You sell a date once, then work for weeks.

How the work runs

The path this business already walks.

Written for Wedding and event photographers and videographers, working alone or as a small studio that brings in a second shooter for the day.

Steps marked for approval wait for a person. Andiamo SMB is not yet offered to customers; the parts each step leans on, and how far along they are, are listed further down.

1. First contact

   A date arrives before a price does

   The first message names a day, sometimes a venue, usually nothing else. What matters is whether that day is still free, because a Saturday in autumn is the thing being sold and it can only be sold to one party. Putting the date, the venue and the coverage asked for on the client record with the first reply keeps that answer out of a mailbox someone has to search later. The reply itself is drafted for you and held until you have read the exact wording; sending approved replies is still being built.

   Human approval
2. Pencil

   A pencilled date is a conversation until the retainer clears

   The money this trade loses is the date that was held informally and then let go. A retainer is what turns a pencil mark into work, and the invoice for it belongs on the same record as the date it protects. When the automation is switched on for a business, a paid retainer opens the shoot as a card the studio can see, with a starter checklist on it. Sending the agreement for signature is planned rather than built, so that paperwork sits outside the workspace today, and keeping the held date in step with the calendar you actually check is planned as well.

3. Brief

   The shot list is the part that gets argued about afterwards

   Family groupings, the first look, the speeches, the drone the venue will not allow, the aunt who has to be in a photograph. All of it agreed once and then remembered differently by everybody. Held as coverage options the client reviews and chooses from in the portal, the brief stops being a thread of messages. Proposals are in development and releasing one waits on a person. A maintained catalogue of coverage and add-ons for proposals and invoices to draw from is planned, and so is recording a change of timing or coverage together with the price adjustment it triggers.

   Human approval
4. Call sheet

   A second shooter is a subcontractor who needs an address and a time

   The person carrying the other body is booked for that day alone, often months ahead, and what they need is small and specific: where to be, when, which half of the day they cover, whose name to ask for at the door. That is part of the shoot rather than a separate rota. Assigning people to a shoot by role and seeing who is free is planned, so today the board is what tells the studio which job belongs to whom.

5. Shoot day

   The crew and the couple read different versions of the same hours

   From the start time, the venue and what was agreed, the workspace derives a logistics view of setup, the blocks of coverage and breakdown, and alongside it an experience view for the people being photographed, including when to expect a camera in the getting-ready room. The same description of the day always produces the same schedule. The generator is exercised in tests; saving the schedules for a business is switched off by default, and delivering them to anyone is not built. One record per shoot that every task, document and message links back to is planned.

6. Edit

   The job is barely half done when the gear goes away

   Culling, a first pass, a client selection, a second pass, the film cut and the revisions after it: weeks of work with nobody in the room and nothing to show until the end. It is the stretch where a studio loses track of which shoot sits at which stage, and where the chasing email goes out far too late. Assignable tasks with owners and due dates on each shoot are planned. Follow-up drafts prepared for a person to approve or reject are in development, and sending the approved ones is not built yet.

   Human approval
7. Delivery

   The gallery goes out, the balance comes in, the album drags on

   The workspace holds the record and the money, not the frames: footage and finished galleries live wherever you host them. What it can hold is the part that usually slips, which is the balance owed, the album selections that come back late and the print order behind them. Clients sign in with an emailed link to see their invoices and payment history; connecting a payment account and emailing invoices are still being built. Payment reminders prepared for a person to release are planned, and so is a message thread attached to the shoot rather than to a personal inbox.