There are a lot of benefits to sharing images with wedding vendors. Giving photo access to the wedding planner, florist, venue, makeup artist, caterer, and the rest of the wedding professional team can serve as free social media or Internet marketing for your photography business (as long as you are being tagged and linked appropriately) and is a great way to earn referrals from those other vendors, too! They are able to see your beautiful imagery for themselves, and they are likely appreciative that you are willing to extend image usage rights to them so they can show off their own work.
An important note about photo sharing: the decision of whether to share ultimately comes down to copyright: the photographer owns the copyright to the images, so it’s up to them whether to allow other wedding pros to display those images. If you decide that you’re not willing to share client gallery links with vendors, that’s your prerogative and you are fully allowed to control who has access to your photos (and who doesn’t).
If you decide you are comfortable with other wedding pros viewing and using your images, there are some best practices you can implement to nurture the relationship with fellow vendors and ensure you’re being correctly attributed wherever images are used.
Check these three WAY easy strategies and don’t be surprised if you end up on preferred vendor lists, like, tomorrow. The time and energy you save other wedding pros on asking around for images? It’s good for business!
1. Make vendor sharing part of your workflow.
An efficient way to share the wedding gallery with other wedding pros is to incorporate it as a step in your post-production workflow. After sending the completed image collection to your clients (or prepping a blog post, or sending a submission… wherever it feels right in YOUR workflow!), forward the link to your fellow vendors, too! Once you get into the habit of sharing the gallery with vendors as a step in your workflow, it’ll be an effortless and prompt way for the rest of the professional team to access the photos and shout your business name from the rooftops (without them having to bug you for it and interrupt your inbox later on — it’s a win-win!).
2. Clearly state your image usage guidelines.
No photographer wants their images showing up on Instagram with a filter on it, and half the reason for sharing the images (i.e. the free marketing!) is lost if other wedding pros aren’t tagging your business on social media or linking your web address in their online portfolios. Prevent these issues from coming up in the first place by clearly stipulating your conditions for image usage in the very beginning of the e-mail (pro tip: putting it in bold text ahead of the gallery link helps make sure they don’t skip reading it!).
3. Include a list of vendor credits when you send the gallery link.
An important element in sharing the images with vendors is ensuring you’re being tagged or linked properly, and the other wedding pros involved in the big day will appreciate being attributed, as well. A great way to make life easier for everyone is to include a list of vendors when sharing the gallery link. You can simply include the list of everyone’s business names, or you can go the extra mile and include web links and/or social media handles. If you’re planning to blog the wedding or submit for publication, you’ll need to gather the list of other vendors anyway, so why not share it with the whole team? Listing everyone’s social media handles, for example, makes it easy for vendors to simply copy and paste into an Instagram caption. Wedding pros LOVE it when photographers make this extra effort — it goes a long way!
Vendor Sharing E-mail Template
This all sounds great, but now you have to put these strategies into action. Cue the eye roll for ANOTHER e-mail you have to write…
OR, you can just copy and paste!
The Vendor Sharing E-mail Template we use at Anna Delores Photography has been refined over the years and is an efficient, easy way to share images and grow relationships with other wedding pros!
