If you’ve ever wanted to build a profitable high school senior photography business, this episode breaks down the exact roadmap I’d follow if I were starting from zero today. I’ll be showing you how to attract dream clients, price your work sustainably, build a standout brand, and turn your passion for photography into a thriving, flexible six-figure business. Whether you’re brand new or ready to level up, this is the video for you.

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What You’ll Hear In This Episode:

• How to define and position a standout senior photography brand
• The difference between boutique vs. volume business models
• What equipment you actually need (and what to stop overspending on)
• How to legally set up your photography business
• A simple formula for pricing your photography for profit
• How to build your portfolio fast using model calls
• How the senior rep program jumpstarts bookings
• The tools and systems that streamline your workflow and save hours

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Podcast Transcript

If you’ve ever thought about running a high school senior photography business, well, I’m here to tell you it’s one of the most profitable ways that you can possibly do photography while still maintaining the freedom and flexibility that you’re after. So if that sounds like you, this is the video for you because I’m going to break down exactly what I would do if I was starting my six figure high school senior photography business all over today. So if that sounds like something you’re interested in, well, keep on watching.

Hey there photography friend, Shawn Brown here. And I’m so excited that you’re on this channel where we break down all things high school senior photography education, helping you build a thriving senior photography business so that you can have more time, freedom and flexibility to do what you want. This video is one of the most requested videos, topics, whatever you want to call it that we get from photographers every single day, which is how do you build a profitable high school senior photography business? What do you do? What does it take?

Well, this video, we’re breaking it all down, every single step of the process. But one of the things is we also made this a little bit easier for you. So if you head into the video description right down here, one of the things that we’re doing is we’re actually giving you our free senior photography crash course. Inside of that crash course, it’s a five part video series that you get instant access to that talks even more in depth about everything that we’re going to be covering in this video. So make sure to grab that freebie — our gift to you for tuning into the channel.

Before we start, it would do me a huge favor. Help other photographers just like you find this video. If you could smash the subscribe button and the like button that will make sure that you get every single video that we release. And if you turn on the notifications, it’ll also help you to make sure that you get all of the notifications when we post a new video so that you don’t miss a single thing. Now to the video.

One of the things that I always get asked is why high school senior photography? Why did I get into it? Why even choose high school senior photography? And if you’re like me, see that this is one of the most fun genres out there that there is. Every client that you have wants to work with you. They’re high energy, they absolutely love being there. They want to dress up for their actual senior portraits and not just wear the sweatpants that they always wear to school. And if you’re a high energy photographer, or even just a photographer that wants to feed off of high energy clients, this is truly the genre for you.

No more photoshopping boogers out of toddler’s noses. No more having to spend your weekends with weddings. In fact, every single one of my seniors that I photograph is on a weekday, meaning I’ve got my weekends free for friends and family. And this is just one of the many ways of why high school senior photography is such a, such a freeing genre to be a part of and to photograph.

Now, does that mean that you have to give up your weddings, your boudoir family sessions, or any other genre that you want to photograph? No, absolutely not. And I’m not saying that. I’m not saying you only have to be a high school senior photographer when you step into this genre. The beauty is, is that you can actually combine this with other genres. If you want to be a wedding photographer on the weekends and have high school seniors to photograph on the weekdays, well, you can do that because the senior photography side gives you the freedom to do that. And that’s what’s so great about it.

And over the years of running a high school senior photography business that generates six figures, I’ve broken this down into six pillars for you or six easy steps. And we’re going to start from the top, which is step number one — defining your brand. This is by far the most important thing that you could ever do. With all of my experience over a decade plus of photographing 500 seniors later, one of the biggest things that I see that separates the great senior photographers from the not so great senior photographers — not that their work isn’t great, just that their business isn’t working for them — is that they’re not clear on the brand, they’re not clear on the types of clients that they want to attract.

And so one of the things that I want you to do is to understand what is it that you want this business to be. And there are really two models that you can follow. The first is the high end or the boutique side of things. And this is personally the business that I build and the one that we see many of our students see the most success with because it’s easy to do as a one person show. So if you’re not interested in hiring a bunch of employees or having to manage hundreds of clients a year, this is probably the model of business for you and the type of brand that you’ll start building then.

The other side is the volume side. The volume side is where it’s going to be hundreds of clients that you’re working with. We see photographers with great success using this model as well. So this doesn’t mean that the volume or the high end boutique side is necessarily better than one another. It really just comes down to what do you want to do in your business.

