Dear, 

Today we’re going to talk about efficiency. 

This week on the blog I wrote a post called Photographers, Get Ready for the Last Quarter of 2011, suggesting that now is a good time to review the areas of your photography and see what can be improved as we begin our swing towards the end of the year.

And if you saw the blog last week, you might have seen the post where asked the question, How is Your Economic Outlook? (Be sure and answer the poll.) In my mind, what ties those two articles together is efficiency.

One year ago, I took a hard look at my photography business and decided that it needed a serious update. I’d been going full time for over fourteen years, but I realized that in many areas, I was about five years out of date. I was still using a Mac G5 that ran OS X Tiger, I was still on older versions of most of my software and many of the everyday tasks that I was doing simply took longer than they needed too.

I fell behind. Not because I’m lazy, because I when I find something that works, I keep doing it that way. Unfortunately, in today’s digital photography world, the technology moves faster than you can keep up.

My answer was to do a complete makeover of my systems, which included a new Mac Pro, lots of new software, a move to Adobe Lightroom, updates on all my older applications and some major reorganizing of how I do things. The result is that my productivity skyrocketed and I found myself able to take on even more projects. Even just the time it took to scroll through windows on my new computer made a huge difference in the speed of my daily workflow. 

If you’re like me, you’re busy. You have tons of creative ideas racing around in your head and limited time to bring them to fruition. If you’re not efficient with your time, you’ll fall behind. I still fall behind, (I have over a thousand photos in my “waiting to be edited folder”) but then again, as my mom says, “if you’re not behind, you’re not living.”

My point here is that in today’s world, efficiency is key, so take a look at all of the methods that you use to run your photography, whether it’s a business or a creative outlet and evaluate how efficient you are with each task. Is your computer up to date? Your camera? Your editing software? Your approach to staying on top of client contacts, marketing, image processing and archiving?

I’m not saying that you should update everything in one fell swoop like I did. Even if you don’t buy anything new right now, at least make sure that your methods for everyday tasks like photo editing are not bogging you down.

Efficiency leads to success, whether it’s creative success or professional success. Ultimately, it leads to more money and more time for going out and taking photos, which is what you really want to do, right? Make efficiency a priority in your photography. 

And while we’re talking about creativity, make sure you check out David duChemin’s great new eBook, The Inspired Eye 3: Creative Notes for Photographers. It’s one of the best books on creativity that I’ve read in a long time. It’s five bucks very well spent.

See you next time- thanks for reading!

Dan