Workflows - Photography Podcast

[00:00:00] Mike Morby: Which allowed us to focus on our family and even just focus on the day to day of the business more. And then it just started organically sort of growing where we brought on another associate and another. so, so that's where then we've been able to get to this point now of. We have more weddings than we've ever done, but we're working less.

[00:00:21] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Workflows is a podcast about saving you time and money in your photography business as a photographer and content Creator who struggles with dyslexia, color, blindness, introversion, and anxiety stemming from years of being bullied as a. Workflows have been my rock. I have workflows for every aspect of my life, and that's why I am so happy to bring you workflows a podcast Presented by Imagen as a company dedicated to saving you time and money in your photography business.

[00:00:51] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: It makes sense to enhance and expand the conversation to all things. Tune in and subscribe to hear stories, strategies, and tools that could be your rock. Hear from people just like you. Put the camera down for little connect the headphones and get to work with workflows. Get in on the conversation by joining the Imagen community today.

[00:01:12] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Imagen the possibilities

[00:01:17] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Mike Morby brings the perfect balance of experience. In creativity with over 400 weddings under his belt, he's able to anticipate moments before they happen. Mike's relentless desire to improve year after year has continued to put his work at the foreground of wedding photography. He is often praised for his dramatic use of light creative angles and ability to meet and exceed clients' expectations.

[00:01:47] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Mike is known for being a purposeful person who inspires his staff with this hard work and enthusiasm just as he constantly challenges himself. He also motivates those around him to invest in their own. Pushing the boundaries of their skills and ability. Mike prefers, simple living routines and quality time with family and friends to anything else.

[00:02:15] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Give him a hot cup of coffee, a good book, and his kids running through the yard. And he is a happy man. Let's get into my conversation with my friend, Mike Morby. Hey Mike, how are you?

[00:02:29] Mike Morby: I'm doing well. Yeah. Thanks for, chatting with me. .

[00:02:32] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah, well, I'm, I'm glad you're able to come on. We were able to make it work and I'm really excited to, you know, hear all about your workflows as a wedding photographer for so many years.

and the thing ways that you've adapted and evolved over time, I'm really excited to dive into all that. so with that, the first question I have for you is the same question I ask every single. What is one thing that you do for the photographic process, like behind the camera that has saved you time?

[00:03:00] Mike Morby: Yeah, I was thinking about that question. And can I give two, two answers or is, well, we strict one. Okay. You can, two is good. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things we've, Yeah, photographed. My first wedding 20 years ago, went full time in 2012. And then we started bringing on associates in like 2013, which has now grown, you know, the amount of weddings that we do, every year.

[00:03:22] Mike Morby: And I would say the biggest thing, which is a little controversial is, not overshooting. I know there's a big push for like 10,000 Imageners 15,000 ImagenAI's, you know, stuff like that. but yeah, with the quantity of weddings that we do is, Just controlling my image, count, looking through my, my frame and just waiting for the moment before I click the shutter, rather than just being like, and then hope one comes out.

[00:03:48] Mike Morby: But, yeah, I I'm notorious for shooting under 3000. ImagenAI's a wedding, which, is pretty low. But, so I try to get that around, like the three to 5,000 mark, which, Help save time in, in the post processing. and then the other thing is just, consistency. you know, making sure that the image quality is consistent, the lighting's consistent, the backgrounds are clean.

yeah, just consistent shooting because, especially with, Imagen that is it, I hear both, I hear Imagen an Imagen, what you gotta solve this

[00:04:20] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: debate. Yeah. So it, it is, Imagen it is

[00:04:23] Mike Morby: Imagen. Okay. All right. I rarely hear Imagen, but when I, you know, when I do, I'm like, I'll just say Imagen back to them.

[00:04:29] Mike Morby: So I don't make, 'em feel stupid, but I'm like, I think it's Imagen. but, you know, especially with the algorithms that we have for Imagen, you know, that consistent shooting then translates into consistent editing. yeah. You know, as well with the, with the software. So yeah, those would be the

[00:04:46] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: two big things.

