This entry was posted
on Thursday, November 25th, 2021 at 1:09:55 pm and is filed under Wedding Photography & Films.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Scale your business to new heights with Huemn – a lightning-fast AI-based tool for professional wedding photographers!
Wedding Photography & Films - Nov 25, 2021
Created with the aim to eliminate the challenges a photography business faces at every turn, Huemn is made up of a diverse team of IITians and creative heads who use technology to empower entrepreneurs so that they can concentrate on practicing the craft they love. A professional wedding photographer’s job is a colossal one as they circumvent their way through the events capturing special moments as they happen. However, the toughest part of their job begins right after the wedding where one spends long hours sorting through images, coordinating with the clients, taking care of changes, and tracking projects. Having faced similar hardships as a seasoned wedding photographer himself, Vijay Eesam founded Huemn with Anusha Eesam and Sriram Reddy as co-founders. Today, they share their insights and the unique features of this revolutionary tool.
What motivated you to create Huemn?
Vijay Eesam: I’ve been in the wedding photography industry for a decade and as I looked back, I realized that my journey hasn’t been linear. Even after being well established in the industry, I found myself turning to various tool providers for either delivering my photos, managing my team or tracking project productivity while constantly being on endless phone conversations with my clients to jot down the changes they needed!
Spurred by this was the thought – ‘If I am facing so many hardships, then what about the young businesses, solopreneurs or freelancers?’ These small-business owners are still finding their way in the industry and may not be aware of the kind of tools they need to invest in! I believe that necessity is the mother of invention and this very necessity pushed me to create Huemn, so that budding photographers or entrepreneurs don’t have to endure the struggle that I did and can resort to well-integrated business-in-a-box solutions, and that’s exactly what Huemn is.
How does Huemn help photographers streamline their business? Can you tell us about the features that help make this possible?:
Anusha Eesam: With a seamless gallery experience, photographers can now not only deliver beautifully organized photos but also videos without having to share them separately on another platform. Our AI Face recognition feature enables your clients to send the gallery link even to their distant relatives. They can scan their face and acquire all their featured photos in one go. This spares the clients the tedious task of individually sharing photos with their guests, and as a photographer, you can reach a wider audience who can connect with you whenever they want.
We have developed a concept of ‘Brand Adresses’, wherein photographers only need to sign up once, and they can create multiple accounts or workspaces within the main account. Each workspace will have projects of its own. This allows them to make multiple brand categories and toggle between them in one go.
Furthermore, if your team is signed up on Huemn, you only need to invite them to your workspace as a team member. An invitation will be sent via which they can access the project you have assigned them to as a collaborator. As the admin, you hold the reins to which team member gets what control, you can also add or remove a team member at any time. With advanced upcoming features like proposal builders, team management and productivity, project tracking, client communication and finance management, Huemn is going to pave the way for an easier, smoother business running process for photographers.
Huemn lets photographers deliver not only photos but also videos. Can you tell us some more about this?
Ah yes! We are finally putting an end to different delivery systems for photos and videos. You can do it both together only on Huemn. Embedding video links, making separate YouTube playlists, etc? That’s a thing of the past!
We really believe that no delivery is complete without including films/videos along with the photos. So we launched the video delivery feature on Huemn to facilitate the combined experience of looking back at precious moments in the form of photos and videos both.
And, the best part?
Upload videos as they are directly, just the way you upload photos! With multiple file-formats that Huemn supports and super-fast upload speeds – be it photos or videos – we have now made client experience better!
How does Huemn bridge the gap between photographers and their clients?
Sriram Reddy: We realized from the outset that simply protecting your clients’ photos with a password or PIN isn’t enough because sooner or later, this password ends up in a lot of people’s hands and the client is forced to reset it. So inevitably, they turn to the Photographers who often find it a challenge to oblige to all requests – be it revising passwords, edits, or making a special album for their keepsake – while you are possibly busy with other projects.
