WHY MY MINI SESSIONS DON’T BOOK

If you have read about mini sessions on my website, you will have seen that I don’t really love mini sessions to begin with. Let me be clear though. They are harder on me as the photographer than on you as the client. You are there for 10 minutes with very clear direction from me. Your kid’s only have to be happy for 10 minutes and then they can run amok. Mini sessions are a parent’s dream.

In order to successfully book minis, I have to have clients who want or prefer mini sessions. My previous mini session was scheduled for May 30th. Unfortunately I only sold one session from those. But I want you to see what I can achieve in 10 minutes.

These photos were all taken at the Prairie Grove Battlefield Park at 6:50-7:00. This family paid $60 at booking and $60 the day of the session. They received 59 photos. In ten minutes. You may see 10 minutes and be like “what can we get in 10 minutes?” Well if you’re early and in place for your full ten minutes we can get quite a bit!

I am currently trying to build a client base that wants mini sessions. If you prefer 1 hour full sessions then that is GREAT! I will never push people to get a mini session if they want full sessions. But I am strategic (or I try to be) on when I schedule these minis. I think my timing was bad for this spring. After the fact, I had a lot of people tell me they were on vacation or out of town that weekend and that was unfortunate because I probably lost out on multiple people because of my choice of weekend. But that is not really something I can know until after they are already scheduled.

I think maybe if I would pay to promote them on my Google business page or my Facebook, they’d book a little better.

But one of MY reasons I don’t like minis is that they are hard to talk to my clients. Minis aren’t really FOR that, and I realize that but I like to communicate to my clients and get to know them and when you have brand new clients it is really difficult to do that. It’s basically “hi, nice to meet you” shoot shoot shoot “okay bye thank you!” and then that’s it for our time. I like the full hour so we can get to know each other and build a relationship during that time as well as shoot.

But mini sessions are more for quick, updates of family photos, nothing super “fancy” but just good quality family photos you can cherish.

So, am I the problem? Probably, yes. I bet if I really enjoyed mini sessions more, I would try to push them more, but since I prefer 1 hour sessions myself, it makes sense that they don’t book. However, I will still offer them and do what I do for the ones that DO prefer them! I’m excited to adjust a few things for the fall when I do another mini session.