[00:04:47] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. That, those, those, those are fantastic, you know, regarding the, the consistency thing, whether you're using Imagen or manually editing, you know, having that consistency, no matter what is gonna save you time in the long run. Yeah. but, and regarding the, the trying to shoot less. So I don't photograph weddings, but I do photograph other sort of portraits and people whatnot, but I make it a habit of actually using smaller memory cards.

[00:05:14] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So I have to shoot less. I got the biggest memory

[00:05:17] Mike Morby: card. Okay. That would scare the crap outta me cuz it's like oh no. They're about to kiss. And my camera saying it's outta memory. I mean,

[00:05:25] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: it's, it's, it's the, you have to, when you do that, you have to be aware of like, you know, totally not necessarily how many frames you're you're shooting, but you look and see, okay, I've got X amount left, you know, and so on.

[00:05:36] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: But, yeah, I've made that a habit cuz I, I, I don't like. Like you, I, I don't wanna shoot too much, for many different reasons, but, time, time is a big one, for sure.

[00:05:46] Mike Morby: For sure. Yeah. Yeah. And if I did less weddings per year, mm-hmm then yeah, I probably would be a much higher image count cuz there are sometimes I'm shooting and then I go and look at it afterward and it's like, oh, if I just would've worked that moment just a little bit longer or a few more frames, I was actually talking, to somebody the other day that I hope the, Cell phone technology of being able to click on an image and it's like a little video real, and you could pick the best spot.

[00:06:12] Mike Morby: I'm like, they should have that on cameras. Cuz it's like the extra split second. I just, I just need, that would be awesome if they added that into the text. I,

[00:06:21] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I could, I could be wrong. I could be wrong. so don't quote me on this, but I feel like Panasonic made a push for video stills. Yeah. When they called it hybrid.

for a long time, that was like a trending term in the, in the photo space when Panasonic started like building all these, yeah. You know, newer mirrorless. And so I feel like they tried, I don't know how it's doing.

[00:06:43] Mike Morby: Yeah. But yeah. But, who knows, but maybe one day, cause I just wanna see what happened, you know, a quarter of a second past this moment.

[00:06:51] Mike Morby: That's all I want to know like what, what happened or like right before it.

[00:06:54] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. so what is now one thing you do for the business that, saves you time or money?

[00:07:03] Mike Morby: I, I, I think you're setting these questions up that I have to say, Imagen in most of 'em. No, but definitely I'm just, I'm just messing with you, but yeah, it's a no brainer, like Imagen, you know, easy, easy answer there.

well, gimme something

else.

[00:07:19] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Cause we're, we're gonna get to Imagen,

cause

[00:07:20] Mike Morby: I know you're user it. Yeah, so I would say, and super basic, mm-hmm but I would say, time tracking has overall been the like number one thing that has helped us grow our business. So I'm, I'm a big spreadsheet person. Okay. so

[00:07:37] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: tracking like ahead of a wedding, right.

[00:07:39] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Tracking their, the timeframe before a wedding, is that what

[00:07:42] Mike Morby: you're talking about? Track tracking everything. So like, okay. yeah. How long does it take? And, and I. BEC we've passed off like calling and, edit review and, you know, stuff like that. We, you know, outsource all of that stuff. Mm-hmm, , you know, prior to that, I would sit down and I'd have a spreadsheet and I would track my time of like, how long does it take me to call a wedding?

[00:08:06] Mike Morby: And I would track my time for three months. How long does it take me to, prep on a wedding day? and so that's why I switched over. Cannon flashes with double A's to go docs with lithium ion, cuz that will save me time. So just every aspect of our business, just sitting down and when we wanna work on becoming more efficient at something, we'll just track our time for two or three months in that area.

