ShootCal
Plan every shoot around the perfect light.
ShootCal is the scheduling and studio management app built for photographers. Automatic golden-hour scheduling, online booking, client management, contracts, deposit tracking, and a public availability calendar, plus the details that keep your studio running. On iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, the web, and now Android on Google Play. And when the shoot is done, deliver it with ShootCal Galleries: elegant, on-brand client galleries with full-resolution downloads and online proofing.
Sign-up is free!
Scheduling, deposits, clients, and the sun in one calendar, so the tedious parts handle themselves and you get back behind the camera.
Set your city once and ShootCal calculates sunrise and sunset for any date, automatically timing your session starts around golden hour. Every calendar cell shows that day’s sunrise and sunset times at a glance. Fine-tune the defaults with your own session types to automatically schedule sessions.
Create tailored presets for the work you do (e.g., Family, Weddings, Engagements, Real Estate, Mini Shoots) with default durations and all-day settings to make booking lightning fast. Choose to time certain session types to before sunset, at sunrise, all day for weddings, custom real estate shoot times, 30-minute mini shoots, and much more.
Type a line like “June 30th Family pictures for the Smiths at sunset [email protected]” and it fills in the date, time, client, and email, schedules an hour before sunset, and sends the invite, all from one line of text. On iPhone, iPad, and Mac the parsing runs on-device.
Create, edit, and delete events directly from the app, with two-way background sync so your changes update automatically. Add a client’s email and they get an automatic invitation, with a visual indication when it’s accepted. You are never locked into ShootCal, because everything is synced with your Google Calendar.
Show weather, tides, and wind right inside your calendar. Every day shows the details a photographer needs to plan a shoot.
Share your booking page or embed it right on your own site. Clients pick a session, see real openings (a golden-hour type suggests times that end at sunset, with the day’s sunset shown), and send their request. Cover photos, prices, and durations come straight from your session types, and the whole page stays clean black-and-white so it blends with your brand, not ours.
Requests land in the ShootCal app on your phone, iPad, or Mac. Accept and it’s booked on your Google Calendar with the client saved. Prefer hands-off? Turn on instant booking per session type.
You can also show your open days publicly: a clean month grid of open, limited, and booked days for your website, with no event details ever exposed. See a live example →
ShootCal reads your existing Google Calendar and uses Claude AI to pull your past and upcoming clients out of your event titles, match each to the right session type (family, wedding, engagement, and more), and build your client list and booking history for you. I haven't seen another photography app do this. You review everything before anything is added, and your calendar itself is never touched. Years of bookings, organized in a few taps.
Create a wedding, family, or custom agreement from a built-in template, prefilled with the couple, date, venue, and package, then share the signing link. Your client reviews and e-signs from any device with a tap, you are notified the moment they do, and a signed copy is saved to your own Google Drive. (Templates are a convenience, not legal advice.) See how contracts work →
Mark sessions paid or unpaid with a single toggle, color-coding your events green (deposit received) or red (no deposit) on both the app and your Google Calendar. When Wave or QuickBooks marks an invoice paid, ShootCal flips that booking's deposit to received for you. You also see your business at a glance: bookings this month and year, sessions by type, deposits paid versus pending, and a month-by-month trend, all built into Clients & Booking. See payments & deposits →
Keep invoicing in Wave or QuickBooks Online the way you already do. When a payment comes in, ShootCal matches it to the right booking and marks the deposit received on your calendar automatically. It is read-only, so it never changes anything in your accounting. See how the deposit sync works →
ShootCal can email your client a friendly reminder before their session, sent from your own Gmail. Choose how many days ahead, and write your own message or use the built-in one. Fewer no-shows, zero manual follow-up.
Booking requests land in your inbox. Just hit Reply to answer the client, and they get your message along with a tidy copy of what they asked for. ShootCal quietly marks the request handled: no app to open, no status to tick off, and the conversation stays in your Gmail. Prefer to work in the app? One setting flips it.
Set follow-up to-dos that show directly in your calendar, separate from events, and check them off when they’re done. For example, set a reminder to deliver a client’s gallery in two weeks right from their original session. Your to-dos are backed by Google Tasks, so they stay in sync across your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and the web.
ShootCal keeps your clients right alongside your calendar: name, email, phone, address, and last session, ready when you schedule the next one. On shoot day the details are right on the event, so you are not digging through old emails for contact info at the last minute. Everything is stored in your own Google Contacts under a private ShootCal Clients label, never on a server I control, so your client list stays yours on every device.
A watch complication shows your next event, plus a fast, streamlined watch app that lists the next 30 days. Home-screen widgets show just what a photographer needs: client names, times, location, sunset/sunrise, and tides. There’s also a Names Only complication that shows just the client names, a real help at a wedding when you are juggling the couple’s and the family’s names.
ShootCal signs in through Google’s own secure login (OAuth), so your password never touches ShootCal, and your calendar data stays in your Google account, not on a server I control.
A one-time download. ShootCal is currently free, with no subscriptions. Your data lives securely in your Google Calendar, so you’re never locked into a monthly fee or a closed platform. If it saves you time, donations to help out are always appreciated.
Plus a 100% native Swift app, with iCloud settings sync across all your Apple devices. See ShootCal in action →
ShootCal started on Apple and goes deepest there: home-screen widgets, an Apple Watch app, and sunrise, sunset, tides & weather built into every day. The web app is the easy way in; the native apps are the full experience.
ShootCal Galleries gives you elegant client galleries under your own brand: your logo, even your own domain (clients.yourstudio.com). Clients get full-resolution downloads, online proofing with favorites they can send back in one tap, and a gallery that opens like a website, not a folder. No client accounts or sign-ins required.
Publish straight from Lightroom Classic with the ShootCal plugin: your collections become galleries, re-edits re-publish in place, and uploads go directly to cloud storage. Start free with 50 GB during beta (20 GB after), then 100 GB for $12/mo or 1,000 GB for $25/mo, billed month-to-month with no annual contract.
Using ShootCal in your business? Tell me how it’s working for you and I’ll feature your review right here on the site.
Yes. ShootCal is fully free while it's in beta, with no subscriptions. Your data lives securely in your Google Calendar, so you're never locked into a monthly fee or a closed platform. Depending on how things go, there may eventually be a small charge for the web version to help cover server costs, but the apps stay a one-time, no-subscription download.
Set your city once and ShootCal calculates sunset and sunrise times for any date, automatically setting your session start times based on sunset or sunrise. Every default time is fully customizable with your own session types.
Yes. You create, edit, and delete events directly in the app, and two-way background sync ensures your changes update automatically.
Yes. Turn on online booking and your availability calendar becomes a request form. A client picks an open day (and a time slot, if you offer them), sends their details, and the request lands in your ShootCal inbox. You review it and accept to add it to your calendar, or decline with a quick reply. Nothing is booked automatically unless you turn on instant booking for a session type; otherwise every request waits for you to accept.
Yes. Toggle any session as deposit received and it color-codes green on both ShootCal and your Google Calendar (red when nothing is in yet), so your paid and unpaid bookings are clear at a glance. You can also connect Wave or QuickBooks Online so a paid invoice marks the deposit received automatically, right on the booking.
No. The public availability calendar on your website shows only which days are open, limited, or fully booked. Event titles, locations, and details are never exposed.
Free to download. No subscriptions.
Free while in beta. Sign in with Google or create your account in seconds.