How to Start a Photography Business: PART I - Setting Up Your Business

So if you're looking for a little guidance on how to start a photography business and find yourself asking "where do you start?" - I GOT YOU.

Well, there is no escaping this. If you want to run a business, you have to have a business, and to have a business you have to register it with your government, collect and pay taxes accordingly and make sure you keep track of your income and expenses. Having systems in place will make this part of your business easy and routine, and eventually, take no time out of your life. But that’s why having systems is important. Nothing more painful than having to chase clients for payments (been there, done that), or being surprised by a huge income tax bill at the end of the year, and not having saved the money for it. So the first thing you should do is get your admin side of your business streamlined and with systems in place.

In terms of business registration, and taxes, it is completely different depending on where you live. I would love to list the steps here, but my process was very different than it will be for you. But don’t fret, it’s pretty straight forward, and all the information on how to register a business in your local area should be easily available. I would encourage you to reach out to photographers in your area, as well as do a search for government resources.

In Canada, I was able to register my business name and get a number for taxes fairly easily, calling their business's office, and getting all the info necessary through them online.

Once you have a BN (business number), it's time to figure out your taxes. It usually depends on your level of income, and type of service.

Here, because I make over a certain threshold, and because it is considered a taxable service and product, I have to charge my clients both PST and GST (provincial tax and goods and service tax). Although when I work outside of the country or with international clients, I don’t usually have to charge either… it's complicated, but if you are working locally, it will most likely be much more straightforward than mine.

In terms of filing taxes, I collect on each invoice both PST and GST, and then I do my income tax once a year. I do my taxes online, and I hire an accountant every year to file for me. You could do this on your own, but I believe in delegating the things I am not good at and occupying my time in being creative and running my business. Accountants aren't expensive, and their work pays off, in fewer payouts due to their knowledge of laws and ways to deduct expenses, and the peace of mind that you are doing things right.

When figuring out how to start a photography business - having systems in place is a must. In terms of tracking systems for clients, invoices, and contracts, there are a ton of free and paid resources online, and offline. For my accounting, I use Wave, a free online software that connects directly to my bank accounts, and allows me to create invoices, and even process payments. I sync all my income channels through Wave, and once a month I go through the list, linking payments to invoices, categorizing expenses and income, and making sure everything is accounted for.

As a freelance and travel photographer, most of my travel expenses are deductible, as well as a lot of other common expenses. So all my flights, hotels, meals, client meetings, camera equipment, etc go towards a tax deduction. Having your business running officially and smoothly is not as bad as you think it is!

I always said that a photographer that charges less doesn't bother me, as long as s/he isn't as good as I am.

But when I see a photographer who is amazing, not charging enough, that… that is a huge problem. Photographers not only need to value themselves for their own sake, but we need to stick together and uphold our industry to a standard of work, ethic, and pricing.

There aren't unions for photographers, unfortunately, so by staying close as a community, we are able to gauge the going rates for different types of shoots, and make sure that we are not undercutting each other, or overcharging for shoots. Pricing is such a subjective matter, as there is no price tag for creativity, but it is important to decide on your rates based on your experience, quality, zone of genius, and overhead cost.

Undercharging is never good. If someone chooses me as their photographer, I want them to choose me because of my skills, style, and who I am, not because I am cheaper than the competitor. Pricing yourself lower than the average to get a gig might seem like a good life hack, but in the long run it will piss off your community, it will lower the standard for your industry, and ultimately lower your perceived value to regular and new clients.

I understand that when you are starting out, you don’t have the experience and skills to charge as some of the pros are, so naturally, your rates will be lower, but that’s why it is so important to know what other people charge, how they work, and what they deliver. When it comes to rates, I am an open book. Especially to other photographers. I have come up with my rates based on many things, but ultimately I know where I stand within my industry, and I want to help others get their bearings to find their place as well.

Next up I want to talk about what operating your photography business looks like. It's good to start getting an image of the operational side of things so you know the workflow and overall process.