Hence we came up with the Complete Client Control concept. Now photographers can allow their clients to take complete charge of resetting their exclusive guest PIN, suggest edits on individual photos, make selections and ask guests to scan their faces with our AI Face Recognition feature to get all their photos in one go! Also, the best part about client control is that the photographer still has the ultimate authority to disable the given permissions and get notified every time their client suggests an edit or makes a new selection. The ‘Suggest Edits’ feature enables your clients to suggest an edit in any of the photos for which you get notified on your dashboard. You can easily access that image from the notification bar, download and edit at your convenience.
Similarly, selecting favorite photos is now just a 2 step task for your clients. All they have to do is press the heart icon on the photo of their choice and add it to a chosen selection. This also keeps you on a notification loop to understand what are your clients’ preferences which in turn helps you understand the kind of pictures to select for printing.
Additionally, hiding or displaying photos, playing a slideshow, downloading, unlocking albums, sharing locked albums with individually customizable PINs are the supercool features we offer your clients. This in turn gives you the freedom to do more of what you love.
What kind of challenges does Huemn eliminate for wedding photographers who’re always on the go?
Vijay Eesam: The ability to reach existing clients and also potential clients without compromising shoots is multi-tasking on another level! Accepting bookings, sending out proposals on time, getting the contracts signed, shooting emails, and follow-ups are administrative tasks that are unavoidable for which you have to be on time and you have to be precise. With features like proposal builders, integrated calendars and team productivity tracking, Huemn intends to give photographers the ease of managing workflow at your fingertips. Once a base template for a proposal is made, all you need to do for the second time around is to fill in details like you fill a blank form, and Huemn will take over the rest!
Similarly, let our integrated AI system store information based on your previous projects, and use it in the future to give you suggestions on whether your upcoming projects will be a profit or loss, how much time should be spent on each project, the cost spared per project and much more!
How does Huemn help in boosting sales for wedding photographers?
Anusha Eesam: Automated watermark application and the ability of the photographers and clients to choose between downloading raw, uncompressed or web-optimized or even compressed images are features that amplify brand visibility. Logo uploads that get displayed in the client view enable your clients and guests to be aware of your brand at all times. Not to mention, the reach is also boosted for the photographers due to our AI feature as every guest present at the event ends up receiving their photos without having to follow up with the bride and groom or the photographer.
Browsing through multiple galleries can be a time-consuming task for couples or their loved ones who’re looking for the perfect shot. How does Huemn ease this dilemma?
Sriram Reddy: Tags! They work similar to hashtags on Instagram. In simple terms, Huemn lets photographers create sub-folders within albums (called tags) that depict the different types of photos that the photographer has clicked. So in an album called ‘Engagement’, there can be tags like ‘Decor’, ‘Bride’, ‘Groom’ etc. The best part is, you can add tags either while uploading or after uploading and also add one tag to a photo or even multiple – Huemn segregates these photos automatically based on tags!
Client coordination can be a colossal task for wedding photographers, especially during the peak season. Can you share how Huemn can help ease their burden?
Vijay Eesam: An upcoming, exciting feature ‘client communication’ helps you integrate your emails and set up automated replies so you don’t have to worry about constantly following up with them. This also includes shoot schedules in your calendar to keep you constantly under check. Moreover, bookings and sending proposals can now be done at your fingertips. You can also integrate your team calendars into one and overlook when their dates are packed, for which shoot and where!
The Huemn vision is to incorporate various tools required not just for delivery but also productivity and team management into one so that there is no more toggling between a plethora of tools for every new task on your plate.
Virtual security is an absolute must in today’s times. What measures does Huemn take for the same?
Anusha Eesam: At Huemn we strictly don’t compromise on the quality of deliverables and data security. Housing its entire foundation on the AWS (Amazon Web Services), Huemn ensures that there is absolute security every time a user signs up with us. Our users’ privacy is of topmost priority, and therefore we follow all the standard cloud practices for storage and distribution purposes. The aim is to provide our clients with a delightful overall user experience, while also ensuring that no third parties get their hands on any personal/private information at any cost. Furthermore, Huemn stores no user information or user-registered data in any format.
Reach more clients and give your business a boost with Huemn. To learn more click here.
