How Sam Hurd Uses Aftershoot to Super-Charge His Photography Workflow

Sam Hurd is a Washington, D.C.-based wedding photographer well known in the wedding photography community for his helpful content for photographers. From his tutorials on his Patreon channel to his tips & inspiration on Instagram (@iamthesam), Sam is someone who tells it like it is, and he’s earned a well-deserved reputation for giving independent, fair, and balanced reviews of photography products and software.

That’s why we were so pleased when Sam did this video on his review of using AfterShoot for his culling and how he has introduced it into his workflow.

“AfterShoot genuinely made the process both faster in terms of the raw numbers and the actual timing it took to go through the galleries, but mentally it took a lot of the stress out of the process. At the end of the day, it just made my workflow a better experience for myself”.

As we built AfterShoot, one of the things we knew was an issue with photographers? They wanted a solution for culling their photos that didn’t have a huge learning curve. Something that would fit into their existing workflow.

When you have client galleries stacked up to be edited, the last thing you need is finding out you have to lose days to learn a new program! You can be up and running with AfterShoot in about 15 minutes of installation and culling your first gallery.

As you review & modify the selections, you give AfterShoot feedback on how it did with choosing photos for the cull. As a result, it gets smarter, learns your preferences, and continues to make choices based on the parameters it knows you prefer. 

We are also very reactive to our customers & love your feedback! Each version of AfterShoot and the improvements made have been driven by valuable feedback on what photographers want and need. Join our friendly Facebook community to meet other AfterShoot users and see what they are saying about us.

“One of the things that I wanted to address is the general sense of distrust or uncomfortableness when it comes to talking about AI and letting a computer make a decision for you. As a photographer, it does feel weird to give up some control like that, but I have found that since I take more photos with my mirrorless camera, using AI actually frees me up to shoot how I want to shoot because I know I use AfterShoot to easily edit down for client deliverables.”

Yes! Taking photos and editing are creative tasks. Culling is not; it’s a repetitive process that can be learned by AI technology. Embracing the creative side of photography as you let go of the culling process means you have more time and energy to do the part of your job you love.

Think of it like this: taking the photos and designing and an album is an art. Wrapping it up and putting it into a box to be shipped off? Is not.

“One of the things I like most about AfterShoot is that it offsets a huge amount of mental load by being 90-95% accurate with the choices that it makes. I relate it to using a self-driving car, it takes you the exact same amount of time to get from your starting point to your end destination, but if you use a Tesla self-driving car vs. driving yourself, the difference is if you take the self-driving car you arrive there more energized. You don’t have to make all the micro-decisions along the way that can drain your energy.”

We agree! There’s a lot of pressure in the photography industry to do more and be better than everyone else. It can be exhausting, and we need to take care of ourselves, so we don’t burn out. Even the smallest decisions are a mental load, so we need to make sure the decisions we are making bring us joy and income.

See also: 5 Income Producing Activities You Could Do Today While AfterShoot Culls Your Photos.

It’s no secret that being an entrepreneur can be a very challenging job. You have to wear many hats and juggle everything from marketing, customer service, social media management, email correspondence…the list goes on. AfterShoot is the perfect solution for your photo editing needs. It takes away the repetitive job of all those micro-decisions like culling through hours of photos, giving you more time with friends and family!

Try out AfterShoot today with our free trial and see how much time you save by having us do all the work for you–while still getting amazing results. 

Let us show you how good life is beyond the keyboard! Create more, edit less.