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Volume photography that works: Real workflows, retention, sales, and AI–from three pros.

Photo credit: JSPS Schools

Volume photography can feel like organized (or not-so-organized) chaos. One season you’re juggling paper forms and chasing payments, and the next you’re trying to keep up with dozens of teams, hundreds of parents, tight timelines, and a workflow that never seems to slow down.

In our recent Zenfolio webinar, three working volume photographers—Misty Huss, Seth Fontenot, and Jani Tzolov—shared the real tools, habits, and decisions that helped them regain control, increase revenue, and create more space for genuine connection in their work.

The webinar covered a wide range of topics, but for this blog we chose three core questions that consistently shape a photographer’s ability to scale:

• What tools and techniques made the biggest impact on managing and growing a volume photography business?
• What reliably increases sales per client or per event?
• How does AI support the workflow without replacing the human connection that families value?

Read on for practical ideas and mindset shifts you can bring into your next season.

The workflow evolution: Leaving paper behind.

Growth in volume photography is built on clarity, repeatability, and workflows that remove friction instead of creating it. Misty, Seth, and Jani each started with paper based systems. Their turning point came when they replaced manual steps with consistent, automated structures.

A night and day difference.

Misty Huss: When I first started it was paper–everything was manual. In one season, I had ten teams; I spent the vast majority of my time dealing with paperwork, inventing my own systems. Then I would have to do manual orders for prints–it was archaic. 

Creating the galleries and setting up the structure used to take a couple of hours.  Now I’m running 73 teams through the new systems that Zenfolio has created–it takes a minute and a half or less, which is insane. It’s The Flintstones versus The Jetsons; a night and day difference. It’s allowed me to scale up the amount of clients I can have.

From struggling to seamless.

Jani Tzolov: When we first start, we are just trying to figure out how we can make it happen. I was struggling; there were papers, there were excel sheets. There was, “Oh my goodness, I gotta make sure that everybody has their order.”

I first began with dance studios, and they are amazing, but it can get intense when you’re going from taking photos of little tiny dancers, to delivering the orders, making sure that parents are choosing the right package. 

This past year has been just completely seamless–I think one of my favorite things is that you can just have the parents and the dance studios do their own registration; I don’t have to do anything. They can find the photos, they can place their orders–they go straight to my lab and then straight to them. Life is so much better.

Building a professional reputation plus smart automation.

Seth Fontenot: There were so many cold communications starting out–I was emailing schools, coaches, athletic directors. It was a wide net I threw, and the ones that responded are now the biggest schools that I work with; it’s a natural evolution of getting established and getting some reputation built. 

And having a website was a differentiator from somebody who’s just dabbling and sending out Google Drive links. You instantly have more credibility with a solid platform; that was definitely a big piece of what helped me scale the business. 

Outside of that, I do a lot of Photoshop work and there’s so much repetition–I’ve become a proponent of using plugins. Pixnub is one that I use exclusively for my edits, it’s an AI-based tool. I’m always looking for ways to be more efficient with what I’m doing–my focus is how I can shorten the amount of time it takes to get shoots organized, pushed out, and on to the next one.

Controlling the environment; Misty’s 40 foot mobile studio.

Misty Huss: Colorado weather is unpredictable. Last year my husband and I invested in a 40 foot enclosed car hauler and turned it into a dual mobile studio. For big organizations, like a Saturday where we will run 45 teams in six hours, I have complete control over the lighting and environment.

I can usually get four to five poses out of each athlete in 30 seconds or less. Because I control the environment, the quality does not suffer.  It has been the single biggest game changer in how I can scale.

Try this:

• Map your complete workflow from intake to delivery and mark every step that is still manual.
• Standardize naming, file structures, and pre shoot prep so each season repeats predictably.
• Add (at least) one tool that reduces repetitive editing or sorting work.
• Ask yourself; how can I control my environment to decrease wasted time during a shoot?

Strategies to increase sales.

Increasing your revenue does not always equal increasing your prices. For these three photographers, growth happened through value, variety, and long term relationships.

Bundles, repeat clients, and small gifts.

Jani Tzolov:  For me, it is always  bundling. I am not just a photographer, I’m also a mom. I have kiddos in dance and sports. I know what [the client side] looks like, so I always want to put it from my [mom] perspective. I want to be able to provide more while still keeping in mind that I am a business owner. So bundles and discounts, especially when it comes to repeat clients.

I am big on rewarding the people that I work with. The more we invest into our local businesses, the more we can add value–not only to them as a business and our economy, but also through our clients. Because we share clients, we share the partnership. I’ll do their favorite photos from years before, and then we’ll do fliers–the more clients they have, the more clients I have, and vice versa.