Now with the volume side, this is typically hundreds of clients a year that you’re working with. Typically this is higher volume, lower sales averages. Now when we say volume, we’re talking hundreds of clients a year. And one of the things that I don’t love about this is that personally I would have to be photographing a lot more sessions. There’s a lot more high pressure. And this is usually where we see a larger studio model really have the best success, which means lots of employees, lots of managing. And personally that was just something that I didn’t want to do.

I really loved the high end boutique side of things because when you’re defining your brand, you have to understand, are you going to be a high end senior photographer that’s going to provide an incredible experience or are you then going to be a photographer that’s a little bit more of like the digital gallery photographer? Now there isn’t a right or wrong. And when we talk about pricing, which is one of the other steps, so that’s a little sneak peek at what’s coming — well, one of the things that can happen is that if you are a shoot and burn, digital gallery photographer, well, you can sometimes get lost in the shuffle because chances are you’re thinking, well, Shawn, there are a ton of photographers in my market. How am I ever going to stand out? Their mom and pop — why would they ever come to me as their senior photographer?

Well, that is where the high end brand comes in. And so this really comes into a couple things. Do you want to offer the absolute best experience for your clients? Do you want to offer everything from session prep of helping them to get ready? Maybe incorporating professional hair and makeup into your photo shoots? Maybe what you’re going to do is you’re going to go to the actual session itself and maybe what you’re doing is you’re following that up with offering these heirloom archive quality photo products for your clients that they’ll have forever. If that sounds like you, well, a boutique or a high end model is going to be absolutely perfect for you.

Step number two is to get the right tools without overspending. There are so many photographers out there where they make the mistake of saying, “I want to go into photography business and I’m just going to go buy the absolute best camera out there. I’m going to buy the most expensive lenses, I’m going to buy the most expensive lighting.” And soon enough what you’ve done is you’ve gotten yourself into a financial mess when starting your business.

Now all of a sudden you’ve got a bunch of pressure to pay for that new laptop, pay for the new camera, all the equipment, the subscriptions, the softwares that you bought. So what I’m here to tell you is to get the equipment that is not necessarily the cheapest, but will do the job that you need it to do. In fact, we’ll also put a video description down below for how you can figure out what camera and stuff is best to start when photographing senior portraits for you. We’ve already got that up on the channel, so we’ll link that in the show notes below.

Now, when you’re picking out your gear, one of the things that I’m going to tell you is you just need a simple full frame camera. Ideally crop is okay as well, a prime lens and a reflector. You don’t need to go out and go crazy and buy all the best equipment and all the best gear and the fanciest stuff. It’s not going to make you a better photographer. Learn on this gear and then you can start really elevating your game once you know how to use this gear.

All right, so you’ve decided if you’re going to be a high end boutique photographer that’s making the premium dollars or if you’re going to go the volume model with the staff, a bigger studio, and depending on which model you choose, there’s a path forward for you — as well as making sure you have the equipment to actually photograph a senior session.

The kind of in between two and three, I’m going to throw in a little side note — and that is get your business legal. In fact, this is one of the hardest things that I see photographers go through is they have a photography business and they’ve put up an Instagram page, a Facebook page, maybe you’ve even got a website. And what happens is years down the line you’ve photographed a ton of sessions and all of a sudden, knock, knock, knock, IRS comes and all of a sudden you’re in hot water because they want you to pay taxes on all the photography — or worst case scenario, they shut down your business because you didn’t have the right stuff and now all of a sudden you got to start over.

Well, just do this from the very beginning. There are really a couple things that every photographer should do. And the sooner you do it, the less headache it causes down the road. I know it sounds like, hey, this isn’t the fun stuff, but guess what — it’s going to make your life so much easier down the line.

I recommend that you at least have a contract in place when starting your sessions. No, it’s not going to scare clients away. In fact, it’s there to help your clients just as much as it is to help you. The other thing too is file your business license with the state. You don’t have to go do anything crazy. It’s literally just at least a sole proprietorship or an LLC. The LLC is the safer route. It helps separate you from your business and it also keeps you and all of your personal assets a lot safer.

So if you have any questions on this, I always recommend going to your state saying, “Hey, I’m opening up a photography business. What do I need in place?” They are here to help you. I promise. They’re not the mean bad people that we sometimes make them out to be. They’re here to help you. So that’s the first step in the process — making sure you can get legal as well before you can even think about going any further in your business.

