Alright babe, I am SO excited to welcome a very special guest for today’s episode – Dawn Richardson of Tech Savvy Creative! Dawn is joining me for another installment in the Amplify Your Weddings series, and we are talking all things tech. We are diving deep into a conversation about ensuring your images are safe and how to create a fool-proof system for protecting and archiving your files. As wedding photographers, we have the privilege and the responsibility to protect some of our clients most intimate and special memories. I am so excited to chat with Dawn and give you all of the insight into confidently handling your technology. 

Review the Show Notes:

How To Ensure Your Images Are Safe (2:44)

Gear Every Photographer Must Have (5:25)

Best Practices For Backing Up And Archiving (9:58)

Tips For Managing Tech When Traveling (16:30)

How To Show That You’re Proactive About Safety For Images (20:47)

Best Systems For Gallery Organization And Delivery (24:28)

Do Not Wait! (30:31)

Connect with Dawn (32:21)

Mentioned in this Episode:

File Management for Photographers Waitlist: https://techsavvycreative.com/file-management-for-photographers

Backblaze: https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup.html#af9rt2

Sprout: https://www.TrySproutStudio.com/dawnrichardson2

Travel Backup Drive: https://amzn.to/3rULvBc

Connect with Dawn:

https://techsavvycreative.com/

https://instagram.com/techsavvycreative

Review the Transcript:

Quianna Marie
Hey, hey, today is a great day. In fact, today is a day that I feel like you are going to learn so much information you are going to feel so empowered. As wedding photographers, we know that we truly hold the key to some of the most intimate and special memories on wedding days. Now with that gift and with that privilege, we also have a ton of responsibility. So today, I thought it would be a great opportunity to introduce you to one of my professional besties Her name is Dawn Richardson and I am just so thrilled to invite you to the party and include you in this conversation all about preventing failure, backing up our systems archiving and creating honestly really full proof and crash proof systems for your business. Dawn is a creative she is a powerhouse woman. She started her business as a wedding photographer. She also does really incredible tech stuff. So she has his tech background, where she just is a wealth of knowledge and she has blended these two together as a professional photographer, and also a tech guru. She creates tons of education for creatives and small business owners as well as photographers to confidently tackle their technology so they can spend more time doing what they love. No more second guessing your technology worrying about your cards crashing your computer failing, even your computer being literally stolen out of your car. Okay, we’re talking about like these major disasters. Alright, enough chit chat. Dawn is a beautiful friend of mine. I am so grateful that she’s here. Let’s get this party started. Welcome to Kiana Marie weekly, a podcast for creatives who love to celebrate wins big or small by dancing in the kitchen photographers who are excited to serve their clients and friends who are ready to chase really, really big dreams. You can find all of the resources mentioned in this episode at Kiana murray.com/podcast. Join me as I share weekly motivation, chat about growing pains, finding genuine connections and celebrating your wins through the lens of a photographer at heart. Come join me for a dance party. Ready? Love though. All right, all right. Welcome, Dawn. I am so so so thankful that you can be here and continue this party. How’s it going?

Dawn Richardson
is so good. I am so glad to be here. I mean, this is a podcast that I can see your face right now. And it’s so good to see you. i This you.

Quianna Marie
Oh my gosh, I’m sending you the biggest hug from Arizona. Oh my goodness, let’s dive in. I just want to start chatting about this super critical and super important part of running a business and especially in this photography world and this creative space. At the end of the day, we could have the best personality, we can create this incredible experience. But if something goes wrong, technically, we are literally screwed. So as the tech savvy expert, how can wedding photographers ensure our images are safe and

Dawn Richardson
well protected? I love this topic, this is my favorite topic ever. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna get really good today. So you have to plan for your technology to fail. That’s the thing at the end of the day like, we cannot prevent something from going out on us whether that’s a card being corrupted, or your camera shutter being jammed or your hard drive feeling, you just have to simply plan for this to happen. So when you have this plan, and when you have a backup in place, this event is just a speed bump in your journey and not a catastrophic like implosion, right? So you want to plan for it to fail. What that means is backups. And that means backups in every sense possible. That means shooting on two cards, if your camera has dual card slots, that means uploading your files and having those files backup to a hard drive on your desk and then also a cloud. It means having a second camera in your bag when you’re on a wedding day. So always think in the sense of if this were to disappear. What would I do? You know, answer that question with your camera, answer that question with your memory card or answer that question with your files. And that’s going to set you up for success and again, make that very painful event much less painful.

