Pixieset

Pixieset is a magical, all in one program. I manage my website, client galleries, and print shop all in Pixieset. Delivering my clients’ final gallery is the most exciting part for me and this program makes it so easy; digital delivery is even more exciting because it truly makes the process easy for you and your clients. Remember when we used to deliver a USB drive with all our clients’ images on them (and half the time they misplaced it)?

Pixieset allows you to deliver custom-branded galleries to your clients, which allows for immediate downloading, proofing, selling, and sharing their gallery.

I also designed this website using Pixieset and it is so easy to manage and make updates.

Honeybook

Honeybook is my most often used program and I don’t think I would have a business without it. This program allows you to eliminate the administrative pains of running a business. HoneyBook is a great way to streamline your client experience. It keeps track of all your email correspondences and files. Managing a pipeline can be exhausting, but Honeybook’s software allows you to track your shoots, manage an inquiry, create custom client questionnaires, follow up on a proposal, and collect payments, along with many other useful features. I am able to use Honeybook to manage my mini session time slots as well. Each project stays together and organized so you can spend more time photographing and less time on the managerial tasks of running your business.

QuickBooks Self-Employed

I don’t know about you, but taxes scare me. Well, they used to scare me. QuickBooks Self-Employed has made tracking my business expenses, income, invoices, and milage so easy.

Here are the main features:

• Track and organize your business income and expenses.
• Maximize your business deductions.
• Enter data quickly with online banking.
• Track your business mileage and claim mileage deductions.
• Run reports to figure out your business profit.
• Calculate your estimated federal quarterly tax payments.
• Put your expenses into the correct Schedule C categories.
• Send your data to TurboTax Self-Employed for fast year-end filing.

Canva

Canva makes branding my business as simple as a drag and drop. I have selected what fonts and colors I want for my brand to make all of my marketing materials cohesive. I have used Canva’s predesigned templates to create Instagram Storys, Reel covers, main posts to my feed, Facebook headers, and more.

Adobe Lightroom & Photoshop

Lightroom is where I personally do about 90% of my editing. This powerful program allows you to create and save presets so that every one of your photos can have your signature editing style easily! I cull, edit, and export all in Lightroom.

Photoshop is a beast of a tool and can be intimidating with all of its features. I will take a photo from Lightroom and edit it in Photoshop when I need to do more intricate edits. It truly is the best when photos need extensive spot editing, all while keeping the integrity of the original image. This is also a great tool for resizing and compositing.

Sun Seeker

Sun Seeker is an app that helps me plan session start times according to the golden hour or blue hour & optimal sunlight conditions, sunrise & sunset times & directions. Honestly, this app does so much more but I just use it to find optimal lighting based on the geographical location and date of my upcoming shoots.

SwipeMix

Ah, panoramic carousel posts. These seem to be getting extremely popular, so let me share my secret: SwipeMix. This is also an app.

SwipeMix allows you to make swipe-able, panoramic layouts & collages for the Instagram carousel. I used to make these panoramic posts in Photoshop and this app has saved me hours! I prefer this type of post for two reasons:

1. They are more interesting and keeps your followers on your posts for longer.

2. I am able to get the full aspect of my images in a post without Instagrams awful 4:5 ratio

SwipeMix features dozens of templates that are easy to modify, or you can create your own. Super simple!