Setting up Yesoma for a portrait photography business

This guide walks portrait and family photographers through setting up a Yesoma workspace using the portrait photography playbook. It covers everything from session packages and deposits to gallery delivery messaging and bringing back repeat clients through seasonal mini sessions. This is the non-wedding playbook — if you shoot weddings exclusively, see the wedding photographer guide instead.

1. Apply the portrait photography playbook during onboarding

When you first sign up for Yesoma, the onboarding wizard asks what kind of business you run. Select Portrait & family photography to load the portrait playbook. This pre-populates your workspace with:

• Eight session types (family, newborn, headshots, maternity, senior portraits, personal brand, and a custom/commercial option)
• Seven policies covering deposits, cancellations, gallery delivery timelines, and usage rights
• Eight FAQs written in a voice that sounds like an actual photographer, not a legal document
• Eight reply templates you can send immediately without editing
• A follow-up cadence tuned to the gallery delivery rhythm of portrait work

After onboarding completes you will have a workspace that looks like a real photography business, not an empty shell. Your job at that point is to replace the placeholder prices with your actual rates and adjust anything that does not match how you work.

If you already completed onboarding with a different playbook, go to Settings → Business Brain → Re-run playbook and select Portrait & family photography. This will merge the playbook content in without overwriting the business information you have already entered.

2. Package-based pricing and how it works in Yesoma quotes

Portrait photography runs on packages, not hourly rates. A "30-minute mini session with 10 edited images" is a cleaner sell than "my hourly rate is X." The playbook reflects this with five anchor packages and a separate line for add-ons.

The five pricing anchors in the playbook (in USD) are:

• Mini family session (30 min, 10 images) — $250
• Full family session (1 hr, 30 images) — $500
• Newborn session (2 hr, 25 images + props) — $700
• Senior portraits (1 hr, 25 images) — $450
• Personal brand half-day (4 hr, 50+ images) — $1,200

These are baseline US market anchors. If your local market or specialization pushes your rates higher or lower, edit the service prices in Services before you start replying to inquiries.

Add-ons — extra edited images, rush delivery, travel, commercial licensing, prints and albums — are not in the base service prices. Yesoma lets you add line items to any quote. When you build a quote for a client who wants 10 extra edited images or a 5-day turnaround, add those as separate line items with their own prices. This keeps your base package prices clean and makes upsells feel like a natural next step rather than a hidden fee.

For headshot clients coming from a company or HR department, the pricing reply template includes a line for "any specific framing requirements from company or agency" — this is intentional. Corporate headshot coordinators often have specs (pixel dimensions, background color, turnaround) that affect how long the session takes. Getting those details before quoting saves a round-trip.

3. The 50/50 deposit schedule — the photography industry standard

Every session in the portrait playbook requires a deposit. The default schedule is:

• 50% deposit at booking to reserve the date
• Remaining 50% due before the gallery link is sent

This structure is standard across the photography industry for a straightforward reason: it protects both sides cleanly. The client's date is locked the moment they deposit and you decline other bookings for it. The final payment is due before the client receives anything, which removes the risk of delivering a gallery and chasing the balance.

Yesoma supports this in a few ways. The booking confirmation template references the deposit received and the balance due. The balance reminder template ("Gallery ready soon") triggers when you are about to deliver the gallery and prompts the client to pay the remaining balance via a payment link before you send the gallery access.

To configure the payment link in the balance reminder template, go to Settings → Payments and connect your payment processor. The [pay link] placeholder in the template will automatically populate with a Yesoma payment link once a processor is connected.

For newborn sessions specifically, the playbook notes that deposits are often collected during the third trimester — weeks before the session date. The deposit policy handles this gracefully: the free reschedule clause explicitly covers early or late arrivals, so clients booking during pregnancy do not feel like they are risking their deposit if the birth timeline shifts.

4. Gallery delivery timeline messaging — preventing "where are my photos?"

The number one complaint portrait photographers get is clients asking where their photos are after a session. The playbook addresses this at three touchpoints so clients never have to ask.

First, the booking confirmation template explicitly states: "your edited gallery will be ready within 2–4 weeks." Clients read the booking confirmation carefully because they just paid a deposit — this is the moment to set the expectation.

Second, the gallery delivery FAQ is written to pre-answer the question: "Galleries are delivered within 2–4 weeks of your session date. We do not send sneak peeks or previews during the editing window, but you will get a notification the moment your gallery goes live." Setting this expectation up front (no previews, yes notification) eliminates the mid-edit check-ins that slow down your workflow.

Third, the gallery delivery template ("Gallery delivered + review request") is what actually triggers the review request. In the portrait playbook, the follow-up cadence is set to fire 14 days after the session is marked completed — which in Yesoma's terminology means the day you deliver the gallery, not the day of the shoot. Satisfaction peaks when clients see their finished photos for the first time, not when they are still in the car driving home from the session.