Quianna Marie
Yes, that’s incredible. And I feel like that’s something that a lot of people miss is a lot of photographers are so stressed right? They’re stressed with posing, they’re stressed with putting their best foot forward they’re stressed with the timeline and juggling all these humans that are like feeling like herding cats. On a wedding day, it can be so overwhelming. So having that backup system, and I love how you mentioned, literally, we have to prepare for failure, we have to just assume that your memory cards are going to crap out on you, we have to just assume that your laptop is going to be stolen out of your car, we have to assume that these horrific things happen so we can be prepared. Oh my gosh. Okay, so let’s dive right into the gear. So what gear do you recommend that every photographer must have in their toolkit?

Dawn Richardson
For me, being a professional photographer is less about the actual gear that’s in your hands. Okay, it’s more about the systems and your back end of your business. So for me, that means like utilizing a client management system like honey book, or dubsado. That means having a place where your invoices your contracts are being managed, that means backing up your files and having a system when you are uploading your car, when you get home. To me, that’s going to be key more of a professional than any fancy camera. Well, now, if we have to talk about like gear, and I love me some gear, I always lean on, like, if I’m going to invest in gear, it has to have two memory card slots. Like that’s a non negotiable for me. I went mirrorless when the AR six came out, and I love my Canon AR six, it’s great. But I did not go mirrorless until it had dual cards. And that’s just a very important thing for me. Are you a professional? If you use a camera that doesn’t have a dual card slot? Like, yeah, you can be like, it doesn’t mean that you’re not a professional, but it’s definitely something as a professional you want to consider because you want to protect yourself, you know, in every way possible, because it’s not. If it will fail, it’s when it will fail, and you just have to be ready for it.

Quianna Marie
Oh, absolutely. Now I have a quick question about memory cards. Since we’re talking about slots. I’ve seen quite a couple of myths or rumors going around about the size of your gigabytes. So I personally shoot on 64 gigs. But I also have heard that that may be not a good idea. Maybe we should stick to 32 gigs because of that turnover. So God forbid, one, if not both cards corrupt, you’re only missing a tiny slice of the wedding day and not such a large chunk. What is your advice on the gigabytes?

Dawn Richardson
I love this question. So it’s really personal preference and what you’re comfortable with, right? And it also depends on how much you’re shooting. I know some wedding photographers, I can shoot a whole wedding on 32 gigs. I am not that wedding photographer. Oh my God. Not me. I definitely overshoot. So. But yes, you’re totally right. If you shoot in smaller increments, if you were to lose a card, and for cardboard to fail, you’re only losing a smaller chunk, right? Hopefully you have, you know, you’re writing full rod to both of those cards. So if a card does go down, and the other one is there, personally, now that I use the Canon R six that has two SD slots, I actually have a 128 card in one slot, and I have a 32 in the other slot, and I read and write that 32. So like when I’m looking at the back of my camera, it’s that 32 And then I just replaced the 32 as it becomes full. So I have one card that has all of the images from the day, that’s my backup card. And then I have the 32 gig cards as my like primary cards, again, just kind of keeping it smaller and simplified. That also helps like when I come home, because I can just pop in the to 128 cards instead of like having to deal with six of the 32 cards. When I’m uploading it just makes it a little bit faster. However, I do not wipe those 32 gig cards until the wedding has been delivered. So I will wipe the 128 I will add the backup cards and like let’s be real, like nobody wants to own like 3128 Gig parts like but I do have a lot of 30 twos laying around, right. So I do store those 30 twos until it’s delivered. Again, if I need to come back and upload those photos again, for some reason, even like human error reasons, right? Like have you ever like time synced your photos to the same time I did that once an entire wedding was set to 11:23am Like I couldn’t I had nothing. It was at that point it was just best to scrap it and to re upload from scratch and start over. So keep those cards until you delivered and got a big you got to be smart right from your plan for it to screw up and it’s not always something that fails. It’s human error, right? You toddlers pull things off of desks and cameras get left behind and dropped guests fall on equipment you know you just have to be ready for all the possible scenarios. And it will help you with your overwhelm and your anxiety when you know that there’s a plan if something were to go wrong. I love

Quianna Marie
this so much. Going back to you mentioned system And I would love for you If I miss this may take forever. Because there’s so many details. But if you could give us like a quick almost like the Cliff’s Notes version of the system, so let’s say you just shot this wedding, you have the dual cards, you are being proactive, you have your backup camera, not only do you have the backup systems, but your second shooter also has the same practices as well. So we’re not just hoping they just capture things on a whim, like we’re being very, very proactive about our second shooters as well. So let’s say you get home, okay, can you walk us through your process about backing up and archiving and just the most safe practices that we can start implementing at our next wedding.