[00:08:30] Mike Morby: And then, you know, make a decision of like, is this something we wanna start outsourcing? Is this something that, maybe even like where we have our hands on a keyboard can save. you know, so that we're not doing too many movements. but yeah. Is it worth, is it worth

[00:08:44] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: using a keyboard versus a walkup tablet or a loop, a loop deck or whatever?

[00:08:50] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yep. Very smart.

[00:08:52] Mike Morby: Yeah. Yeah. And it also helps me to like plan my week, especially when I did more within the business post-processing I could plan my week and say, okay, we have these three weddings, we shot this. and I can then could time block, cuz I knew exactly how much time each one would take. And if it took longer, then I knew I was like slacking or distracted, you know, stuff like that.

[00:09:13] Mike Morby: Yeah.

that

[00:09:13] Mike Morby: just super sexy response. Yeah.

[00:09:16] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: No, you know that, that's what, I actually think that would be a really cool thing for you to give away like the, the spreadsheet, like template that you built for this cuz that's. a business nerds dream is having something that organized, you know? Yeah. So, that might be something worth considering we could talk later on about like what you could do, but like, I feel like you should totally like temp, templatize that and, and give it away to people.

[00:09:39] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Or sell to

[00:09:39] Mike Morby: people anyway. Yeah. And we do, we do, do you know Tony, do you know Tony Hoffer, Hoffer photography based out of Downingtown, Pennsylvania? yeah, because of this, he's a big like time tracking nerd and backend business nerd as well. Kind of like my wife and I. so my wife and I, we have all of these spreadsheets we've created for our own business.

[00:09:57] Mike Morby: Even like, if I didn't wanna shoot weddings anymore, how many weddings would we need to book with associates for me to take LA like everything is spreadsheeted, but, Carrie, Tony and I, actually ended up creating a. Called cost cruncher, where people could type in all their overhead costs type in their cogs type in the time they spend.

[00:10:18] Mike Morby: And it will show their profit, you know, how much profit per package, their hourly rate, how many hours. And, and we thought like this was years ago, we created this and we're like, oh, this is it. Everybody's gonna want this. We were selling it for like $50. And like 25 people ended up signing up were like, okay, maybe not that many people care about their numbers as we do.

[00:10:43] Mike Morby: Yeah. Yeah. You

[00:10:44] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: think, you think that when somebody could use something to save them, you know, potentially save them hundreds of thousands of dollars, you know, year after year after year, they might wanna invest in a $50 tool,

[00:10:55] Mike Morby: but yep. Yep. Takes effort, takes a lot of effort to know all your, because you have to know.

[00:11:00] Mike Morby: You have to know your numbers to plug in your numbers. And I think that's the, the spreadsheets are awesome and people love 'em, but the work to find all the information to plug in. Yeah. A lot of people are like, eh, I'll just keep throwing stuff at a wall and hope it sticks. yeah, yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:17] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: All right. So, we've talked about the photographic process.

[00:11:19] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: We talked about the editing, you know, the business process. Let's talk about a little bit about editing. So besides from, Imagen, cuz we're again, we're gonna get to Imagen. Yeah. What is one thing that you do for. That has saved you time. And I'm also gonna preface this with you kind of alluded to this earlier, talking about consistency, how that could, you know, help.

[00:11:36] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So if you wanna, you know, talk more about that or if you wanna talk about something else perfectly fine. Yep.

[00:11:42] Mike Morby: Yeah. I, I think a around the consistency piece, I have found, yeah, other than running stuff through, Imagen, that just paying attention to backgrounds has probably been one of the. Biggest things.

[00:11:56] Mike Morby: It's not the actual editing process, but it's what we're doing before. The editing process happens of, I was photographing a wedding the other day and, and the groom was tying his shoe and I'm always whenever something's happening, I'm, I'm looking at the background. Is there like a water bottle? Is there trash, you know, all of cuz that takes so much time afterward to get out and he was tying his shoe and the SCO on the wall had a.

