Vendor sharing and tagging

Every event you shoot is full of vendors who need great images and can send you referrals. Learn a repeatable routine for sending each vendor the right images fast, tagging and crediting properly, and staying within Canadian privacy, anti-spam and disclosure rules.

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Vendor sharing and tagging.

At a typical wedding or gala there may be ten or more vendors in the room: the planner, venue, caterer, florist, rental company, DJ or band, entertainer, cake designer, hair and makeup artist and stationer.

Each of them wants professional images of their work and rarely gets them.

Why vendor sharing is a referral engine.

Planners, venues and florists talk to couples and corporate buyers months before those clients choose a photographer.

When a florist posts your image of their centrepiece with your credit, their followers see your work.

Before the event: the vendor list and shot list.

Ask the client or planner for the vendor list at your final planning call.

Record each vendor's business name, contact person, email and social media handle.

After the event: the seven-day vendor gallery.

Set yourself a standard and stick to it.

A good target is vendor galleries within seven days, even if the client's full gallery takes several weeks.

A vendor email you can copy.

Subject: Photos from the event,

"Hi, it was a pleasure working with you at on .

Tagging and crediting when you post.

When you publish the event on your own channels, tag every vendor whose work is visible, both on the image and in the caption, using their exact handle.

Put the full credit list at the end of the caption or blog post: venue, planner, florist, caterer and so on.

That is the lesson. The worksheet and the quiz are just below this video.

What you will be able to do

• Build a vendor list and shot list for each event before you arrive
• Deliver curated vendor galleries within a set number of days using a standard email
• Tag, credit and disclose relationships correctly when you and vendors post

At a typical wedding or gala there may be ten or more vendors in the room: the planner, venue, caterer, florist, rental company, DJ or band, entertainer, cake designer, hair and makeup artist and stationer. Each of them wants professional images of their work and rarely gets them. If you become the photographer who reliably sends great vendor images, you become the photographer they recommend.

Why vendor sharing is a referral engine

Planners, venues and florists talk to couples and corporate buyers months before those clients choose a photographer. When a florist posts your image of their centrepiece with your credit, their followers see your work. When a venue coordinator needs fresh photos for a tour package, the photographer who sent a tidy gallery last month is the one they mention. Vendor sharing is not a favour. It is the cheapest marketing you will ever do, because the images already exist.

The catch is that most photographers do it badly or late. A vendor who receives 400 unsorted images four months after the event will post none of them. A vendor who receives 15 well-chosen images in a week will post three that day.

Before the event: the vendor list and shot list

Ask the client or planner for the vendor list at your final planning call. Record each vendor’s business name, contact person, email and social media handle. Then add vendor shots to your shot list so you do not have to hunt for them after the fact.

A ten-minute room reveal before the doors open covers most vendors at once. Agree it with the planner in advance so the room is fully set and lit.

After the event: the seven-day vendor gallery

Set yourself a standard and stick to it. A good target is vendor galleries within seven days, even if the client’s full gallery takes several weeks. Clients need to see their images first, so send the client a sneak peek before or on the same day.

1. Cull per vendor. Choose 10 to 20 images for each vendor showing their work at its best. Overlap is fine; the venue and the florist will both want the wide room.
2. Make separate galleries or folders. One link per vendor, named with the event date and vendor name, so nobody scrolls through someone else’s images.
3. Size for web. Deliver web-resolution files sized for social media and websites, with high-resolution files on request.
4. Send the standard email. Include the link, your licence terms and the exact credit line.
5. Log it. Record the date sent and check two weeks later which vendors posted.

A vendor email you can copy

Subject: Photos from the [Client] event, [date]

“Hi [name], it was a pleasure working with you at [venue] on [date]. Here are [number] images of your work, ready for your website and social media: [link]. You are welcome to use them for your own marketing with the credit ‘Photo: [Studio] [handle]’. For paid ads or print advertising, just ask and we will sort out a licence. If you need anything specific for an award entry or a venue tour pack, reply and I will look. Hope to see you at the next one. [Name], [Studio], [mailing address], [phone].”

Tagging and crediting when you post

When you publish the event on your own channels, tag every vendor whose work is visible, both on the image and in the caption, using their exact handle. Put the full credit list at the end of the caption or blog post: venue, planner, florist, caterer and so on. Vendors search their tags and mentions, and a complete credit list is often reshared.