Dawn Richardson
So this process is very simple, but you have to set it up correctly for it to work, okay, because it’s automated. And that’s, that’s the beauty of all of this. So let me preface this by saying that I upload all of my RAW files to external hard drives. RAW files never live on any computer. Okay, they’re always on an external. And the reason why I use external hard drives is because I frequently bounce between using an iMac and a MacBook Pro. And when you store your catalogs and your Roz and everything all on an external hard drive, all I have to do is unplug the hard drive and plug it into the next one. And I can move on with my day. I’m not transferring things, I’m not dragging and dropping, I’m not deleting it’s all there. And then when the drive gets full, I simply retire it, you know, I mark weddings from this date to this day. And I make sure it has a backup, I make sure it’s backed up to the cloud, and then it goes into a safe, you know, it’s all right there. So I use external hard drives. What I do with my second shooter, my second shooter shoots on my carts, okay, both of my carts, so they come home with me. So I’m not worried about what they’re doing, how they transfer the files, and so on. If I am allowing them to use any images, I will send them to them via Dropbox. But that’s dependent on what I have an agreement with that second shooter. So I come home come to my iMac in my office, and I plug in the parts from that wedding day, I use a multi card reader. And it’s not like the big expensive fancy one that people have talked about. It’s like the little tower, I actually just have a USB hub that has multiple little USB slots in it, it’s really great and it cost me like $20 I put four cards in at a time if I have more than that, I’ll use the SD slot in the back of my iMac. And that I use Photo mechanic to ingest all of those cards at the same time. I ingest them into the external hard drive in a particular folder for that client. And then I also ingest that into another hard drive at the same time that’s just like my I call it me vault right it’s just another place for my RAW files to be. Now once the external hard drive that I work from has the files on it, my computer recognizes that and it starts a time machine backup of that external hard drive so the backup automatically begins. Also Backblaze is looking at that drive. Okay Backblaze is a cloud backup software. So as soon as it recognizes there’s new files on there, it begins the backup to the cloud. So at the end of the wedding when the card is done uploading the backups are complete. I have my RAW files on my memory cards. I have it on my working external hard drive. I have it on my vault external hard drive, I have them backed up to my time machine and then I also have them in the cloud on Backblaze that’s five places that I have these raw files okay as files are not going anywhere

Quianna Marie
right and I just want to clarify to these are also your Ross like these are your digital negatives of the day these aren’t even your edited files yet Okay, so we’re just up to this point backing up all the Ross Okay, love this so far. Got all the Ross. I’m a firm believer that storage is really cheap, okay,

Dawn Richardson
like, let’s think about like 15 years ago, like, oh my gosh, eight gigabyte car. And that’s so expensive. And it’s so huge, right? But now it’s like we can buy terabytes and terabytes, terabytes. We’re running businesses, spend $100 To buy yourself a new four terabyte hard drive when it becomes full. We shouldn’t be clearing cards because you’re out of cards, right? We shouldn’t be wiping hard drives because you don’t want to buy a new one, right? storage is cheap, protect those files. And I have been shooting weddings for seven years. I only have three left before I retire, which is easy. And I have every single RAW file from every single shoot every single wedding I have ever done in those seven years. Because storage is cheap. And you know what, when that harddrive is full it goes into a safe that’s under my desk that’s a fireproof safe and it’s all backed up to the cloud. And there it is, if I ever have to come back to it for some reason I can and it’s just nice knowing that have I had to do that. No, but it’s nice knowing that it’s there.

Quianna Marie
And I feel that is a great, great way that you can honestly just uplevel your experience for your couples So God forbid something happens on their end where they lose access to their files. Or right like there’s I mean, we’re talking brides that have worked with us 345 10 years ago. And what a gift like what an absolute angel, we could be to say, no worries, I caught them baby like, it’s okay. Like, let me just is take me a couple days to like dig them out of the archives like I, but I got him. And that, to me is a great way to amplify your weddings and to just honestly, prepare for that peace of mind. Like that’s huge.