[00:12:23] Mike Morby: White lampshade. So it looked like he, he was so, so perfectly in that spot, it looked like he had a lampshade as a hat. Yeah. And so it was like, oh wait, Hey, pause real quick. Let me just move this out of the way. And then I got back to shooting. but yeah, always just thinking what what's in my frame and yep.

[00:12:42] Mike Morby: Is there anything I can do to get it outta my frame while shooting? If so, that's gonna save hours of. You know,

[00:12:49] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: later, a couple, a couple episodes back, I was talking with charming Pena and she had a very similar thing where she always pays a very close attention to the light bulbs that are being used in chandeliers and SCS and whatnot.

[00:13:03] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And she actually works with the, the, the venues ahead of time and say, and, and she knows like, okay, this plate, this venue has these type of. They're gonna actually turn them off for charming or they're going to swap 'em out for different bulbs because she knows, she knows that if that's gonna save so much time in post for the lights to either be off or not be, you know, the, low quality LEDs or fluorescence that flicker and change color tones every two seconds.

[00:13:35] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So, really, I mean, it's so important to pay attention, you know, you don't. a lampshade coming outta someone's head or a pole, you know, or something that's movable or adjustable, to be in your way, or like you said, garbage on garbage can. Yeah.

[00:13:48] Mike Morby: Garbage. Yeah. The bag, you know, and, and plastic from the dress.

[00:13:53] Mike Morby: Is that still on the, you, on the, on the bed as I'm photographing, you know, the getting ready stuff? yeah, all that, all those little.

[00:14:00] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: What is one thing that you are struggling with right now in your photography business? Is it something that a magic could help with share it with the other Imageners in the Imagend community?

[00:14:12] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So now what is one thing that you do after a session after the session's completely done that has increased business for you?

[00:14:22] Mike Morby: Okay. So this is a secret that I questioned sharing. So hopefully nobody in the greater Philadelphia area is listening. and some of my team might, kill me for this, but every single wedding we gather, as much as we can of vendor venue information, we use Tave.

[00:14:40] Mike Morby: And so there's all these fields where we can say, who's the DJ. who's a caterer, you know, all that sort of stuff. And we get their contact information. And then after every single wedding we send the, the venues and vendors, the ImagenAI's usually just like the Bo blog post, which is like 50 ImagenAI's.

so yeah, this, this year we have like 105 weddings and every single one of those is gonna get sent to, the vendors. And then we create folders. If we shoot at this wedding venue a lot, they can go into their folder and here's every wedding blog post that we've shot there. and then what we've seen is because they're getting our ImagenAI's consistently when they want to post something on Instagram or social media, or even we had this one venue create a brochure and she was like, You know, 50, of the 52 ImagenAI's were yours, because it was just so much easier to go into the folder rather than reaching out to everybody.

yeah, so that post wedding, it's, it's a lot of effort to, to do and to create and organize. But, I would, I don't know the exact stat, but it's the majority of our weddings come from venue and vendor referrals. And I think a big part of it is. Of we're consistently giving them content to help promote their business.

[00:15:55] Mike Morby: And then in turn they're promoting us. Yeah. You

[00:15:58] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: know it there historically. you've got, you've got advertisements, you've got SEO. You've got social media. You have email marketing, but above everything else, the one thing that has always been number one, If you put the effort in is word of mouth between vendors and your customers.

[00:16:19] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Absolutely. So what you're doing is very smart and, I can only Imagen how much it's in it's helped and increase your business and your referrals. I mean, it's, it's gotta be immense, so yeah.

[00:16:30] Mike Morby: Yeah.

[00:16:30] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: It's been huge. That's yeah, it, it makes the effort. I mean, cuz I I'm sure that is a lot, as you said, a lot of effort to do each every session, but that makes the effort worth it for.

