For Photographers – Using Zenfolio for Galleries and Backup

Over the years I have found different websites, services as well as techniques that have helped me run a more efficient service for my brides and grooms. For the next few weeks I will be posting additional information to help other photographers who may be interested in improving their photography or workflow. Feel free to ask any questions in the comment are below and I will do my best to respond!

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One of the free services we offer to all of our brides is a personal wedding gallery where all of their photographs can be shared with family and friends. After trying a few different services over the years, I ended up settling on Zenfolio. Several photographer friends highly recommended their services and once I had a chance to setup an account and make some comparisons I saw the clear advantages.

So not only does Zenfolio provide a place for the couples to visit and relive their own wedding day, but it also makes it easy for family and friends to order prints of themselves from the wedding if they wish. It also provides an extra backup for wedding photographs after we finish with any necessary touchups and sorting. But I don’t wait until I am finished going through the photographs to upload them, I start the night of the wedding when I arrive home. I have a separate, private section setup on Zenfolio where I upload each and every wedding photograph, no matter how late it is when I get back. This gives me a great deal of peace of mind when I go to sleep that each couple’s wedding photographs are safely backed up in an additional location.

Another feature I love about their interface is their easy and intuitive file organization system. As you can see below, I organize photographs in galleries by year and category. This makes it easy to go back and find a photograph from any wedding:

Within each couple’s gallery I have their wedding photographs separated in sub-categories to make it easier for the couple or guests to find the pictures they are looking for. The “highlights” folder holds a smaller set from the entire day for guests who may not have time to look through the entire set. Everything you see here is the backend that I see when logged into my account. The second photo below shows what guests see.

I like the clean, simple format I have setup. All of this is customizable within the Zenfolio system, I have even seen some pretty well put together websites that are entirely based on the Zenfolio platform. Not only do they give you this incredible functionality but they also provide tons of tutorials to get you started. They also provide excellent and responsive customer support. They are also not content to sit back and relax with the well developed services they already have but send out monthly updates with new features. I had previously used Smugmug and their features paled in comparison and they rarely released updates so Zenfolio has won me over and provided a solid system for my business.

If you are interested in checking Zenfolio out, feel free to head over to their site and give it a try. Zenfolio offers a free Trial account for two weeks so you can see if you like it. You can use my referral code AFC-T47-ZKQ during sign up to save 10% off your own subscription. Once you subscribe you’ll get your own code as well to pass on to others. Please know that I am not sponsored by Zenfolio in any way shape or form, I am happy to promote this excellent service since it took me a few test rounds with other services to find what I consider to be the best.