Dawn Richardson
Yes, well, and to piggyback off what you’re saying, like, we are really the keeper of our client’s most precious memories. And I know you like you preach that, like it’s so true. A couple of years ago, I had a funeral home call me because they needed a photo of one of my past grooms like that is, that was the worst phone call I’ve ever had in my like photography career. But I was also it was a lot of peace, knowing that like I could dig through my archives and find the headshot that they would display, you know, at his funeral. And it was just nice to know that I can help that family because like, I can’t, there’s not much you can do. But that was what I could do to contribute to what they were doing. Because, you know, I was the keeper of their most precious memories. And it’s just really nice to know that you have that safety. Also, I know you travel a lot. So there’s a lot of photographers that travel. So something that people ask me a lot is like, Okay, how do I do this, if I’m like on the go, right? Like, I can’t have like 12 Hard drives plugged into my computer, right? Look into, there’s a Western Digital, portable, hard drive that actually has an SD card slot built into it. I love this thing, and I don’t use it every wedding. But if I’m at a wedding that’s like, you know, far away or from traveling, I will. And you just plug the SD card into it, and it automatically backs up the SD card to this hard drive. So for those of you who travel, invest in one of those, it’s a couple 100 bucks. It’s awesome. It’s just like, know the size of a normal hard drive. And when you’re done with your files, you just pop it in, and now you have them in more than one place.

Quianna Marie
That’s amazing. Now, quick question, because I’m such a visual person does this does this hard drive have to be plugged into your computer to suck up the pictures? Or oh, wow, okay, well, I’ll

Dawn Richardson
battery. Yeah, I can grab it for you if you want to see it. I know. But yeah, it’s just that extra layer of security. I bought mine when I was traveling for a wedding and no, like, I’m not gonna upload a wedding to Backblaze on hotel Wi Fi. Like, let’s be real. So I always have that in my bag. And it’s just battery operated, you charge it? And yeah, it’s like two terabytes.

Quianna Marie
And what a great way for that safety for destination weddings, right? I mean, something that you can just keep in your camera bag. And I would almost kind of play that off, like even a backup to all your backup system, right. So it’s not actually part of your workflow, you’re still going to do your workflow once you get home to your home office. But this is something you can do when you’re literally waking up in Cancun or you’re waking up in Switzerland for these super awesome destination weddings. Come on people, we are manifesting this, like we are making these things happen. So maybe we should all go buy that product. So make sure you link that for us. Yes.

Dawn Richardson
Well, it also to gives you that flexibility, like I don’t put all your eggs in one basket, right? Like, okay, so you have your memory cards in your camera bag, but maybe you have this backup, you know, hard drive in another suitcase. So if one thing were to go, you have another one somewhere. But if you have all of those things in case and that suitcase is gone, it’s not helpful, right? Same idea with cloud backup. So you want to have that cloud backup, like my Backblaze. Because if, you know, if my house were to burn down tonight, you know, that’s cool that I had three backups on my desk, but guess what desk is not there anymore. You know, like you have to have that off site backup. So think of that, too, when you’re traveling is just don’t put all of your cards in one bag, make sure you’re no you have one backup, maybe in a separate bag, and then you’re keeping your cards on your body at all times.

Quianna Marie
And that’s brilliant, even for like I even know this, like just gonna give you a little peace of mind to like, even after the wedding, like even just that transfer between, like, let’s say, I know that sounds crazy, but that’s happens. But let’s say you decide to go to in and out or go to like a late night restaurant or go like vendors will like go grab a drink after work and that is totally like after the wedding. That is totally normal. But I want to encourage you photographers to keep those cards physically on your body. Like if something happens God forbid like your car gets broken in or anything like that. Like these are just these are horror stories. And I think before we move on I just like you mentioned earlier too, about being the keeper of these memories. Now for some of us and I’m super intuitive so I can probably already feel your mind right now. Like this is me just being crazy for you that are listening right now. Yeah, and I understand this. But before we move on, I just have to share that it’s truly a gift. And it’s truly just such a special thing, and that we are the keepers of these memories. And I don’t want that to intimidate you. I don’t want that to hold you back or to have fear about it. And this is why Dawn, this is why you are the perfect person, and leader and educator and inspiration to just remind us that even though we have this kind of power trip, and we have all this like on our back, it can absolutely be done safely, and very, very proactively. So if you’re feeling overwhelmed with this, like, please don’t stress, just know that these products and these Backblaze and all these things are so affordable, and it’s just a peace of mind. So rolling into peace of mind, I’d love to chat with you, especially because you are a professional wedding photographer, and you are now getting into, like you’re pivoting and you’re dancing and like we’re you know, we’re creating new offers. But before we move on from from that, what type of advice would you give to photographers to actually show and share that we are being proactive about safety for their images?

