Building a Digital Culture That Grows with Us

Running a photography business is no longer just about having a good eye for creativity; it’s about building a digital culture that grows with clients, tools and technology, and artistic and business challenges. As the photography industry continues to digitise, companies must rethink how they work, collaborate, and grow talent. According to Rowles and Brown (2017), workplace culture is shaped by the environment in which people work. In photography, this means more than props and lighting setups. Studios with great digital potential integrate apps like client portals, cloud-based proofing systems, AI-assisted editing platforms, and digital booking kiosks. These tools streamline general operations and grow internal and external collaborative work due to their ease of use, knowledge, and empowerment for creative ideation.

Digital transformation seeks to create an agile, transparent, and collaborative workspace. This removes most inefficiencies, such as email back-and-forths or miscommunication about shoot timings and creative editing. A well-integrated digital environment supports faster decision-making and clearer visibility across projects. Within this, talent or employee development is also just as crucial. Studios need to invest time into T-shaped creatives. Those with great expertise in the area, i.e., retouching, also have a broad understanding of digital marketing, branding, and teamwork. Building Digital Culture explains how training needs to be multimodal, a blend of formal learning like webinars and meetings and informal learning like gamified learning and real-time collaboration, to help foster growth. This ensures that learning is integrated into daily routines, not as an afterthought or once-off.

There is a framework that is crucial for businesses to dive into: Dervin’s (2018) 6 ‘I’s Framework. This Framework stresses that transformation has to be centred around people. Change has to empower or improve the work lives of staff; this can be done through tools like automated scheduling or digital intake forms. This way, staff can focus on being creative rather than administrative. This shift is an excellent example for photography and general companies as it boosts productivity and improves job satisfaction.

The larger industry trend supports this shift. Pixifi’s article on photography trends explains that innovations like AI editing, mobile-first workflows, and cloud collaboration are shaping how studios operate in a growing digital space. These tools are not optional but paramount for staying within the industry and competitive in an oversaturated market. Studios that adopt digital culture as a strategic aid and not a necessity or afterthought position themselves to succeed in a fast-evolving, creative, digital, transformative industry.

References

• Dervin, M. (2018). Digital Transformation from the Inside Out. Michael Hanrahan Publishing.

• Rowles, D., & Brown, T. (2017). Building Digital Culture. Kogan Page Publishers.

• Pixifi. (2024). The Future of Photography: Trends and Innovations Shaping the Industry.