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Prom Night Profits: How to Rock Prom Photography in the Age of Smartphones

Prom Night Profits: How to Rock Prom Photography in the Age of Smartphones

Prom night is a rite of passage, filled with teenage dreams, extravagant dresses, and Insta-worthy moments. But as a photographer, you might be wondering if prom photography is still a profitable gig in the era of smartphones and selfies. Fear not, fellow camera enthusiasts! With a few clever strategies and the help of NowCandid's Party Pics Now program, you can turn prom night into a money-making opportunity. So, grab your camera and let's dive into the world of prom photography!

  1. Adapt and Thrive:
    The rise of smartphones has indeed changed the game, but savvy photographers can adapt by focusing on what they do best: capturing high-quality, professional images. Offer your clients a mix of posed pictures and candid shots, using the Selfie Check-In and Tap-A-Face workflows from NowCandid's Party Pics Now program to streamline the process and ensure a smooth experience for everyone involved.
  2. More Photographers, More Profit:
    Increase your revenue potential by sending multiple photographers to cover the event. Assign one to a dedicated photo station for portraits, while others roam the venue capturing quick posed photos of friends and group pictures. This approach ensures that you capture a wide variety of sellable frames, making the most of your time on-site.
  3. Create a Unique Photo Station:
    Make your photo station stand out by offering themed backdrops, fun props, and creative lighting. This will not only draw the prom-goers to your station but also encourage them to share their professional photos on social media, giving you free advertising and potentially attracting new clients.
  4. Network with Schools and Event Planners:
    Build relationships with schools, event planners, and other key stakeholders to secure more prom photography gigs. Offer special deals, referral incentives, or donate a portion of your profits to the school as a way to give back and establish a positive reputation in the community.
  5. Promote Your Services:
    Use social media, your website, and local advertising to promote your prom photography services. Share examples of your work, highlight special offers, and showcase testimonials from satisfied clients to build credibility and attract new business.
  6. Capture the Essence of Prom Night:
    Prom is a night of glitz, glamor, and teenage dreams come true. To create images that truly resonate, focus on capturing the energy, emotion, and excitement of the event. Channel your inner photographer and make every shot a visual feast that transports the viewer to a world of prom night magic.

Prom photography can still be a profitable venture for professional photographers willing to adapt and innovate. By combining the power of NowCandid's Party Pics Now program with smart strategies and a touch of creativity, you can turn prom night into a lucrative opportunity that'll have you dancing all the way to the bank. And hey, who knows? You might even get a chance to bust a move on the dance floor while you're at it – just remember to keep your camera handy, because you never know when that perfect shot will present itself. Happy shooting!

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Big News: Introducing Client Outreach 🚀📣
Feature Updates
April 3, 2026

Big News: Introducing Client Outreach 🚀📣

6
 minutes read
Hey photo friends! 👋

This is a big one.

We’re excited to introduce Client Outreach — a brand-new tool that lets you reach your customers directly with one-off texts and emails, completely separate from your normal event marketing.

Whether you’re following up after an event, promoting future bookings, or nudging people who missed check-in… this gives you a simple, flexible way to stay connected.

Let’s break it down 👇

📣 What is Client Outreach?

Client Outreach lets you:

📩 Send one-off emails and texts

👥 Build contact lists from:

  • Existing events
  • Uploaded spreadsheets
  • Or both combined

🎯 Filter contacts based on:

  • Contacts with matched images
  • Contacts without matched images
  • Or everyone

This is not automated campaign messaging — it’s intentional, targeted outreach when you need it.

👥 Build Your Audience, Your Way

When creating an outreach list, you’ve got flexibility:

  • Pull contacts from one event, multiple events, or none
  • Upload your own spreadsheet of contacts
  • Combine both sources into one list

And when using events, you can choose:

  • Only people with images
  • Only people without images
  • Or everyone

That opens the door to some really useful workflows (more on that below 👀).

💬 SMS Outreach (Simple & Familiar)

Sending texts is designed to feel easy and familiar.

🧾 Uses a QuicPics-style editor + preview

✍️ Write your message and send to your list

🔗 Include links (galleries, check-in, etc.)

💸 Pricing:

$0.01 per segment, per text

A segment is roughly:

  • ~140 characters (standard text)
  • ~65 characters (if using emojis)

Longer messages may use multiple segments (typically 2–4).