Dawn Richardson
I’m a firm believer in transparency. And I really think that our clients like that transparency, and I believe that in every sense, like from pricing, like y’all stop wasting your time post your pricing, you know, you’ll get good leads, if they can see it, you know, but also like talk about your process, like what does it look like maybe you’re doing that in an Instagram story, like, hey, just came home from this shoot, watch these parts upload, you know, I also love time lapse, you know, videos, like it’s really fun to like, you know, call a wedding on a time lapse and post it like my clients love seeing and they’re like, oh my gosh, that’s my wedding, like they love seeing behind the scenes. But again, all about transparency, I literally have this question answered in my FAQ on my wedding page. And I actually copied it down so I could read it to you guys. It says Do you have backup gear? Are our photos safe? Okay. And then my answer is yes, absolutely. Not only do we have backup gear on hand at your wedding, but we also shoot on multiple cards and back them up to multiple places. Once I get home, your photos are added to multiple locations, including about cloud backup, and then I talk about tech savvy, creative and like, Hey, I actually teach other people how to do this. So

Quianna Marie
like, drop situation,

Dawn Richardson
like, Hey, you speak in my love, like Nigel’s talk about this, but like, be transparent about that. Like, it’s just gonna make your clients feel so much more comfortable with you. And even be prepared to answer that question in your consultations. Because you know, those like, you know, 30 questions to ask your wedding photographer like those like posts out there, this tends to be in there. So be ready to answer it and be excited when you are answering it. Because that’s just going to make them more comfortable. And then like you said earlier, like it’s overwhelming, like, oh, my gosh, all of these tools that plays like all these hard drives, like what am I going to do? It gets so much easier over time. And as you figure it out, like I’ve literally come home, plugged my parts and push a button and go to bed. Like it’s not this whole drawn out process, right? It just sounds like it when we’re trying to describe it on a podcast, we actually are doing it, but have comfort in knowing that it’s going to be something that’s going to become second nature to you. It’ll feel weird if you don’t do it right. And it will give you so much peace of mind as you just make this part of your everyday habit.

Quianna Marie
And I also love the transparency of sharing those behind the scenes, you know, I’m the behind the scenes dancing queen. Like I love sharing just like the inner workings of business. And I feel like sometimes photographers especially we’re all about and I don’t mean this in any other way than just the way it is. But we are we’re all about appearance. And we’re all about perception. And sometimes our desk isn’t that pretty. Sometimes we are literally working from our countertops or in tiny, cramped kitchen tables and apartments like I see you boo like you are doing the work. And I just think that that’s okay like that. It’s absolutely a beautiful process. And sharing that sharing the fact that you have these backups that you are prepared is going to leave a forever impact and create that trust and create that truly just genuine connection with your couples so they know that they’re in really good hands. So what are some tools for organizing? So I know like now that we have our images, they’re bagged up, we are ready to edit, you know, we toss them in after we call them through photo mechanic toss them into Lightroom what are some of your favorite gallery delivery situations? Yeah,