The third one — you gotta make sure that you have your pricing. Now there are a lot of photographers out there. We’ve got a whole video coming on how do you price, so make sure you’re subscribed so you can check out that video. But one of the things that I always recommend is to get your pricing right from the beginning.

And especially where I see a lot of photographers go wrong is what they do is they go on their computer and they just start googling senior photography in your area. And that’s not a bad thing to do. But what happens in the next step is really a crutch — or I should say not a crutch, it helps you get to where you’re going. But we want to make sure that you are really helping yourself out to the best of your ability.

And that is what they do is they go and look at what other people, other photographers are charging in their area and then they say, “Okay, well if they’re charging this much, well, maybe that’s just what the market supports or maybe that’s all that people are willing to pay.” And this isn’t at all true.

And we’re going to go into this in our pricing video down the line. But to cut to the chase, it doesn’t set you and your life up for success. Because that photographer may have a different cost of living. They may not be having the same overhead like expenses like their camera equipment. Or maybe they have a studio rental and you don’t. You don’t know how their business is set up. So copying or mimicking their pricing doesn’t actually help you know what you need to make in your photography business.

To keep this nice and simple, all you need for great photography pricing is just to do a couple things. The first is how much do you want to make in your business? That seems like a pretty simple answer. If you want to make five extra five grand to help cover a family vacation, that’s your number. If it’s 10, 15, 20K, that’s your number. Maybe you have ambitions to have a six figure photography business and you set your goals there. Whatever that number is, I want you to just pause this video for a second, write that number down, and then you can go ahead and unpause. So I’ll give you a second.

All right, so you wrote down that number. Whatever came to your head is great. Now what you’re going to do is you’re going to ask yourself how many sessions do you want to photograph every single year? This is a question that I like to ask myself because guess what — I don’t want to be overworked. I don’t want to be stressed out all the time. And so for me, this number is about 40 to 50 clients.

Now, I live in Portland, Oregon. It rains a lot now. It’s not raining today, but it usually rains quite a bit. And so I know that I only have a few months of the season to photograph. And chances are you live in a part of the US that you also are only photographing for a few months of the year. So ask yourself the question, what amount of sessions can you handle? So if you’re like, “Hey, I want to shoot every single day,” well, think what that’s going to do to not only your editing, but also time away from your family, not being able to do what you want.

So pick a number that you feel like will work for you. On average, we see many of our students during their busy seasons photographing about 10 to 15 clients per month. That works out to about three to four sessions every week during their busy season. And then guess what — December rolls around, you’re taking time off for friends and family during the holidays. Maybe you take a summer vacation before you start your busy season. And in general, if you’re following the high end boutique model that’s very easy to do — 30 to 40 clients per year.

So what I’ll always say is don’t overwork yourself. If you think you’re going to do a hundred senior sessions, all of a sudden you’re going to feel burnt out, you’re going to feel stressed out — it’s going to be a lot of work. So once you get that number, I want you to pause that video, write that down as well. So I’ll give you a second.

Hopefully you wrote it down. Now that you have both of those numbers, I’m going to just have a very, very easy math problem for you. Not even a problem, just a math solution for you. What you’re going to do is you’re going to take your income that you want, the revenue that you want your business to make — so whatever that first number is that you wrote down — and then you’re going to take the second number and what you’re going to do is you’re going to divide that second number by the first number.

So if you wrote down, let’s say, let’s keep this nice and simple — you wrote down that you want to make $50,000 a year with your high school senior photography business. Well, if you wrote down 50 clients, that would mean that you’re going to charge $1,000 per client. Now that’s just simple, simple math. There’s a lot more that goes into it. So I definitely recommend — we’re going to put this in the show notes as well — to download our pricing blueprint where we go into a lot more detail of what it is that it takes to actually charge the prices that you want and to make sure your pricing is profitable. It’s another freebie for you, my gift to you.

Now once you have this, are you going to start charging those rates if you’ve just picked up the camera for the very first time? Absolutely not. In fact, one of the things that we recommend is to go into step four, which is the portfolio building stage. This is when you’re going to get your expertise. This is when you’re going to start learning how to use your camera better, how to start posing clients better, how to actually take photos consistently that you’re proud to deliver to your clients.

One of the things that I always recommend when starting in the portfolio building stage is to do something called a model call. The model call just gets somebody in front of your camera who might be a potential senior client. Right now, they don’t know that you’re using a model call for this. And does this have to be a professional model or somebody that even has modeling experience? Absolutely not. This is just a word in our industry, in the photography industry, that just means, hey, we’re just doing basically a free shoot. This is not any pressure. I’m not exchanging any photographs to you that I don’t love. It’s only for you to get experience or gain exposure.