[00:16:40] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. because you could get, you could get 10 referrals from one, you know, one post session upload of all the, of all the new, new stuff. Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:16:50] Mike Morby: Yeah. VE especially venues. And it's really hard to do, but getting in with a venue, you know, they'll, they'll do maybe 300 tours a year and we have 300 couples.

seeing our work, you know, in, in some capacity, whether it's something we put on a wall at the venue, some of them have iPads and they show our ImagenAI's as they're walking through. but yeah, if you can get in with a single venue, that could be yeah. Of those 300, maybe 20 of them reach out, you know, 20 or 30 and that's, that's huge.

[00:17:21] Mike Morby: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And then keep multiplying that and then it kind of slowly grows.

[00:17:27] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Awesome. So this is the point of the show where I ask for you to look down at your wedding photography business from a 30,000 foot view. Yes. And if you can please share an outlined breakdown of your workflow from lead to delivery.

[00:17:45] Mike Morby: Yeah. Well, that's, that's a, that's quite a question. I know I'm trying to be as simple as possible. Yeah, kind of everything within our business, we have like little, like mottos of, you know, when you're shooting safe shot, first creative shot, second, you know, stuff like that, or pay attention to your backgrounds.

[00:18:02] Mike Morby: But one of the things that we kind of with our workflow, one of the foundational elements in the very beginning is, the website gets the email. The email gets the meeting and the meeting gets the booking. and so, you know, in the beginning there. We're kind of guiding them through a process where the kind of mountaintop is the face to face, used to be in person.

but now it's over zoom, but slowly getting to them to the point where we have a zoom meeting. And now here's all of the information you need to make a decision, but we, we try to get that, meeting as much as possible. And we've noticed if we give too much information up front, They get, they think they have everything, they need to make a decision.

and then they never set up the meeting, but, you know, yeah. Get getting that meeting is, is primary and guiding them to that. so then when the lead comes in, something that's been really huge. And again, it takes a lot of effort is just responsiveness, wedding wire put out a stat years ago that you are a hundred times more likely to connect with a lead.

[00:19:03] Mike Morby: If you respond within five. Mm. so we always try to respond to leads, like whatever's happening, just respond right away. Something super simple. Just to get that meeting, set up. We had won the other day. They inquired at eight 50 at night and I was like, oh, maybe I'll just respond tomorrow morning.

[00:19:19] Mike Morby: But I responded. And she was like, can you talk now? Cuz my mom is with me and she won't be with me tomorrow. So I was like, sure. So we got on the phone. They inquired at eight 50, we were doing a zoom at nine 15, and they were booked by 9 45, which is like, nice. And we'll actually see that fairly often. there was another one that inquired and they were booked within three hours and her fiance was about to head out for a work trip for two weeks.

so yeah, photographers then inquire or like responding the next morning. you, you can lose. Yeah. Yeah. And the couples will, you know, we've gotten that before, where we've delayed in our response and they've already found somebody and we're like, how'd you find somebody so quick, but, you know, that's, that's really big is just responding as fast as possible, getting the meeting set up.

and then we set up a, it used to be in person, but now we do a zoom call where I'll show the photographers available for their date. kind of recommend a photographer from our team. According to their needs, talk through pricing, all of that sort of stuff. And then the goal of the meeting is gonna sound kind of car sales, mini, but is, stay during the meeting.

[00:20:29] Mike Morby: It's always really big. I feel to stay on the emotional side of the buying decision. Like I want them to leave that meeting thinking like I have to book more be photography. Like I don't care the price I want. I wanna get that emotion really high. that. Feel like Morby photography, is it? yeah, so that coming outta the meeting, I'm hoping that there's like no other option that I've sold them enough on this, you know, decision that this is who they have to use.

then after that meeting, we send a, follow up right away. Like it was great talking with you. Here's links to pricing in portfolio. Here's a contract. If you want a book, you know, all that sort of stuff. And. Yeah. So that's all kind of like pre-booking is this whole workflow of yeah. Responsiveness, portraying value, you know, all of that sort of stuff so that we can get that, get that deposit in hand.