Dawn Richardson
you know, software is always changing. So this this changes over time, right. In terms of delivery systems. I’m currently using pixie set. I have been very happy with pixie set I’ve and therefore ever. But as my business is winding down, I’m trying to consolidate a little bit. I use sprout studio for my client management system. And I adore them. They are an amazing company, but they manage my invoices my clients, but they are built for photographers. So they also have a gallery system built into it. And they also have an album proofing system built into it. So I am consolidating and slowly starting to move those pixie set galleries over to sprout just so as I wind down the photography, business, it’s all in one place that I’m not managing all of these different, different tools. But again, there’s so many cloud spots out there. There’s oh my gosh, shoot proof. There’s just there’s so many amazing gallery systems. And I firmly believe and this is like a foundation of tech savvy creative is that there’s no such thing as the perfect tool. It just what works for you. Okay, I don’t care what affiliate link you have, I don’t care what coupon you have, I don’t care what Caitlin James uses. I love you, KJ but right like don’t choose something just because somebody else does it, you have to find which one works best for you. works best for how you think. And that’s the one that you want to stick with, I can tell you all day why you something but at the end of the day, you have to try it yourself. Now in terms of going into organization a little bit deeper, I use a new catalog for every single shoot, and wedding, okay. And when I say catalog, I’m talking about Lightroom catalog. And that means when I open Lightroom, I only see the photos for that particular session or that particular wedding. Now I’m going to try to describe to you a hack that I do to organize my wedding in Lightroom is going to be a little hard. But it will be in our course that’s coming out in just a few months. When I have all of my cold photos in Lightroom. I create collections. Okay, so collections are like the little folders inside of Lightroom that you can use to organize all of your photo photos. And what I do is I named the collections 01 Dash, bridal details 02 Dash, girls getting ready 02 and so on, right. And I put it in the order that I want the photos to be delivered it. Okay, not necessarily the order, they were shot in the order that I want them delivered in. So for example, like I always want my wedding party photos to be delivered after the ceremony like when they’re like organized. That’s just how I think like I want family formals I want portraits and I want wedding party to be delivered after even if they were taken before. So I organized them in that order there. Now, before I actually move the files into their correct collections, I create a smart collection. Okay. And a smart collection is basically like a little automation that like you give it some criteria automatically creates this folder or tells you what photos belong in there. And I say if the file is not in a collection with a dash, because I do 01 dash right, then put it into this folder. So then I use that folder, and I drag those images into their correct collection. And as they get their homes, they disappear from this smart folder. So I know that I’m not accidentally putting a file into to where I know I’m not accidentally forgetting a raw file. And then from there, when I edit all my photos, I do it by collection or my editor does them. But when I export them, I export them by each collection in that order. So out the gate, when I deliver those files, they are numbered in the order I want them to deliver in so when I put them into my gallery system, they’re already in order, I can just sort them by their file name. And then I just separate them into the different parts of the day. It’s really hard to explain on a podcast, but there are easy hacks like that you can do to organize at the first point in time rather than trying to do it later. Also time syncing right like that’s something that you want to consider too. If you’re using photo mechanic, it is so easy to time sync. First thing I do every single wedding is I take a picture of a clock app on my phone so you just have to feel the seed the second hand on that app okay, I do it with each of my cameras and then I also have my second tutor take that same photo with their camera. Then I have that photo of the time and I can sync that camera to that time. Okay, I have a whole YouTube video on this I have a whole blog posts on it but that means I’m not doing this whole like okay on the count of three we’re gonna push go right like if you tried to like sink your camera like it never works and it makes sure in the right time zone. Exactly like it never works this way, we all take a picture on each camera, it works for the whole day. And then I can timestamp them later. And if you’re using quantum mechanic that is so easy to do. And again, I have this all outlined on a blog post and a YouTube video to explain how to do that. So that’s another way you can get your photos organized without having to do manual dragging and dropping, because who has time for that?

Quianna Marie
Oh, my gosh, John, you are literally just a wealth of knowledge, like you are just the tech savvy queen. Oh, my God. Thank you for these tips. Oh, my goodness. So what is one thing that you wish every photographer wouldn’t take for granted? When it came to our work?

Dawn Richardson
I love this question. Do not wait until you’ve had a loss. To start doing this. Do not wait for your harddrive to fail to start backing your things up, do not wait for your camera to get stolen, to have a plan in place. Do it now is going to save you so much pain and stress. I get DMS in my tech savvy Instagram account all the time, that are like, hey, my computer can’t see this hard drive anymore. Or my toddler pulled my computer off of my desk, or my car got broken into. And it’s just these catastrophic events. And it’s hard. Like that’s our livelihood. These are our clients memories. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to explain to a client Why don’t have their wedding photos. Oh, my God. No way. I know, right? I know, way too many photographers that have had to do that. I want to be friends with you before that happens. Right? Like, I want to be friends with everybody. Like, come say hi to me and my DMs. Like that’s great. But I don’t want you to have finally because he lost something. So plan, you know, straight out the gate. Doesn’t matter how early you are, this is just a hobby, take care of these files, plan for things to fail. And you’re going to have such a better experience. And you’re going to love this job in this career so much more. When you are comfortable and confident and you are ready to handle whatever challenge comes your way. Oh, my heart, I