And I know that’s a dirty word in this industry — it’s just for you to start building your brand awareness with clients where all of a sudden they’re talking with their friends and now their friend hears about you and maybe they’re wanting to work with you. So it’s a great way of starting your business. In fact, I think we’ve got a video coming up on that channel solely about that as well. So you’re going to want to stay tuned for that as well.

Now with the model call, this is going to be really simple and straightforward. All that you’re doing is you’re taking them out for a 30 to 45 minute photography session. You’re going to provide them five to 10 digital images, maybe more if you’re proud of those. And you’re just doing things like testing out locations or seeing what wardrobe looks best on camera for them, or even understanding your lighting better, your camera settings better.

This is a great way of doing like a no pressure photo shoot. In fact, I remember when I was starting over a decade ago and I did like 5, 6, 7, dozens of these model calls — basically just learning how to be a better photographer, checking out what happens when I change my aperture or my shutter speed or ISO or what happens if I photograph in this lighting condition or that lighting condition. It doesn’t have to be hard — just make this a fun, no pressure photography session for your clients and it’s going to help you in the long run.

This is for your portfolio images for social media — keeps it fresh. And one of the things is that, does this always have to be free? Well, no. And that’s actually where we’re going to get into step five, which is what we call the model call to senior rep pipeline.

And the senior rep program is a fantastic thing where once you’ve gotten your model calls in, what you can do is you’ve built relationships with those people that have basically said, “Hey, yeah, we’ll model for you for your photography business.” With a senior rep program, you may have heard about this. So what even is a senior rep program?

A senior rep program is a group of individuals who are going to work with you and your photography business. With this, what you’re going to do is you’re going to give them some free photo shoots in exchange for them being a booked paid client. So notice I didn’t say free. Notice I didn’t say that they’re bringing you clients necessarily, but they’re going to go out and market for you.

We’ve got a whole video on senior reps and the truths coming up on the channel, so make sure to tune in for that as well. But we’ll also include a little freebie down below for the nine questions to ask your senior reps if you’re ready to get started. Maybe you’ve watched another YouTube video on this and you know you’re going to get started. We’ve got a freebie down below for you just for that.

Now with the senior rep program, these are going to be clients that are posting about you, sharing about you, and you’re just going to do two, maybe three — if you feel really ambitious — photo shoots throughout their junior and senior year, in addition to their actual senior session with you. And what they’re doing is you’re saying basically it’s kind of like the Billy Mays ShamWow thing — hey, what we’re going to do is when you book us as your photographer for your senior photos, we’re going to throw in some extra goodies for you. And that is all of the things of the senior rep program.

So maybe what you’re going to do is you’re going to give them a few free shoots. Maybe you’re going to say, “Hey, by the way, if you do happen to bring us a referral, what we’ll do is we’ll give you $50 cash or credit towards your photography session,” however you want to work that. And now what you’re doing is you’re having clients post about you while getting paid. And so this is going to help increase your brand awareness. More clients are going to hear about you, they’re going to want to book with you, and all of a sudden it kind of becomes like the snowball — where at first it’s a little bit hard and you start picking up more and more momentum as it goes down the mountain.

The last and the most important one that I can’t stress enough — if you want to have the freedom that the senior photography genre gives you — is to make sure that you are streamlining and setting your business up for success early. Now, we talked about all the business stuff at the top — a little bit more business stuff here because it makes a world of difference.

In fact, every single client that I work with, on average I spend about six hours with. That is not a lot of time. In fact, that’s like barely any time. I’m spending more time doing this YouTube channel than I do with my actual senior photography clients because I’ve gotten it so, so ironed out.

The first of these is to get what we call a studio management system in place. Now, with a studio management system, you may think that you don’t need one yet. You’re like, “Oh, well, I’ll just do that when I start booking more clients.” Well, what if the reason that you can’t book more clients is because you don’t have that? Because you’re so frantically trying to make sure that you’re sending the right emails to the clients — that you even remember to follow up on that inquiry email that came in or send them where they’re meeting for their actual photography session?

I always recommend that at least when you get to five to ten clients, start putting this in place. Because when you start to scale, when you start to get more clients in the door, you don’t want to be caught and not have a CRM in place because it’s going to literally drive you into the ground. It’s going to be a lot more time consuming, it’s going to take away time from your family, it’s going to add stress into your business. So get this up and running.

