make a good profit.

The problem is when, for example, in the middle of the communion campaign, families call to ask to book a family photo shoot. What usually happens in these cases is that the photographer finds it difficult to combine the strong campaigns of reportage with the attention of the clients.

2# I find it difficult to balance their schedules with mine

A problem closely related to the first one, especially when dealing with families with young children where schedules are very inflexible in many cases. Usually, in order to schedule a session, the family has to consult the parents’ agendas on several occasions in order to fit their schedules with the photographer’s schedule.

This problem boils down to having to attend to the same client several times, either via WhatsApp, email or a phone call to make a single appointment.

3# I spend a lot of time in my studio dealing with clients who come to select photographs

If the photographer does not have a ready-made online gallery service for clients, after each shoot he or she will again have to make time in his or her schedule for families to come and view and in many cases select the images.

As well as being detrimental to the photographers’ time management, this also disadvantages the clients who will have to travel back to the studio to view the images, with the inconvenience of having to look at their diaries again and find time for the new appointment.

4# I can’t get families to buy extra photos from me

When it comes to meeting clients and showing them the photos, clients are often already predisposed not to spend more money on more products. And in case the photographer shows them the images through an online gallery, if the system does not favour the quick purchase of a larger number of photos, the photographer will be left without that extra income that comes in handy.

If you are not a salesperson or your online sales system does not make the process easy for customers, you will miss out on the opportunity to make more profit from every photo shoot you do.

5# If I deliver pictures on USB or Disk, customers complain that sometimes they fail

If you are one of those who still deliver the photographs to your clients on a USB device or Disk, you will already know that sometimes these devices can fail and in those cases the clients usually get a bad impression of your work, even if they love the photographs.

To avoid this type of problem and to update their business to a more computerised type of audience, other colleagues often use external platforms to send images but in many cases the clients do not know how to use them or the link expires and they have to send it again. Again, the photographer will be spending more time than he should be spending with a client.

6# When I have finished my work and time goes by, I am asked for copies for the family and I spend a lot of time looking for the originals

And to finish with this brief compilation of problems of a family photographer, there is the case where the photographer has already finished the job and after a few months the clients contact him again to ask for prints for the family.

In these cases again the photographer has to spend precious time searching for this client’s files, selecting them and sending them back to him.

All the problems of a family photographer can be solved in Arcadina

All these problems of a family photographer could be summarised in 2 main ones. To get more income from each report that is carried out and to save as much time as possible in dealing with a client so that it is much more profitable.

At Arcadina we offer a series of business solutions that help photographers to create a professional photography business on the one hand and manage their time more effectively on the other.

On this occasion we would like to highlight the Booking services and the private galleries with multiple options.

Booking service for your clients to make their own reservations

With the service that you can hire from Arcadina de Booking, a large part of the time you spend managing clients will be freed up so that you can work on new sessions, offer a greater volume of reports or simply take a break.

In this booking calendar service, customers who enter your website will be able to choose a photo shoot, for example a family photo shoot, see what the shoot consists of, check the booking price and the total cost of the shoot and book, if they are interested, the day and time for the shoot, leaving the booking price you have stipulated paid.

All these arrangements will be made by the users themselves and we assure you that they will love the idea of being able to choose a date and time without having to contact you.

Now that you know what this booking calendar service is all about, let’s take a closer look at some of the advantages you can benefit from if you implement it on your website.

Use an online booking system to dedicate your time to other sessions

We already told you about it a moment ago but it is very important to emphasise it again. When a photography business starts to roll, there comes a time when a single person can not devote himself to do the photo shoots, edit them, serve customers, be present in the networks, create advertising, maintain the website, etc. When you reach this point it is important to either seek help from another colleague or implement a series of tools that free you from performing certain tasks.

With the Booking service you will be able to put all the photographic reports you want for sale so that your clients can make the bookings and leave the payment made without you having to invest a single minute of your time in it. Can you imagine the number of tasks you can put in place if you implement this service on your photography website?

