Portrait Photography

Video Tutorials

How to Stop Winging Your Photography Business (and Actually Build One in 2022)

I lost a $5,000 client once because of a sloppy contract. No payment terms, no cancellation clause, nothing that would hold up if someone decided to walk. That experience cost me more than money. It cost me the confidence that I had any idea what I was doing on the business side. The photography was solid. The infrastructure around it was held together with good intentions and wishful thinking. That’s why when The Portrait System dropped their 2022 overview video, I watched it twice.

July 7, 2026

Video Tutorials

Two Lighting Setups That Will Elevate Your Business Portraits (And Win You Better Clients)

Business portrait clients are not the most forgiving. They show up with a specific idea of how they want to look, a tight schedule, and zero patience for you figuring things out on the fly. Early in my studio career, I was winging my lighting more than I’d like to admit. I had one setup I felt comfortable with, and I bent every client into it whether it suited them or not.

July 7, 2026

Video Tutorials

How a Former Doula Built a $3K Average Sale Motherhood Photography Business (And What Every Portrait Photographer Can Learn From It)

Every quarter, I sit down with my studio metrics and ask myself the same question: which clients are actually worth the energy I’m spending? Not in a cold, transactional way. I mean genuinely, which relationships are generating repeat business, referrals, and the kind of word-of-mouth that no ad budget can buy? That question is what led me to completely rethink how I structure my client journey, and it’s exactly why a recent episode of The Portrait System podcast stopped me mid-scroll.

July 4, 2026

Video Tutorials

The Photography Marketing Playbook That Actually Reflects How Clients Book Today

I spent most of last quarter wondering why my inquiry rate had gone flat. My work hadn’t changed. My pricing was competitive. My Instagram was consistent. But the pipeline felt thin in a way I couldn’t explain by season alone. I knew I needed to stop guessing and start looking at my marketing with fresh eyes. That’s exactly what pushed me to sit down with James Patrick’s session on CreativeLive, where he rebuilds the photography marketing playbook from the ground up.

June 30, 2026

Video Tutorials

From Corporate Job to Creative Empire: What Meg Loeks Gets Right About Building a Photography Business

There is a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from running a photography business that was never really designed around your life. I know it because I lived it for two years before I started making deliberate structural decisions about what my studio actually looked like day to day. The photographers I respect most are the ones who figured out how to build something intentional, not just hustle their way into a calendar full of sessions they resent.

May 24, 2026