To make this work correctly in Yesoma, mark inquiries as Completed on the day you send the gallery, not the day of the shoot. Settings → Business Brain → Follow-up cadence shows you the current rules; the default is 14 days after Completed, which matches a typical editing window.

5. Mini-session retention plays for repeat clients

Families who book a full portrait session once are your best leads for the following year. The mini-session promotion template is built specifically for this.

The flow:

1. A client completes a session and is marked Completed in Yesoma.
2. When you announce a seasonal mini-session event (fall family minis in October, holiday minis in November–December, spring minis around Easter), use the mini-session promotion template to notify past clients first.
3. Past clients get first access before you post publicly. This is a genuine value signal — it makes them feel like insiders, not like they are on a marketing list.

The template is intentionally left flexible because the dates, times, and locations change every season. The key fields to fill in each time you run it are: session type (fall family, holiday, spring), the available date slots, the price, the deposit amount, and how long you will hold a slot before it opens to the public (the template defaults to 24 hours).

To send this template in Yesoma, go to Customers, filter by past clients from any date range, and use the bulk message feature to send the template to that segment. You can further filter by session type — for example, sending holiday minis only to families who shot with you last year, not headshot clients.

The mini-session format also lowers the barrier for clients who loved their last session but feel like a full 60-minute booking is a bigger commitment than they need right now. A $250 thirty-minute slot to update the annual family photo is an easy yes.

6. Portrait playbook vs. wedding photographer playbook — which one to pick

Both playbooks are for photographers. The distinction is business model shape.

The wedding photographer playbook is built around a single high-value event booked 9–14 months in advance. Deposits are event-specific. Gallery delivery is 4–6 weeks. The client lifecycle is essentially a one-shot booking with an engagement session add-on. Everything — templates, follow-up cadence, deposit structure — is oriented around the long lead time before a single defined event.

The portrait photography playbook is built around recurring, session-based work. Families come back every year. Seniors shoot in the spring. Brand clients refresh their content every quarter. The packages are smaller, the per-session price is lower, and the business model depends on a returning client base rather than a large pipeline of one-time events.

Pick the portrait playbook if:

• Most of your bookings are family, newborn, headshot, maternity, senior, or personal brand sessions
• You want to build a client base that books with you year after year
• Your typical session is 30 minutes to half a day, not a full wedding day

Pick the wedding playbook if:

• Weddings are your primary or only service
• Your pricing is anchored around all-day or multi-hour event coverage
• Your booking cycle is measured in months, not weeks

If you do both — you shoot portraits most of the year and weddings in the summer — the portrait playbook is the better starting point. Wedding-specific templates can be added manually. You can also run two separate Yesoma workspaces on one account if you prefer to keep the inquiries segmented.

7. What your reply templates look like in action

The eight templates in the portrait playbook cover the full inquiry lifecycle. Here is how they connect.

First reply fires at day 0 when an inquiry comes in. It asks three things: what kind of session, preferred date, and how many people (or for newborns, the due date or baby's age). Without those three pieces of information, you cannot send an accurate quote. The template does not guess — it asks.

Pricing reply goes out once you have the session details. It references the package and add-ons, states the 50/50 deposit schedule, and closes with two specific available dates. Ending with open dates is intentional — it moves the conversation forward instead of leaving it open-ended.

Booking confirmation goes out after the deposit clears. It states the session details, confirms the deposit received and balance due, and sets the gallery timeline expectation. It also mentions that a wardrobe guide is coming separately — which prompts you to actually send it.

Balance reminder fires when the gallery is ready to deliver. It asks for the remaining 50% before sending the link. Keep this message short — the client is excited to see their photos and the reminder should feel like a quick step, not a friction point.

Gallery delivered + review request combines the delivery and the review ask in one message. This is the highest-emotion moment in the portrait client relationship. Clients who have just seen their finished photos for the first time are primed to leave a glowing review. Do not send the review request the day of the shoot — send it when you send the gallery.

Quote follow-up goes out three days after you sent pricing if the client has not responded. It is light-touch: it acknowledges they may still be deciding and offers to adjust the package or date rather than just pushing for a decision.

No-availability reply is designed to keep the relationship rather than just saying no. It offers alternate dates first, and only offers to refer to another photographer as a last resort.

Mini-session promotion is the only outbound template in the set — it goes to past clients, not new inquiries. Run it once or twice a year when you open seasonal mini-session slots.

These templates are starting points. Portrait photography has a warmer, more personal voice than service businesses where the client relationship is transactional. Read through them and adjust the tone to sound like you — Yesoma will use them as the basis for AI-drafted replies, and replies that match your actual voice convert better than generic ones.