4 Photography Upgrades to Make in the New Year

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4 Photography Upgrades to Make in the New Year image

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What photography upgrades will you be making in 2022? Some upgrades or improvements may be desired for increasing our enjoyment of photography, but some will have a direct impact on our photography business.

When you first started your photography business, you probably made several upgrades specifically to your photography gear and also had a plan for getting better at photography such as by learning new methods or techniques.

Since the new year always brings up thoughts about how to improve in the future and reflections on the past, let’s use this mindset to see how we can upgrade or improve our photography business. Here are four photography business upgrades to consider.

Learn or Improve on a Technique

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I say this a lot, but photography is a complex discipline. It’s an art, a craft, and a science. No one can know all of it, so there’s always something else we could choose to pick up as a new method or technique or improve as an existing skill.

So, the question is how do we do that, we’re busy running our photography business? Online learning is a great option. There are many free tutorials that you can access from manufacturer websites that will often detail techniques along with explaining how to use their photography equipment.

If you are willing to pay for more intensive training, check out the continuing learning offered on Udemy, SkillShare, LinkedIn Learning, MasterClass, and other top education sites. Many of these courses are taught by working professionals and some are accredited courses with certification available. Most of the courses are very favorably priced compared to in-person classes.

You can also subscribe to our own Photography Courses right here on Photography Talk. Check out our ON Demand series as well (for paid members only).

Examine Your Photography Equipment

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Upgrading our photography gear for our photography business sometimes involves replacing photography equipment that we’ve outgrown or that simply doesn’t live up to the extra demands of professional use. Buying used is an option, too, especially since pro-level gear can get somewhat pricey.

Oftentimes, though, all we may really need to do is to carefully examine the condition of the things we use in our photography business. Do our lenses need a good cleaning, and do we know the best ways to do that? Same with our sensors, either doing that ourselves or taking our cameras to a local repair shop or camera store.

Our computers are an integral part of our photography businesses, so we should check them out as well. We don’t have to be a certified technician to clean up cookies and temp files, but you might want to check out the help pages of the programs and computer hardware you own before diving into something irreversible.

Here's some gear that I love that you might consider for upgrading your kit in 2022:

Learn More:

Upgrade the Quality of Your Printed Images

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Are you offering physical prints to clients or using enlargements in your studio or office as a passive advertising technique? This is an opportunity that some pros in the digital field seem to forget since we do so much electronic delivery.

High-quality physical enlargements can be a great method to upgrade the profit margins of your photography business as optional products for your clients. And they look great on the walls of your own office or studio.

The specialty processes such as metal prints, acrylic prints, and canvas wraps seem to garner the most attention. Canvas wraps create a fine art feel of almost any subject which may have excellent image files of in our portfolio.

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Canvas HQ is one of the premium online printers specializing in ultra-high-quality canvas wraps, they have many sizes available from small to ginormous and they can also print your images over 2 or 3 wraps for a unique and very artsy effect.

Canvas HQ has won our Canvas Print Shoot Out for the past three years running. I have many canvas wraps of my own photography scattered all around the office and studio of my photography business as well as in my own home for personal decoration.

Offering canvas wraps to our clients can increase the presence and staying power in the minds of our photography business clients, these specialty images make a lasting impression. Plus, this adds another revenue stream to our photography businesses.

Branch Out Your Photography Business

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This next year may be the time to branch out your photography business. There are several ways to do that.

We can branch out in what we offer as services or products to our clients. Those physical prints are a great product for adding extra profit. We might also offer a service that’s related to our primary photography business interest, such as portraits or small product photography.

Branching out photography business might also involve searching out business partnerships to join. A wedding photographer could partner up with local florists, for example, or a portrait photographer with a makeup artist.

Think about these 4 ideas for upgrading your photography business in the next year and let us know what other ideas you have for fellow professionals.