On a blog post, link each vendor’s name to their website. That gives them a useful link and gives your post a reason to be shared by every business on the list.

When vendors do not post

Some vendors will never post, and that is fine. Check your log after two weeks and look for patterns. If a vendor never uses images, ask what would help: square crops, a vertical clip for stories, or images of a particular product. A rental company may care more about one clean shot of its lounge furniture than twenty images of the room. A caterer may want a short video of a station in action rather than stills.

For the vendors who do post, say thank you publicly by resharing their post to your stories. It closes the loop and tells every other vendor that you notice and value the partnership. Videographers can do the same with a 15-second vertical cut for each key vendor. Photo booth operators can send the planner and venue a handful of the best guest strips, with the client’s permission.

Worked example: one wedding, eleven vendors

Northlight Studio, an illustrative Hamilton photo and video studio, shot a 180-guest wedding with eleven vendors. Aisha sent eleven vendor galleries of 12 to 18 images within six days, and a 60-second highlight film to the planner and venue.

Two weeks later, eight of the eleven vendors had posted, with a combined 14 posts and stories carrying Northlight’s credit. Over the next season, two vendors referred a total of five inquiries, and three of those booked at an average of $4,600. That is $13,800 in bookings from about four hours of extra culling and email. Even if your numbers are a fraction of that, the arithmetic of a few hours of work against one booking makes the routine worth keeping.

In Canada and the GTA

Privacy when you share client images. PIPEDA generally applies to private businesses in Ontario, and the privacy commissioner has treated photographs of identifiable people as their personal information. Sending images of your clients and their guests to a dozen other businesses is a disclosure to third parties. The OPC’s consent guidance says express consent is generally needed when a use or disclosure falls outside a person’s reasonable expectations, such as sharing with third parties. Put vendor sharing in your contract in plain words, for example: “We share a selection of images with the vendors who worked on your event so they can show their work, and they may post them publicly.” Give clients an easy way to say no, and leave out guests or children whose families asked not to be photographed. This is general information, not legal advice.

Anti-spam rules for vendor emails. A one-off email delivering images to a vendor you worked with is mainly a service message, but if it promotes your services it may be a commercial electronic message. CASL has a business-to-business exemption for messages between organizations that have a relationship, when the message concerns the receiving organization’s activities, but contact between two individuals alone does not create a relationship. The safe habit is to include your business name, mailing address and a phone, email or website in every vendor email, which CASL requires of commercial messages anyway. Do not add vendors to your newsletter list unless they agree. The CRTC’s CASL FAQ covers the details.

Disclose material connections. If a vendor supplied free product or services to a styled shoot you organized, or you received free services in exchange for images, that is a material connection under the Ad Standards Influencer Marketing Disclosure Guidelines, which list free products and gifts as material connections. A tag alone is not a disclosure. When the post promotes a vendor who gave you something, add a clear label such as #Gifted or #ad in the main caption, before any links. See the Ad Standards guidelines. Normal credits for vendors your client paid are not endorsements of this kind, but use judgement when you are praising a vendor who referred you work for a fee.

Local practice

In the Toronto and Hamilton wedding markets, vendors increasingly expect images within one to two weeks, and many planners keep an informal list of photographers who reliably share. Venues in the GTA often refresh their photo libraries ahead of the January wedding show season, so November and December are a good time to send any venue a curated set from the past year, even if you already sent images after each event.

Corporate events need more care. Sponsors, speakers and brand teams may have rules about who can publish images and when. Ask the corporate client before you send anything to vendors, and wait until the company has published its own recap. For galas run by charities, the organizer may want first use for donor communications. A quick question saves you from being the vendor who leaked the CEO’s speech photos before the press release.

Multi-day celebrations, common in the GTA’s South Asian, Persian and other communities, may involve different vendors each day: a mehndi artist and decorator on one day, a ceremony décor team and caterer on the next. Collect a vendor list for each day, and send each day’s vendors only the images from the events they worked.

Cultural and religious ceremonies deserve the same respect. Some families do not want ceremony images shared publicly. Send those vendors reception images only unless the family agrees.

Worksheet

Download the worksheet and complete it for your own business, using Lantern & Lane as the model where it helps. Keep it with your marketing plan. It takes about 10 minutes.

Download the worksheet (PDF)