Photography and videography studios run on shoots, edits and delivery dates. Crews work long event days and weekends, while editors sit behind screens for weeks. Both groups need fair pay, clear files and a plan for peak seasons.
Not sure what you need? Tell us about your business in six short steps and we will come to the first meeting prepared.
Share your requirementsA photography and videography business covers weddings, corporate events, product shoots, films and portraits. The team has the owner or lead photographer, second shooters, videographers, assistants who carry kit and manage lights, editors and colourists who work on footage and images, and a coordinator who handles bookings and delivery. Many shooters are freelancers hired by the day. Work follows seasons, with wedding months and festival weeks packed solid and quiet spells in between. Shoot days are long, on foot, often at night, with heavy cameras and drones. Editing is slow and repetitive, and clients expect fast albums and reels. Files are huge and costly to lose. Equipment is valuable and is carried by many hands. See also HR for professional services.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in photography and videography. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
A wedding or event can stretch fourteen hours, with little food, no seat and a drive home at night.
Peak months leave no time off, and slow months leave freelancers without income and staff with idle hours.
The sales team promises a quick album, and the editor works through nights to meet it.
Memory cards, drives and cloud folders are labelled in many ways, and one lost card is a lost wedding.
Lenses, gimbals and drones are borrowed and returned without a record, and damage is blamed on whoever last held it.
Day rates, payment dates, credit and use of their work are agreed on a call and disputed later.
A client books the owner, but a second shooter arrives, and quality varies.
After carrying kit for years, they are not offered shooting work, so they start a studio of their own.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Health, Safety and Wellbeing; HR Operations and Governance; Career and Succession Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
The pieces a photography and videography business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A calendar of heavy months, crew rotation, caps on consecutive long days and time off after peaks.
A calendar of heavy months, crew rotation, caps on consecutive long days and time off after peaks. Use shift and leave rules.
Editors and sales agree what is possible per package, and extra speed is priced.
Editors and sales agree what is possible per package, and extra speed is priced. Record them in documentation.
Card labelling, double backup on the day, a shared folder structure and a check before cards are formatted.
Card labelling, double backup on the day, a shared folder structure and a check before cards are formatted.
Who took which item, when, and its condition on return, signed by both.
Who took which item, when, and its condition on return, signed by both. Include it in employee records.
Day rate, payment date, credit, usage of work and cancellation, in a one-page agreement.
Day rate, payment date, credit, usage of work and cancellation, in a one-page agreement. Review it against pay benchmarks.
Steps from kit carrier to lighting assistant to second shooter with trial shoots.
Steps from kit carrier to lighting assistant to second shooter with trial shoots. See learning plans.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Rest and rotation around long shoot days and peak months.
Delivery rules and one-page freelancer terms that avoid later disputes.
An equipment register tied to people and a clear record of crews.
A path for assistants to become shooters inside the studio.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why associates and managers leave consulting, accounting, legal and advisory firms, and how to ask about progression, workload and partners at exit.
6 min readRead article
A shift, weekly and monthly safety routine for rubber plants that names who checks platen guards, mill trip bars, autoclave doors, burst-test cages and slings, and who acts on near misses.
7 min readRead article
Every growing company reaches a point where the founder approving everything stops being speed and starts being the bottleneck. Twelve signs it has happened, and what to fix first.
9 min readRead article
A two-hour exercise that names the roles you could not fill quickly, who could cover them, and what readiness would actually require.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Cap long days in a row, rotate who shoots, plan time off straight after peaks and pay fairly for overtime. Tired crews miss the shot.
Fix delivery times per package with editors, price rush work and share the queue. A promise made without the editor is a promise broken.
Label cards, back up twice on the day and check before formatting. Make one person accountable for the data each shoot.
Rate, payment date, credit, use of work and cancellation. Ask a qualified professional to check them.
Show a way to shoot under your name, give trial work and recognise progress. Otherwise they will start a studio of their own.
How crews are rested, how delivery dates are set, how files and kit are tracked and how freelancers and assistants are treated. A season plan, an equipment register or a freelancer page is a likely start. Scope, timing and fees are put in writing after that talk.
All 145 business types in professional services · Find another business type
See all HR topics for professional services, or another industry.
Tell us what is slowing your team down. We’ll help you find a practical way forward, starting with a conversation.
