As a photographer, managing session schedules and locations can be overwhelming, taking away valuable time from your passion for capturing stunning images. However, with the powerful Dubsado scheduler, you can revolutionize your photography business and focus on what you love most – taking and editing beautiful pictures. In this blog, we’ll explore how to use the Dubsado scheduler as a photographer- because it can be your ultimate game-changer, simplifying session planning, and enabling clients to book seamlessly from your website.

Tackling Sunset Times

I know that you want to take pictures at sunset, I do. But I’m telling you, making sure your availability is lined up perfectly in accordance with sunset times is not worth the headache to get there. Dubsado simply doesn’t give you the ability to manage sunset times efficiently. You would need to individually set the availability for every single day of every single year. It is NOT worth that admin, espeically when your clients are intelligent people with the ability to be reasonable!

Instead, program your scheduler with with a large timeframe that encompasses sunset throughout the year – something like 4pm to 8pm. In the email where you send the scheduler, give your client LIGHT EDUCATION. Instruct them to google sunset on the day they’re looking for and to schedule their session 1.5 hours before that time.

This practical approach eliminates unnecessary admin work and ensures a seamless booking experience for your intelligent clients. And if your clients choose not to listen to the education that you’ve provided them? Well #1, you can always follow up manually and reschedule as needed, which is still less work than manually scheduling every single client. But more than that, #2, if they knew when they were supposed to schedule and chose NOT to, then they have taken responsibility that the images may not be what they hoped.

Determining Session Locations

In the scheduler settings, you’re asked to fill in a location. You won’t be able to fill this in since it will be custom for each client, so I’d recommend putting something like TBD in there.

My favorite way to handle selecting a session location is to attach a questionnaire to your scheduler (the “Additional Form” in the Advanced Setting tab. I call it the “Session Planner”, so that when the client is choosing their day & time, they’ll be asked to fill out a short form as well.

The goal of the form is to at the very least start the conversation about choosing a location for the session. At BEST it will solidify the session location and you won’t need to manually track anything down.

On the session planner, you can really go to town. Explain different types of settings and the emotions they will evoke (urban vs. park. vs. woodsy for example). I love including an embedded GALLERY that showcases my favorite locations so that they can look through and choose.

Then include a short answer question asking which location they’d like to choose and map it to the Project Location Name field. If they are certain which location they want, then boom you’re done. You can include that smart field in your reminder emails to make sure you all are set on the same location.

If they list some notes for you there or questions, then you can manually follow up with those. To make sure you don’t forget, include a to do in your workflow after the appointment is scheduled to remind you to check on this.

By using your workflow, the scheduler, and a session planner, choosing session dates and locations just got a whole lot easier and more automated.

Allow Clients to Book from Your Website

With your scheduler and session planner, you could even embed your scheduler or scheduler groups right on your website. You can enable the invoice feature so that clients have to pay in order to book.

I recommend including the price in the title of the appointment so that clients know before they click (to minimize the number of erroneously created invoices on the back end).

You can use scheduler groups to accommodate different lengths of sessions. For example, if you offer both 30 and 60 minute family sessions, you would make 2 separate schedulers and then create one single “Book a family session!” Scheduler group and include both schedulers in that group. Then embed the group on your website.

You can also check out this blog for an even more in depth process of how to set this up.

Pro Tip

Schedulers inside a group will display in the order that you add them to the group, so checkmark them in the order you want them to display

See some helpful tips for how to use the Dubsado scheduler as a photographer?

Dubsado’s scheduler is a powerful tool that empowers photographers to streamline session planning and booking, providing clients with an exceptional experience. By adopting these clever strategies, you can save time, simplify location selection, and offer a seamless booking process right from your website. Embrace the potential of Dubsado and watch your photography business soar to new heights. Happy automating!