QUICK TIPS

The big law firm that got publicly burned for filing fake AI-generated case citations made the same mistake most photographers make. They dumped a messy folder at the model and asked for output.

Here's the small version, for your website.

Open a new folder. Paste every version of your About page that has ever existed (homepage bio, services bio, podcast intro, Instagram bio, the one your friend wrote in 2019). One file per source.

Now read them back to back and write a second file called "contradictions.txt." Note every place two of them disagree on price, niche, location, or how you describe what you actually do.

Then write. Or hand the folder to AI. Either way, it now has nothing to invent.

What's hiding in your folder that you forgot was still public?

A candle, a bottle, a printed thank-you. That's most photographers' idea of vendor networking. The candle gets burned, the bottle gets opened, and your name is gone by next Tuesday.

Try this instead. Pick three vendors you actually want more work from (a planner, a florist, a venue, a jeweller, whoever books the kind of weddings you want more of). Print a stack of 5x5 cards, double-sided. Their logo and contact details on one side, four of your strongest images of their work. Yours on the other side, same four images.

Now both of you hand out the same card. They drop it on consultation tables as their own marketing. You slip one into every welcome kit. The vendor's clients see your name in the vendor's hand. Your clients see the vendor's name in yours.

The reason it works isn't the card. It's that you made them a marketing asset they couldn't have made on their own, and you happen to be on the back of every one. They stop seeing you as the photographer asking for referrals and start seeing you as the person who gives them something useful for their business. That switch is the whole game.

Cost is print plus one evening to design. Shelf life is years.

What do you actually leave behind with vendors right now, the honest version?