If you willing to focus on destination wedding photography business than you definitely need several weapons that support your works. It seems to be challenging but you will get a lot of fun through this niche. By the way I start to develop my photography business in 2008 and I focusing my services for destination wedding in 2012. I could say that this ain’t easy thing cause a lot of works if you want to sell your services to outworld market.
I working so bad for in my official wedding photography blog and I started it from scratch with no knowledge at all even how to make a simple portfolio gallery. I start my journey as a US$9 even documentary photographer to a guy who serve overseas couple to get their engagement and wedding pictures in such wonderful places like Bali and Maldives. So today in this blog I’m gonna share to you what I did in my past years.
Destination Wedding Photography Business Secret Weapons
You couldn’t win a war if you don’t have a weapon on your own so as I said before having a destination wedding photography business is a bit different mindset than if you willing to serve only local couple just like your kind neighborhood, so here is the lists:
1 – Online Photography Gallery
If you serve local couple than you need an office or studio where couple can visit, see your frames, images, and your albums. But if you willing to serve overseas marriage couple than one first thing you must have is your online photography gallery and here clearly I have to say that you definitely have your own blog.
Having your own blog mean you must own your professional domain and hosting service so it’s paid service. Rather than spending a hundred or thousand dollars office rent (I spent US$800/year small office rent in my town) than you can start your own blog simply costs less than US$5/month, surely it means about US$60/year both for your professional domain name and hosting from bluehost.
You might also like my recent article about how to promoting your wedding photography business with internet.
2 – Delivering Your Packages
It’s totally different with situation where you attending a wedding expo where you printed your packages in a piece of paper but here you just simply send your photography packages through emails.
All you need to do is creating your nice and informative photography packages in PDF format than send to everyone who asking your enquiry.
3 – Client’s Meeting
If I can meet my couple directly than I will happily meet them in a nice cafes or hotel even I will welcoming them to my office. I did a direct client meeting too in a nice cafe around Raffles Place, in this case I will have my overseas couple from Singapore who asking me to go to Bali Indonesia but in the same time I have some business trip in Singapore so we can meet directly with a delicious lunch menu of burgers and fries.
Once I got an enquiry to go to Maldives from my Hong Kong couple than distance become matters so all I need to do is inviting them into Skype meeting. My wife arrange the schedule as well till we found a good time of 9pm of Indonesia local time (we’re in GMT +7) than I got my couple sitting down in front of their laptop in Hong Kong of 11pm Hong Kong local time.
Here we just see each other for the very first time, we can see how gorgeous our couple is even we can see their wedding dress and night gown that gonna use for their engagement photo session.
4 – Sending the Invoice
Once you’re done with your online meeting than the next step of running your destination wedding photography business is by sending your invoice. It will consist of your package detail, date of shooting, location, and some term and condition.
Here I recommend you to use the Waveapps, it is useful free apps and software that will support your business. It comes with accounting software where you can access through your computer or mobile devices such as cellphone or tabs.
5 – Receiving Your Payments
Once the invoice sent than you will receiving your money shortly and here I highly recommend you to use Paypal. Paypal is the safest payment platform that I ever know since past 10 years and it has very good safety program both for you as the service provider (photographer) and your client.
Paypal has a strict rules and security, in case you got a fake client who don’t want to settle your payment than paypal will do their efforts to grab your client’s money into your account. It is also applicable for your couple, if you’re not do your best efforts to satisfying your couple (example – not sending their wedding album) than Paypal also can grab your money back once they got a complain from your couple.
Related to this term and condition so I could say that Paypal is fair and save both for services provider and for client and since my past 10 years it definitely support my destination wedding photography business.
All you need to do to grow and run your destination wedding photography business is creativity
6 – Proofing
I used to delivered proof images within 14 days following the photo session, it’s not that much cause I only show5 to 10 finished images to my couple. Pixieset is one of the best platform who gonna help you as well to organize your photos, let your couple buy some frames and delivered to their house, or even choose their own photos in a simple way
7 – Photo editing
When you have hundred of images on your drive and need to edited in very soon than you can use any kind editing platform, and of the best that I recommend is Shootdotedit. It’s real human services even you can call to let them use your preset setting. In fact I retouching my masterpiece photo by my self and only spread all the common images to get clear in fast.
I use the Forever Thine Lightroom presets in my post production process and this presets give me a lot of help to finalize my masterpiece as well and you also can learn more about Lightroom Mastery especially if you know nothing about it.
8 – Slide animation
If you would like to create a slide show or motion pictures that will surprising your couple than Animoto is one good choice for you. It’s simple, cheap, and reliable to support your destination wedding photography business.
9 – Your Hotel’s Partner
I travel so much both in business and leisure with my family and find some apartments, hotel, beach front resort in very fast and simple is my priority. Through Agoda.com you can browse thousands of best accommodation units in this world no matter you want to pay now to get the best rate or pay latter if you feel not sure to book on that unit.
All you need to do to grow and run your destination wedding photography business is creativity, there are a lot of supporting services that you can use even so many course or workshop that you can join and get the new networking with other partner, photographers, and photography brand in this planet. Just remind that it’s not about going rich in a single night, enjoy your day, feel your passion, and always get fun with your couple through photography.