We recommend using Iris Works. They’re our studio management choice. They’re absolutely incredible. Their team’s amazing. They make it super simple. And trust me — we’ll do a video on this later — I went through tons and tons of different studio management systems, everything from HoneyBook to 17 Hats to Dubsado. And by far and away, Iris Works did what I needed it to do in being the simplest.

So I don’t know about you — I’m not a very techy person. Now, if you’re a super techy person, well, that’s going to be, you know, other studio management systems are going to be right up your alley. I want something that’s simple, it’s clean, it’s easy to use. That is Iris Works. What it does is it sends every email, all the session reminders for my clients. It literally does everything.

And so if you’re interested in trying out Iris Works, we’ll put a little link down there below. I believe it saves you 20% off your first year — so a little discount for you guys, special for you watching the channel.

The second is to make sure that in addition to having a CRM in place, get QuickBooks. I use QuickBooks Self-Employed. This isn’t a plug for them. I don’t have any affiliate with them. This literally means that what you’re going to do is you’re going to go to QuickBooks Self-Employed, get something that tracks your expenses — that makes sure that you can track every dollar that’s leaving your bank account as you’re growing your business.

So when you buy a new camera or pay for your Adobe subscription, make sure that you are tracking that. Because at the end of the year, because you did the business license set up, you actually get to claim a deduction. It’s kind of like from the Schitt’s Creek show — it’s like, “Can I write it off?” Yeah, you can. You can actually write it off the right way.

So what QuickBooks is going to do is it hooks up to either your bank account, your debit, credit card that you have tied to your business and it tracks every expense. It makes it so you don’t have to do it. I literally couldn’t live my life without it. It’s super simple. Get it from the start of your business and it makes everything down the line a lot easier.

And lastly, be willing to do things that help your business streamline itself — like using tools like AI editing. A Voto is a fantastic tool. It’s an AI retouching, AI editing. We’ll put a link down there below. I believe it’s also 15% off for your first package, so you can try it out. They’re amazing. I’m literally able to retouch an entire senior session in about five to ten minutes tops. That’s 75 images or more — literally with a click of a button. I’m making it sound really easy because it is easy. So definitely check that out.

So those are the six steps. So to recap: make sure that you define your brand. Second, don’t go out and buy the most expensive camera, lighting equipment that you can possibly get your hands on. It’s not going to make you a better photographer. In fact, it’s just going to add financial stress into your business as you’re getting started.

Two and a half — make sure you got your business contracts. Make sure you got your T’s crossed, your I’s dotted, all of the stuff that you need — contracts, business license, all that stuff.

Start building your pricing. Have that structured out. Make sure that you’re not undercharging. Even if you think you’re just starting out and you can’t afford to charge the prices that you are because you’re not taking good enough photos — well, let’s chat about that. Send me a DM over on Instagram @SeniorPhotoEducation.

And fourth — start the model calls. Start building your portfolio. Start being a better photographer.

Five — make sure that you start a senior rep program. It’s one of the quickest, most effective ways to grow your senior photography business and book more clients.

And lastly — put the streamlining processes in place. Get the software that’s going to help: CRM, studio management system, get QuickBooks, start AI editing, play around with all of it. It’s only going to help you in your business long term and ultimately make this more fun for you.

So thanks so much for watching the channel. Do me a favor — hit the subscribe button. If you found this was helpful, leave a comment letting me know what you found to be most helpful. And if you’re getting started with your senior photography business, I would love to help you out. So make sure to leave a comment so we can help you out and grab those freebies. We’ve got our crash course in the links for you, the pricing blueprint.

So that wraps it up for this video. Hopefully you found this helpful. If this was helpful for you, make sure to hit the subscribe button so you’re going to keep up to date on every single video — all things senior photography education that we put out specifically for you.

The other thing too is if you’re just starting your business, I want to help you out. So send me a direct message over on Instagram. You can find me at Senior Photo Education. We’re going to be putting out tons of education there so make sure you’re following there. Send me a DM, comment on this video. If you’re just starting your business, what videos you’d like to see in the future — we do read those, we do respond to those.

And lastly, make sure to grab those freebies. Those freebies are there for you. The crash course is going to help get you started in five easy videos for what you want to do to set up your senior photography business right from the start.

So I don’t know what video is next, but YouTube is going to suggest the next senior photography education video to watch — and it’s going to be right here. So click right here and we’ll see you on the next video.