Photography booking with Light Blue

Many people want to make photography a career as well as a fun hobby and a fulfilling way to be creative. However, the reality of being a full-time picture-taker is that it isn’t all about going out to beautiful locations and taking wonderful pictures. A photographer has to be a marketer, a social media guru, a web designer, an office manager, and an accountant, amongst many other things. Many photographers use light Blue software to take away some of the administrative work of running a photography business. It was recently voted as “Best Professional Software” by The Societies of Photographers.

What is Light Blue?

Since I last reviewed Light Blue just 12 months ago, the product has gone through several new releases offering more and more features to remove admin from the photographer. Every one of my workshops, public relations and private tours are administered by Light Blue. Everything from managing communications with templated or freehand e-mails to carrying out all my invoicing and accounting is easy through the user-friendly front-end. In many cases, the only manual intervention I had to make was taking the information from my workshop booking systems and keying it into Light Blue.

One of the key changes that help a photographer run their business is the available management information. At a glance, I can see each day how many bookings I am getting compared to previous years. There are monthly comparisons of income and profit and all my e-mail communication in one place. This data is customisable to give the business owner the information they need to run their photography studio effectively.

What’s new?

Just launched in the last few weeks is an update that takes one more step out of the photographer’s workflow. More importantly, it puts the clients in control of making bookings without having to make phone calls or send e-mails. Now Light Blue has introduced online scheduling. It means that your customers can see when you are available, make a booking, and, if necessary, pay any booking fees. For the photographer, it means more time and shooting. All the usual accounting of payments and credit card charges are taken care of in the background—a win-win for both client and photographer.

As a Light Blue user, you can now embed the scheduling calendar onto your website with very little technical knowledge required. The calendars are customisable to match the colour scheme, font and logos of your website. Each calendar is configurable to define the timing of each shoot type, how far in advance a client can book, and options to allow clients to reschedule or cancel online. Additionally, you can set up workflows and messages to ensure that you are ready for the shoot and the client receives excellent communication.

What does it cost?

I am a massive advocate for Light Blue and have used the software for eight years. The first 30 minutes of my day are used with Light Blue to manage my day and catch up on any manual tasks and communication. The rest of my time is doing the things that I wanted to do as a photographer – taking pictures and sharing knowledge. So, the current cost of £24 per month feels like a bargain to give me the time to do what I want to do. However, if you sign up here, you can get 20% off your first six months. If you’re still not sure, then there is a free 30-day trial to try out all the features for yourself before committing.

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About the author

As well as running Edinburgh Photography Workshop, Rich Dyson is a professional photographer. His photographs are regularly used in newspapers such as The Times, Guardian and Daily Telegraph. He also had two solo exhibitions as well as being featured in a members sponsored exhibition in the Scottish Parliament. You can see and buy his photography at richdysonphotography.com