June was a big month over here at Carrie Krupke Photography which led to all sorts of changes behind the scenes. I enrolled in a creativeLIVE course taught by the wonderfully funny and photographically gifted Jasmine Star. Dubbed "The Complete Wedding Photographer Experience", the lessons Jasmine taught each day applied to much more than weddings. She taught on her business practices, how she communicates effectively and lovingly with her clients and their vendors, posing, utilizing natural light sources, and so much more.

She also "killed two birds with one stone" as it were. Jasmine was selected to photograph The Knot's Dream Wedding, so in conjunction with this creativeLIVE course, Jasmine brought us along for the wild ride that was that day. It was a winery wedding that started at noon (procuring very difficult light situations among many challenges) and as luck would have it, I had my own winery wedding that started at 1pm to prepare for. It was impeccable timing and prepared me quite well for what I would encounter with Heather + Rob's day. But this class also convinced me it was time for several other changes that I'm implementing in my business practices that I wanted to let you all know about:

1. in preparation for a bride + groom's wedding day, if they have a coordinator, I contact him/her to e-introduce myself and discuss the timeline, making sure we're on the same page. With Heather & Rob's day, it made us all feel like we were a larger team, working together for the couple, not just doing our own thing. What a difference!!

2. using my favorite images that help tell the story of the bride + groom's day, I create a slideshow using soundslides using music from The MusicBed as a teaser for the couple to share their images with friends and family. I also post this to social media for easier sharing. (You can see Ali + Mark's and Heather + Rob's....)

3. after the wedding day is done, the images are culled and edited, and the bride + groom have seen them, I'll send the vendors that were involved with the day (florist, caterer, coordinator) the link to the online gallery so they have great images of their work.

4. as the bride + groom, or any high school senior client of mine, have selected their favorite images from their day, I can see their Favorites List from my view of their Pixieset gallery. I then forward that List to the newest member of my team: Amy from Albumesque designs. I dabbled in designing some senior albums last fall and while I learned a TON from the process and did fine, I also know when it's better suited to be in the hands of a professional.

5. From that list of their favorites, I create a StickyAlbum App. I upload those Favorites to StickyAlbums and it creates an app for my client to download directly to their mobile device-giving them a shortcut, if you will, to the best of their session and it becomes easier to show friends, family and those folks can download the app too.

For someone not accustomed to changing things up all that often, let alone incorporating systems for FIVE new steps to the process, my brain has been on overload a smidge in the past month, and yes, I've made a few blunders along the way, but an email from Jasmine Star, herself, is always a pick-me-up and encouragement to keep going:

6. Lastly, per a suggestion from the lovely Zach & Jody Gray, from my video chat with them, my website designer and I collaborated to condense the video on my website to highlight a few things more directly and make uploading the site to mobile devices faster. Take a look-see!

Whew! I need to get back to work for you guys! :)

Keep on keepin' on,

Carrie

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