Growing horizontally: more people, at the same price.

Seth Fontenot: I think about pricing in terms of vertical or horizontal. A vertical example might be that I keep my same amount of clients and I just start to raise the prices. I don’t typically do that. I try to grow my business horizontally. If I’m at one school and I already shoot soccer and volleyball for them, now I’m going to start shooting tennis and track and swim. Once I’ve got an in with an organization, it’s easier to pivot sideways by adding more teams–more people–at the same price point.

I’ve also started to have minimal goals; I won’t do a shoot for [under] 30 kids, that’s not worth the set up for me. I used to just take anything and everything, but the amount of time to set up for lights and a backdrop–that’s just not worth doing for a [smaller] amount of kids.

More poses equals a higher average sale.

Misty Huss: One of the things that I’ve done is adding multiple poses. The actual team photos aren’t as important to people as multiple pictures of just their child. When I’m offering 4 or 5 different poses that are super cute or fun–whatever the age bracket denotes–that is where I have seen my average sale go from $40 to $65 or $70. I haven’t really changed up anything else; offering them multiple poses makes it hard for them to pick just one. 

I make it about the kids, especially the older they get. I have so much fun with my high schoolers, especially the teams that I’ve worked with for years. They get into it and they’re comfortable with me–our rule is don’t [do anything to] make your mother or grandmother call me, because that’s not going to be good for either one of us. It has increased sales to a level that I was a little shocked after implementing new changes like this–the fact that parents are buying more has been awesome.

Try this:

• Offer 3-5 bundles of popular products at clear price points.
• Expand horizontally with at least one existing client this season.
• Test a multi pose option on one age group or sport and compare the numbers.
• Set a minimum job size that protects your time and effort.

The role of AI: Efficiency, not replacement.

The photography industry is currently navigating the rise of Artificial Intelligence. The consensus among the roundtable was clear: embrace AI for efficiency, but double down on human connection.

All three photographers use AI, but only behind the scenes. The relationship-driven parts of the job stay human–on purpose.

AI for faster editing: 

Seth Fontenot: This is where my two lives overlap because I work in tech. My philosophy on AI is things aren’t as bad or as great as you might think. I look for where I might help my photography business and not overly worry about how it might threaten or hurt it. I mentioned a plug-in earlier, Pixnub; it does a lot of auto extraction, adding layering for my graphics. It runs off AI models where it does image recognition and subject detection. 

I’m a huge fan of Adobe masking on subjects; I’ll have different settings I will apply to the skin versus the overall subject and then the background. Denoise has gotten really good, especially when shooting high speed shutter speed in a nighttime setting where lights are bad. 

These things just make our jobs faster–I have no intention of letting AI stand in the way of my connections with people.  I don’t want to change how I communicate or how I present myself. I just want to use AI to make my editing faster.

AI for getting your life back: Prioritizing human connection.

Misty Huss: AI is for the things on the back side. I will always be someone who wants to have the people connection. The pendulum is going to swing; something new is going to come out, everyone’s going to run to it and embrace it, and then they’re going to go, “Oh, wait–I still I kind of miss this.” 

For me it’s being able to go out and talk to the organizers, joke with the coaches, talk to the kids about their game last night. All of those things are just the fabric of my business, and I know it’s really important to my clients as well. 

AI definitely has some great things–it’s given me my life back while I’m scaling up my business. I’m going to embrace it instead of fight against it.

Embracing change: Using AI for SEO, marketing, and social media.

Jani Tzolov: I don’t think that we should ever be afraid of change. Anything that benefits your business, it benefits your clients. It makes things seamless, especially in our work. Don’t be afraid of trying something new and see if it fits with you. Of course, everything always has to come down to whether it will benefit you or not. I use AI for my marketing, for my social media, for my editing. 

Zenfolio is helping so much. There’s this new gallery tool for SEO and meta descriptions. I am in love with it. It gives you a whole description of [each gallery]–then that gets you even more organic search. 

Try this:

• Choose one AI supported efficiency tool to test this season.
• Keep all client communication human written.
• Use time saved to be more present with teams, coaches, and organizers.
• Review your workflow and remove or adjust any step that adds friction.

This blog contains excerpts from a live Zenfolio roundtable webinar featuring photographers Misty Huss, Seth Fontenot, and Jani Tzolov. Their stories highlight a simple truth; systems and tools can make a big impact on your volume photography business, but the human connection you bring to your work is what clients and families remember.

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