A wedding day is one of those special days that you’ll remember your whole life. One of those days that every little detail is important and you want to soak up every moment and remember the love, the support and the beauty. Part of cherishing this day forever is capturing it through the art of photography so you can look back and reflect on that special day for years to come. Christian Oth is the principal photographer and founder of Christian Oth Studio in New York City. Christian Oth was named one of the world’s ten best wedding photographers by American Photo. Christian established his studio over a decade ago and during that time has been using Daylite to manage his small business.
How did you get into wedding photography?
Christian Oth: As a professional photographer I was asked by friends to photograph their weddings. I enjoyed shooting weddings and realized I could make a difference in terms of creative perspective. I always challenge myself to think creatively and bring a fresh set of eyes to my work. It’s something I continue to do and enjoy doing.
What do you love most about being a wedding photographer?
Christian: So many things… First and foremost a wedding is one of the most anticipated days of anyone’s life. There is a tremendous amount of energy and love. Being there to capture that is true bliss. I am also fortunate to photograph some of the most creative and beautiful weddings in the world, which makes each one something I really look forward to.
What do you feel you do better than other studios?
Christian: We are both very creative and run a full service studio. On one hand we always hone our skills via creative meetings and the teaching part of our studio. This allows our photographers to put their creativity first and foremost. They aren’t encumbered by administrative tasks which is what we have a support staff for. Our clients love this too, because we offer a full spectrum of photo finishing services, such as albums and prints and on occasion design our client’s photo wall.
What is the best advice you’ve ever been given?
Christian: Finish what you started. Project yourself into the future and imagine yourself already there… Then work towards that goal. Paint the picture of who you’re going to be and what your life is going to look like, and then think of all the necessary steps you have to take to get there. Think about where you want to be in 10 years and enjoy the challenge of getting there. It’s totally necessary to dream up those goals and then go after them.
What do you find challenging?
Christian: Hands down, the biggest challenge is staffing and the HR component of running a company. It is so important to hire the right people. Create an effective team of people and the rest follows. Everyone needs to play well with each other.
How does Daylite help with your workflow?
Christian: I’ve been using Daylite for over 10 years now. I’ve gone through all the significant updates. There have been some hiccups along the way but we’ve arrived at a very good place with Daylite. It keeps our studio organized. We track all the weddings we have and the album workflow that follows. We start in a sales process and go all the way to managing projects, managing calendars and using the project and sales pipelines. We use Daylite religiously for our sales process. We have a system of setting the probability percentage and it really works for us. What we really love is having everything linked. I can see who shot what wedding, what venue it was at, new clients that come in, the florists, referrals, who the client is…everything! We can even keep track of the wedding planner so we have all the pieces collected in one place. It’s a good system for us. We can generate contracts out of Daylite from our estimates and it pulls all the data linked to everyone involved. The calendar is our favorite feature to keep track of where everyone needs to be and when.
Do you use Daylite on your iPhone and iPad?
Christian: Yes. I love having my calendar and contacts on me. Daylite on iOS means I can have everything on me all the time. It has everything on it but I mainly use it for my calendar.
Would you recommend Daylite to others?
Christian: Yes and I have. Over the years I have gotten frustrated with older versions, but I really like the continued commitment to improve the software. I can see the effort spent on it. Daylite has gotten to a very good place now. I recommend Daylite as a solid Mac solution. I’ve done a lot of research for other solutions and haven’t found anything else that is as all encompassing as Daylite.
Any additional comments?
Christian: I am very happy with Daylite. It’s nice to be able to run your whole business on it and have it be reliable. What I use a lot is WebConnector from iOSXpert. Everyone here in the studio likes it because we always look up contacts. Initially we would scan into the Daylite database. What we do now is scan in, host on Google Docs and with WebConnector, immediately pull up a contact. It works like a charm! As long as I have internet I can see my contacts, it’s a huge improvement!
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