Thanks to the booking calendar, your customers will be able to pick the date and time they are most interested in without bothering you

This is another advantage that favours your clients but that in the long run will benefit you as well. As we have already mentioned, and if you are a family photographer you will know this very well, balancing the schedule of 2 working parents with the children’s extracurricular activities and other family events is chaos. A chaos that will end up splashing you when the mum calls you to make an appointment for her session after giving it a lot of thought and you have that slot taken.

This is more common than you might think and sometimes it takes at least 3 phone calls to book an appointment for a photo shoot in order to find the ideal time for both of you. However, if you have implemented the Booking service, this problem will not happen again because the families will have access to your calendar of appointments at all times and will be able to choose the one they are most interested in comfortably from their homes and at any time of the day or night.

In this article we explain in more detail all the advantages that you can get if you implement any of the Booking plans that we offer you in Arcadina.

>> Want to improve your sales? Discover the 5 advantages of Booking

Private galleries for clients with multiple options to increase your revenues

Within our Business plans (client area and online shop) there is a business solution that is very interesting and that fits like a glove to solve some of the problems of a family photographer. This is the multiple galleries where customers will be able to: view, select, download and buy the images they like the most from their photo shoot.

This is a fantastic option so that you can once again save yourself time and your clients will have the perception that your service is much more professional and up to date with the times.

As we have done with the Booking service, we are now going to detail some of the advantages of offering your clients a series of private galleries with multiple options.

Save time after the session by sending a multi-gallery to customers

This is one of the biggest advantages that private galleries offer you, especially if you create them with multiple options. Because once you send it to your clients, they will be in charge of sending you the selection of photos, downloading the images and buying hard copies if they want to. All this without sending you hundreds of emails or meeting them several times in your photo studio.

Throughout this process, you will receive an email with all the information that you can manage in the time you have set aside for this type of task.

Boost sales with private gallery options

Another of the advantages of multiple galleries is that as a client visualises the photographs of his photographic report, he will be able to buy copies or increase the number of images of his order in a very comfortable way.

In addition, at Arcadina we have recently launched the option of creating a complete download gallery, so that the customer does not have to go photo by photo to buy the images, but can select the entire gallery in a single click.

>> Arcadina Help: Sale of a complete gallery with digital download

Within the multiple galleries and in the rest of the galleries as well, you will be able to include pricing modalities that will favour a greater purchase of images, such as unit prices, quantity prices, linear prices or scaled prices.

Private galleries are the best method of image submission

When it comes to looking much more professional and current in your work, it is not the same to offer the client a USB device that may fail, the client may lose it, etc. than to send them a link to their private gallery. This method of sending is becoming more widespread among photographers and, in addition to being much more practical for both photographers and your clients, it raises the cache of your services by offering a private space with an aesthetic integrated into your website where clients will be able to view and interact with the images.

If you want to use a good working system, go for private galleries

Another advantage of multiple galleries and any other type of private gallery is the order and security when storing your work. With this method you can forget about uploading your images to a paid cloud account or to an external drive that can fail at any time.

Thanks to this type of galleries, if at any time a former customer contacts you again to ask you a question or request a photograph, you will be able to find it very quickly and solve your customer’s doubts through the galleries page of your shop and the Customer Area of the panel.

Would you like to solve the problems of a family photographer?

As you can see, one of the biggest problems for a family photographer is to make each session even more profitable and save management time with clients. At Arcadina, thanks to the Booking and Business plans, which include multiple galleries, these problems will be solved in one fell swoop. If you haven’t already done so, to solve the problems of a family photographer, the best thing to do is to start today with Arcadina.

To end this article we are going to share with you the interview with the photographer Juan Carlos Albuera, from Albuera Morales Fotografía.

>> “My website is an online showcase where I can display my work in an elegant, simple and affordable way”, Juan Carlos Albuera

And finally, we would like to ask you a question about the problems of a family photographer. If you also suffer from any of them, tell us which one do you find the most difficult to solve and why? We would love to read about your experiences in the comments.

Headache for your photography business? Take an Arcadina

Headache for your photography business? Take an Arcadina

Fulfil your dream of becoming a professional photographer with the help of our business solutions. Now you can create a website and business for free for 14 days with no commitment of permanence.

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