Every few days, at least, someone will ask, “How’s the photography business going?” Inevitably, I’ll reply something along the lines of, “It’s keeping me busy.” After a while, it became easy for me to predict the next question: “So you’re shooting a lot of weddings?”

The answer is yes and no. Because Danny and I are shooting weddings, absolutely — but it isn’t shooting the weddings that is keeping me busy day to day. When people hear a wedding photographer is “busy,” they naturally assume she’s shooting on a daily basis. I thought the same thing before I turned photography into my job. But that assumption isn’t actually correct. We’re shooting the number of weddings we wanted for 2013 — in the mid-teens — but I’ve got plenty of work to do even when I’m not shooting. On any given day, I’ll be working on:

• Emailing, calling, and meeting with clients and prospective clients
• Contacting vendors we’re working with at weddings to coordinate our plans
• Culling and editing images from weddings and portrait sessions
• Blogging, blogging, blogging
• Filing monthly sales tax (definitely not my favorite part of this job!)
• Updating our website
• Cleaning equipment
• Reaching out to other wedding professionals and photographers to build relationships and network
• Building timelines and shots lists for our clients’ weddings
• Learning and studying more about the craft and business of photography
• Marketing
• Designing albums
• Ordering prints and products for clients
• Setting up PASS galleries to deliver our clients’ photos
• Working on streamlining our work flow to make us faster and more efficient
• Doing practice/for-fun/creativity-boosting shoots
• Helping other photographers with their businesses
• Handling client contracts and payment
• Renewing business licenses, professional memberships, liability and equipment insurance, etc.
• Submitting weddings for publication

There are plenty of other tasks and jobs that go along with running any small business, and a photography business in particular — and while not all of it is as fun as actually shooting, it’s all important to make sure I’m able to give my clients the quality of images and the quality of experience they deserve.

Want more of a peek behind the scenes? I’ll be sharing more in the coming weeks!

~ Laura