[00:21:21] Mike Morby: And then once we have the deposit in hand, then we can get more technical. Let's get in the details of your timeline. Let's talk through some of this other more, yeah. Technical things. but I try to stay away from that in the meeting. Cause I don't wanna. into a 15 minute discussion about timeline and then all of a sudden, you know, they're like, okay, well, yeah, we talked about our timeline, but I don't really know, what value Morby photography offers.

[00:21:43] Mike Morby: Right. so then yeah, once they're booked, we usually immediately go into shoot with me, which is, a company that I founded with Nathan dash. so we'll go in there and. Find second photographers assistance that we might need to secure for the day. and then about 60 days out from the wedding, we use Tave for all of our, CRM workflow and whatnot, but yeah, about 60 days out from the wedding, they'll get a questionnaire.

[00:22:07] Mike Morby: Where they can fill out their family. Formal lists must haves timing, locations, vendors. and then right after they fill that out, we jump on a call with them to walk through their timeline. I used to way back. cuz I shot my first wedding in 2001, but we used to use Manila folders and I would just have a call with them the week of, and write the timing on the Manila folder.

[00:22:27] Mike Morby: And then I would take the folder with me to the wedding and it had all their contract and stuff in there's one time I like left a folder at the wedding oh boy. But yeah, over, over the years we've learned like if we can get out ahead of all like the planning stuff, We're creating a lot of value because that timeline releases so much stress.

[00:22:47] Mike Morby: Yeah. From couple cuz once they have the timeline, now they can talk to, you know, hair, hair, and makeup. They can talk to transportation. They know when they're getting to the venue, like all of that sort of stuff. So, so yeah, we try to get out of that. get out ahead of that quite a bit. so we can help relieve that stress.

[00:23:07] Mike Morby: That's great. should I keep going? Yeah. Yeah, this is great stuff. So, so yeah, after all the, after the wedding is shot, you know, we do all, all of the upload, of the ImagenAI's we do the renaming, and then we actually have, a cuing editing team, because some weekends, like we have a weekend in October with nine weddings.

[00:23:28] Mike Morby: So to have. We've burnt out a lot of colors and editors in the past, cuz we would always put the workload on one person. Right. But more recently we're using like a team of freelancers. We have one main editor, but then when September, October hits, we have a group of freelancers that we bring in to help with that extra workload.

[00:23:50] Mike Morby: Mm-hmm but yeah, we do, load everything up onto, into Lightroom after it's renamed. Create a smart preview. And then we send the smart preview, to our Kohler and editor. So they're actually calling in, Lightroom smart preview, and then they run that through. They give everything a one star that they wanna keep, they run that through Imagen, and then they're just doing a, a quality control check and then it comes back to us.

[00:24:15] Mike Morby: I do one more quick check and then we, upload it to their online gallery. Nice. Yeah. I used to spend probably like 10 hours or so per wedding, in work that I actually had to do, but now the it's mainly just that final check. I'm just making sure everything looks good.

[00:24:32] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. I'm sure. Also just like having, your, your, a calling and editing team, that's now, you know, doing the calling and then just quality control on the edits.

[00:24:42] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Not fully editing is probably that is in itself. Is. You know, it's probably a nice, stress reliever for them too.

[00:24:50] Mike Morby: Yeah. Yeah. It's gone from like eight hours down to, you know, basically most of what they're doing is just pressing the next arrow and then yeah. Making slight adjustments if needed. but yeah.

[00:25:02] Mike Morby: And then, so then once that's all done, we upload everything to an online gallery where they can download the photos, order, prints, canvases, all that sort of stuff. mm-hmm and then we use storybook, design company with Leah Gallo. and so we, once we have the online gallery, the couple, if they have an album, they'll go in and pick all of their favorites and then Leah creates a rough draft.

[00:25:24] Mike Morby: Does like a 90 minute zoom call with them to kind of narrow down the spreads and things like that. And then once it's all good to go, we send out the album and, and that's pretty much it. Yeah. Kind of nice 30,000 foot view.

[00:25:40] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's nice that you also outsource the album, process too.