Quianna Marie
feel like that needs to be just blasted everywhere. So people can do this. Now before they even get started before they even start really booking clients like baby, you have got to get yourself backed up. And to have that confidence in that. Oh, my goodness, Dawn, thank you so much. So please tell me I know you kind of just did a little drop about your course coming up coming up shortly. How can people find you? How can we work with you? I mean, you are just this wealth of knowledge and honestly, safety. Like I know you can’t see your face right now. Like for those that are listening, but just being in Dawn’s presence, you just feel this natural safety and comfort and reliability. That is like the coolest feeling that you exude just as a walking friend. But how can people work with you? And how can they honestly just dive into all of your content and just soak up all your goodness? Oh, well, thank

Dawn Richardson
you for that. Because this is an intimidating and very far from sexy topic. So I try to make it fun and comfortable. Because yeah, hard drives, right? So you can find me at tech savvy creative.com. And I’m also tech savvy, creative on Instagram, I’m probably most active on Instagram. So if you ever want to say hi, pop into my DMs there, but yeah, we are in the works of our newest offering, which is called file management for photographers. And it is a step by step course, explaining this whole process, okay, explaining the process from, you know, shooting and how I set my cards to what I do when I get home to how I organize all of these files on these external hard drives to the backup system to delivery that whole process from start to finish. Again, so many photographers are just kind of like they have some files on their desktop and they have some over here and they like oh what hard drive this is on. So we are really excited to create this resource because it’s probably my most asked question in like indirect ways. You’re like, how do I handle this? Like what do I do I have no space on my computer

Quianna Marie
is like the devil on your computer.

Dawn Richardson
You know like with my system, you’ll never have that because nothing ever lives on your computer. So I am so excited to finally launch this resource. tech savvy creative doesn’t serve only like we serve every all creatives not just photographers but there’s a lot of photographers out there and as a photographer myself like this is something I’m very passionate about. So super excited about that. That will launch later this summer but if you head to the show notes I will add a link to the waitlist so get on there also we are cutting off of maternity leave so I just had baby number two you And we’re starting to introduce a Voxer coaching. So that was going to be released in May. And so if you’re working on a project, or if you’re working on getting your files backed up and organized, and you just kind of want somebody to like, be like your little like support on your shoulder, we do all day Voxer coaching. So that means like, you have access to me on Voxer throughout the day, and as you’re working on things, and as you come up to questions, as you get stuck, you can just send me a box and I will work with you throughout the day. We’ve learned that with what I do, like having like a one hour sit down with let’s have a coaching call doesn’t always work because there’s so much of like, I need to go try it and figure out what I don’t know. So we’re really excited to launch this Voxer coaching so you can work on something and get help and support as you go through

Quianna Marie
that process. So amazing. You are going to be such a blessing to so many businesses. So many families, so many wedding couples, like this is the cool part about meeting people in this industry where we, I mean, obviously you and I became instant friends. Gosh, six, eight years ago. Remember, we researched baby?

Dawn Richardson
Shout out hope Taylor 2015

Quianna Marie
Yeah. Oh my god. I was trying to figure out what year that was, but

Dawn Richardson
just 2015 2016 Maybe? Yeah, I don’t know is that I hope Taylor workshop she was like 18 years old. Yeah.

Quianna Marie
We love you hope our little baby boss sister. Oh my gosh. But yeah, but that’s the beauty of connecting with small business owners that are passionate about what we do is we are we have so many different offers. We you know, we bring so many different things to the table. But ultimately, our heart is behind people and putting people first. And so I know like just to kind of, you know, wrap up this whole conversation is you know, it is it’s a lot of tickets, it’s hard drives, it’s cameras, slots, its memory cards on all these really big programs and systems that can be so intimidating, but the end of the day, it’s people we’re putting people first and putting their memories at the forefront of our concern. And so I just I thank you so much, Dawn, and thank you for your wealth of knowledge and all your expertise to make this stuff fun and sexy and really attainable.

Dawn Richardson
I am so glad to be here and girl again. I will talk about this all day. So yeah, anybody needs any you know where to find me. I’m tech savvy created on Instagram and just send me a DM and well get connected.

Quianna Marie
Thank you so much, babe. Have a great day. Yeah. That’s a wrap on another episode of Kiana Murray weekly. Thank you so much for your listenership and support. You can find the resources and show notes for this episode and more at Kiana murray.com/podcast. I’d be honored if you show your support by leaving a review and rating on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, keep on dancing.

Connect with Dawn:

https://techsavvycreative.com/

https://instagram.com/techsavvycreative