1. Getting hired (deposit and contract take place)

2. Shoot happens

3. First round of culling

4. Client selection, or if you are doing the selection, final edits

5. Final payment received (this can happen at any moment, but should happen before final delivery)

6. Final image delivery

Of course, each shoot is a little bit different. Sometimes you shoot different days, sometimes you deliver unedited files, and sometimes all of this happens at the shoot on the day of. But each one of these steps should have a proper workflow to make your life easier. Let's start with the first step, getting hired as a photographer.

Clients come in many different ways, through your website, recommendations, phone calls, emails, texts… I always suggest centralizing all your client interaction to email, so it's trackable and easy to follow up. In the beginning, when I used to have a lot more clients, I would keep an excel sheet with the client name, contact info, status of the inquiry or status of payment, date of the shoot, and any other relevant info. This makes it easy to follow up with clients who haven’t confirmed, or you forgot to check with. Under this category is where you would have a template for a contract, invoice, or request for payment. So once someone has agreed to hire you, you can spend a few minutes filling in your contact info and payment info and sending it over.

Although this will vary depending on the type of work you do, it's important to have a checklist, or a guideline for what you will be doing, what full coverage of the event or a successful shoot looks like, and of course, making sure that all your equipment is ready and working before you shoot.

For me, the day before a shoot means I review the concept of the shoot, the guidelines (if its an event, the timeline), I look at reference images or a mood board, if provided, I charge all my batteries, check all my lenses, flashes, and erase memory cards, and just overall prepare to minimize any potential thing that can go wrong.

I love to go through a checklist in my head thinking about what lenses, equipment, tripods, or lights, I need to make the shoot happen. Depending on the type of shoot, I often have a backup photographer ready to help if I need anything, and I check the nearby camera stores in case something goes wrong and I need anything last minute. After the shoot, I immediately import the photos to my computer or hard drive, and I usually don’t delete my cards until the shoot is delivered and finished. A little extra? Maybe, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

I have a whole post where you can read about how to import and organize photos in Lightroom and how I use Lightroom for all my post-production needs. But the gist is this: I import ALL images from the shoot. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I use Lightroom to do this, to automate and streamline the process of naming the files, sorting them, and creating the previews. Once all images are in my computer or hard drive, I go through them and cull them, deleting permanently, any image that is blurry, unusable, repeated, or just not good for any reason. Once I am left with the brad selection, I make a more curated selection, or I prepare the export for client selection.

When you have your client making the final selection of images (I often do this with commercial clients) you have to deliver them the files for them to see and chose. I usually export the files in very low resolution (although high enough for them to see them clearly), unedited (but always with a little correction so they know what they will look like once they are edited), and either watermarked or delivered through a system that doesn't allow them to download or use them.

This last step is SO important. I learned early in my career that sometimes you might encounter clients who aren't well versed in the world of photography, and don’t understand the difference between a low-resolution file, or an unedited images… I had a client once pull the watermarked unedited selection images and put them on her website. She refused to take them down, so I had no choice but to ask her to literally never tell anyone those were mine. It was awful, and I learned to restrict the access clients have to photos. If you deliver for selection via dropbox or wetransfer, make sure your watermark is big enough. Alternatively, you can use a system that blocks downloads, like I do. I use pixieset and it's amazing. You get a free or a paid version, but both help you restrict client access, and even better, once your client made the selection, you can copy and paste the file names to locate them easily back in your lightroom. Talk about seamless and efficient!

Not much to add here, as I mentioned above, you should always clear your payment in full before delivering your final images. Same as receiving your deposit, getting paid should be easy and efficient. Wave even has a reminder built into its invoices, but feel free to let your clients know their photos are finished and ready to deliver once payment is through.

There are quite a few options here, and it is up to you what system you prefer. I often deliver through pixieset (you might need the paid version for this), dropbox, or we transfer. Whatever system you chose, make sure to let your client know to download and save their images within a time period, otherwise, you will be stuck having to hold months of shoots online and running out of space. A note here that I tell clients I charge an admin fee to re-deliver images, this encourages them to actually make sure they save the files and keeps you from having to do more work later.