[00:25:43] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: That's something that charming has done too. That came up in my conversation with her and, definitely relieved a lot of. The, the extra stress that comes from album creation and, you know, the who the whole like IPS part of albums too. like just taking that off your shoulders and putting it on, you know, somebody who, who sold job is that is a really nice idea too.

[00:26:05] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. So,

[00:26:07] Mike Morby: yeah. And then so much of what I've shared so far, like we didn't set out to have a bunch of associates and shoot a hundred weddings a year. Like that was never. goal. right. But yeah, so much of this, like outsourcing and systems, has been because we have three young kids and you know, now they're all in school, but when we were building this business, they weren't, you know, we went full time in 2012, my daughter was two and my son was just born.

[00:26:36] Mike Morby: And then we had another daughter born in 2015, but we were just looking at our work life balance and. , which is like, what, what areas of the business, do we not need to be a part of, and also like what areas of the business can somebody do better than us? right. Leah's very first album meeting. I sat in with her and I, I made the album meeting worse and Leah was like, you're never allowed any album meeting again.

[00:27:02] Mike Morby: Cause I just like, I just get everything off track. And I, I actually, I read through all these questions ahead of time, so I wouldn't get off track and probably still am. but yeah, we, we were just looking at it and just saying like, how can we get our time back? And then also are there people that are, are better than us in certain areas that can, yeah.

[00:27:22] Mike Morby: You know, do this and then, so it slowly morphed, or we started freeing up more time, which allowed us to focus on our family and even just focus on the day to day of the business more. And then it just started organically sort of growing where we brought on another associate and another. so, so that's where then we've been able to get to this point now of we have more weddings than we've ever done, but we're working less than we ever have because of the ability to, you have a team of people handling everything, right?

[00:27:52] Mike Morby: Yeah.

[00:27:52] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I think a really important takeaway there is that, not every photographer is good at business. Not every business person is good at photography and not every person who is a photography business owner. Is good at the sale selling part of things, but might be fantastic at the rest of the business part of things.

[00:28:09] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. And the photography things, not everybody is a Jack of all trades. And you have to fill the gap where you are, not living up to your, your own standards and goals, right? Yeah. I mean, if so, you, you filled those gaps and, you've built a really successful, you know, wedding photography business off of it.

[00:28:26] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And. You know, that's, that's pretty darn cool. thank you.

[00:28:31] Mike Morby: Yeah. Thank you. It's been fun. Yeah.

so what does the future of AI in photography look like to

[00:28:42] Mike Morby: you? Very bright, even if it stayed where it is, it's still just like, wow, this is amazing, but I. When I talk with my team, like our biggest bottleneck is calling editing.

[00:29:00] Mike Morby: Like it just, you know, it just, it takes time. It's always been our biggest bottleneck and Imagen has cut that editing time from eight hours per wedding down to like an hour or less of quality con. So we're already saving like seven hours of wedding mm-hmm you know, with that, but as I talk with my team, like this October is.

[00:29:23] Mike Morby: September 17th in October 30th, we have 30 weddings. we only have a hundred this year, but like most like a third of those almost are in this like short time window. And, you know, I talk to my team and I'm, I just encourage them. Like AI is gonna continue to make this pain point better and better and better.

[00:29:45] Mike Morby: And I hope it'll get to the point where. Yeah. Like we don't even need a freelance team working on stuff that I can run it through and it will be better than anything any human could have done. And it's just like, yep. Check it. All right. We're good. right. Like I, I see that as the future of yeah. Yeah, like you run it through and it knows exactly how you want it to call exactly how you want it to edit.

[00:30:09] Mike Morby: It's, you know, better than a human and we send it out the door. That's the

[00:30:15] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: goal. That's the goal. That's

[00:30:16] Mike Morby: the goal. Come on, Scott. Come on. keep

[00:30:20] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: it going. Yeah's it's, it's a, that is definitely a bright, a bright future. it's something I look forward to seeing as. Yeah.

