I’ve been a professional photographer for 20 years. Between shooting weddings, family sessions, engagements, and more around Myrtle Beach, scheduling events in my calendar is one of the least fun parts of the job. I’ve always preferred optimizing my own workflow rather than paying for expensive monthly CRM subscriptions. I use Wave for invoicing and Google Calendar for appointments, but Google Calendar was never ideal.
For every engagement or portrait session, I was manually looking up the sunset time for that specific date, calculating my start time to catch golden hour, and typing in the client’s name, location, and deposit status. Just so I could see if a booking was secured at a glance.
I wanted a faster way to do this without abandoning my existing system. Using my coding background, I built ShootCal to automate those exact tasks. It’s built for my needs as a working photographer, but I decided to share it so others can ditch the proprietary platforms, avoid the monthly fees, and take their time back.
I’ve made many little tweaks to this app only a working photographer would appreciate. Something as simple as a quick one-click copy of a client’s name from the calendar to paste into Lightroom to create a collection. You will find these little special features throughout the app.
This app is designed for photographers, but of course it can be used by videographers, content creators, or anyone who plans events around the sun. It’s also just a great general calendar even if you don’t use the event scheduling features.
– Ryan Smith, Ryan Smith Photography