The following tip, and many others, can be found in the free eBook listed on the right column of this site. I hope you find it useful.

Can you imagine the nightmare of double booking the same date? While this is a very obvious problem to avoid, what is important is to understand how this can happen, and more importantly how to avoid it.

Perhaps it’s late because your prospect couldn’t meet until after they got off work. At the conclusion of your consultation your clients reserve the date. You create a contract, collect your retainer and have the contract signed by all parties. You’re tired and fail to place the date as booked in your calendar, or the date gets erased from your calendar.

This can happen for a variety of reasons: human error, a computer crash, a malicious employee, or more.

Another couple comes along inquiring about the same date. You check your calendar and see that the date is still open. The couple comes into the studio and books the date.

This time you successfully place the date into your calendar.

The date of the wedding soon arrives. You show up at the second couple’s wedding and receive a phone call on your cell. It’s the first couple wanting to know where you are! Not only will you more than likely be sued by the first couple, you will be so off your game at the event you are covering, you will probably produce less than professional results.

While this situation is very unlikely to happen, it is your responsibility as the owner of your studio to make sure that it doesn’t happen.

To prevent this disaster, keep all of your open contracts in a safe. Every month, on the first of the month, pull them out and compare them to the booked dates on your calendar. If you come across a contract that has no correlating reserved date on your calendar, you have just prevented yourself from a possible double booking.

Now, do this process in reverse. Check your calendar, and look at each weekend for a booked date. For each booked date you find, make sure you can locate a signed contract that correlates to the date. This will prevent you from booking a wedding and marking down the wrong date in your calendar. It also ensures you have possession of all your active contracts.

Daily Photography Tip – Prevent Double Booking. is a post from: The Pro Photo Business Forum

Every professional photographer knows the importance of backup gear.  At least two cameras, two flashes, two lenses, etc.  And I submit that most professionals have way more gear than that.   However, the other night as we were preparing for a Wedding a thought came to me.

Let’s set a scenario right quick:  It’s Friday night, 5PM.  You’re getting your equipment together for tomorrow’s Wedding in which you need to arrive at 9AM.   You’ve cleaned your lenses, formatted your CF cards, verified time and location, and are working on charging batteries.   You take the batteries out of your cameras and insert one of them into its charger….. and nothing happens.  You chuckle to yourself as you remember you need to turn on the power-strip that the charger is connected to… except.. it’s already on.   Perplexed, you switch batteries on the charger with no avail. You come to the realization that your battery charger is no longer working.  You do have a back-up, right?

Now.. if you’ve purchased two similar cameras at retail, then you most likely have two identical chargers… regardless of the brand.   I chose not to sell my extra chargers because it made my task of charging all the batteries that much simpler.  But as I was looking at the charging table we have set up at the studio – I thought about how problematic it could be to not be able to charge batteries the night before a wedding or big event.

Fortunately, many cameras that accept battery grips have AA battery attachments that can be used to power the cameras.  But, that assumes that you know where that attachment is.  However, full body professional cameras rely on their brand specific batteries for power with no other (easy) alternatives.

I’ve attached an iPhone photo of my charging station that I’ve temporarily made for our studio.  Since we’re still settling in after a big move – this will be a little more permanent as soon as I find the appropriate place for it.  Until then – you can see the redundancy we have in battery charging, which allows us to recover from a problem should one ever occur.

One final note, we keep our chargers unplugged when not in use.  This saves on the minuscule bits of power they use when not actively charging – and also helps to prevent any stray power surges from wiping out our entire collection of chargers.

It may not seem important at first and I’m sure it doesn’t happen often – but small bits of preventative action can save you loads of stress down the road.

Backup Equipment (but not what you’re thinking) is a post from: The Pro Photo Business Forum

Today’s tip is right out of my eBook “Actions You Can Take To Promote and Protect Your Studio“.

Format all of your compact flash cards before you leave your studio for a wedding.

Imagine you are photographing a wedding and it is late in the evening. You realize that the card you are shooting on is now full and needs to be switched out with another card. So you reach into your camera bag and pull out another Compact Flash card. You check to see if there are any images on the card, only to find the card is filled with images that you shot yesterday during a family portrait session. You know you have downloaded the family portraits already, and it is safe to erase them. You erase the card to make room for the images you are about to shoot.

It turns out, that you actually used that card for both the family portrait session AND earlier in the evening during the ceremony. Because you didn’t look through all the images on the card, you didn’t see the images you took earlier that evening. You just erased hundreds of images from your client’s wedding!

Make sure all of the memory cards you take to a wedding have been formatted before you leave for your wedding.

Add it to your checklist. Never erase a memory card at a wedding.

By Aric C. Hoek, owner and creator of Ten Houston Wedding Photographers

Daily Photography Tip – Never erase a memory card at a wedding. is a post from: The Pro Photo Business Forum