[00:30:29] Mike Morby: Yep. Yep. So yeah, just keep it going, man.

[00:30:33] Mike Morby: You, you and the team over there,

[00:30:34] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: keep it going. Yeah. We're working out, working out. so you've touched on this throughout the, this episode, but how did Imagen impact your life?

[00:30:47] Mike Morby: I don't even know where to start with that. but oh, obviously it save. a ton of money because most quality editing companies are 35 cents. You know, an image, plus if you really want it done well. So one thing is to save us money. It saved us time, but I would say the biggest thing is just the consistency of it.

because like when, when a human, nothing against humans, but mm-hmm , this is one thing I don't want humans to have to do anymore. But like when I used to edit and I would have a ton of weddings, I would be editing in the morning. I'd sometimes be editing at 2:00 AM. I would be edit like all different times.

you know, I might be like really tired and I'm editing and I'll look at it the next day and just be like, oh, this just looks like crap. I did, everything's fluorescent green, but what I, you know, Imagen doesn't get tired, you know, Imagen doesn't take days off, you know, Imagen has, doesn't have seven to 10 day turnaround times.

you know, all of that sort of, and we just we're getting these catalogs back and the consistency of them is better than it's ever been. so for me, that's the biggest thing of like, You and you see it all over Facebook group, September, October. I'm so tired. I'm burnt out. Like you're yeah. You're not gonna be doing your best work when you feel like you have nothing left.

[00:32:05] Mike Morby: Right. and Imagen not only gives you more time back because you don't have to edit as much, but also the consistency of it is just like, is incredible. Like they're not, you know, the white balance is consistent. The exposure is con like everything is consistent from start to finish because. you know, the algorithms of the technology, and them evaluating my ImagenAI's.

so that that's been probably the biggest way it's changed my life. Just the consistency of it. I'm, I'm always proud of like a blog post from the editing standpoint. That is nice shot better, but the editing is just, it's a more consistent product than it's ever been. I love

[00:32:43] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: that. We started this episode with talking about consistency and we're editing, This episode talking about consistency.

yeah, cause that is actually a big thing. I'd Imagen that we are very proud of is that we do provide that consistency and I'm glad that you're recognizing it and others are recognizing it. So, thank you for, for, for sharing that. Of course. Yeah. yeah, it's been huge. Yep. So Mike, where can listeners learn more about you connect with you and of course see your incredible photo.

[00:33:14] Mike Morby: Yeah. So Morby photography is, is our business. so Morby, photography.com, online and, social like IG and Facebook Morby photography. And then we just started venturing in the, to. I did not set that up, so I don't know. where I don't even know what we're putting on there yet. so yeah, just Morby photography in general, very one of a kind name.

and then also, as I had mentioned earlier in the episode, my buddy, Nathan Des and I Nathan Desh, and I, started a business called shoot with.me. and it's a platform for photographers to find and hire. Help for jobs. so you won't see my face on that website, but also yeah. Shoot with.me is, another avenue of, our business.

[00:33:57] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. A much better way to find, photographers to work with in various aspects of your jobs that you have, outside of Facebook groups.

[00:34:07] Mike Morby: yep. So yeah, I found so many amazing. second photographers with the amount of weddings that we're doing. We really have to, I think we hired 30 unique people this year to second shoot for us.

and yeah, shoot with me kind of opened up the. the opportunity to have people that I didn't even know second shot, you know, to work with us. So it's been really helpful. Yeah. Cool.

[00:34:31] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Thank you so much, Mike, for that incredible conversation about your workflows. I am sure that all the listeners have walked away with a bunch of great takeaways.

[00:34:40] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Thanks to you. You have been listening to workflows Presented by Imagen to hear more from workflows and to find a link to our guest. Please go to imagen-ai.com/podcast. Be a part of the conversation by joining the Imagen imagen-ai.com/community. And be sure to subscribe to the podcast on apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[00:35:08] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Thank you for tuning in until next time.