📧 Email Outreach (Powered by Candy 🤖)

This is where things get really fun.

Instead of building emails manually…

👉 You just describe what you want, and Candy builds the email for you.

✨ How it works:

Tell Candy things like:

  • What the email should say
  • What tone you want (fun, professional, urgent, etc.)
  • What your call-to-action button should say
  • Where that button should link

Candy will:

✍️ Write the email

🎨 Design the layout

🧠 Generate a subject line

🏷️ Pull in your business info automatically

No HTML. No formatting headaches. Just describe it.

🧠 Even Smarter with Events

Every outreach must be tied to an event (for billing/history), but that unlocks some extra power:

If your outreach is related to that event, Candy can pull in things like:

🔗 Check-in links

🖼️ Cover photos

🖼️ Gallery links

And more!

👉 You can still override this and use your own URLs — Candy will follow your instructions.

📬 Sending Details

Emails are sent from:
your-business-name@quic.pics

Your business name is prominently shown in the inbox

You can edit the subject line Candy generates before sending

💸 Email Pricing

$0.01 per 10 emails (rounded up)

Examples:

  • 10 emails = $0.01
  • 11–19 emails = $0.02

🖼️ Bonus Tip: Include Images in Emails

If you have direct image URLs, you can give them to Candy and ask her to include them in the email.

Not sure how to get those? Google is your friend on this one 😄

📊 Track Performance

Just like order receipts, you can see:

👀 Opens

🖱️ Clicks

❌ Bounces

So you know what’s working.

💡 Real-World Use Cases

Here are just a few ideas:

📸 Catch Missed Check-Ins

Send a Selfie Check-In link after an event using a roster from a school or organizer.

📅 Promote Future Events

Reach past customers and say:
“Hey, we’re photographing again next week!”

🏈 Action Sports Galleries

Send All Images Gallery links when using Jersey Jotter (where face matching isn’t ideal).

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 New Group Photos Added

Let people know:
“Your group photos are now live!”

📝 Post-Event Surveys

Send feedback forms to improve your next event.

🔔 Picture Day Reminders

Get ahead of the event with reminders to increase participation.

And that’s just scratching the surface.

🎯 Simple, Flexible, Powerful

Client Outreach is designed to be:

✅ Easy to use

🎯 Highly targeted

🔄 Flexible for different workflows

💸 Cost-effective

You’re in control of when, who, and what you send.

This is one of those tools that grows with you — whether you’re running small events or large-scale operations.

We can’t wait to see how you use it! 👀

More soon,

Candy 🍬

Weekly Recap: Client Outreach, Better Renders & Faster Tools 🍬📣
Feature Updates
April 3, 2026

Weekly Recap: Client Outreach, Better Renders & Faster Tools 🍬📣

5
 minutes read
Hey photo friends! 👋

This week’s headline is a big one: Client Outreach is here. It’s a powerful new way to connect with your customers outside of event-based marketing—and it opens up a ton of new possibilities for growing your business.

We’ll keep this recap focused on what it does at a high level, and we’ll link out to a full deep-dive guide so you can see exactly how to use it.

📣 NEW: Client Outreach (SMS + Email)

Client Outreach is a brand-new messaging system that lets you send texts and emails outside of your event campaigns.

👉 Learn more here: www.nowcandid.com/blogs/big-news-introducing-client-outreach-sms-email

What it can do:

📩 Send one-off emails and texts to past customers

📊 Track engagement (opens, clicks, bounces, etc.)

📂 Build contact lists from:

  • Events (with or without matched images)
  • Uploaded spreadsheets
  • Or both combined

🤖 Candy-powered email creation

  • Candy can write and design your outreach emails for you—including subject lines—so you don’t have to mess with formatting or HTML.

Why it matters:

This unlocks a ton of real-world use cases, like:

  • Sending Selfie Check-In links after an event
  • Promoting future bookings to past customers
  • Sharing All Images Galleries for action/sports events
  • Notifying customers about new uploads (like group photos)
  • Sending surveys or follow-ups

💸 Pricing is simple:

  • $0.01 per 10 emails
  • $0.01 per SMS (per segment, and longer texts may be 2–4 segments)

This is one of the most powerful tools we’ve added in a while!

🛍️ Retail: Better Products & Previews

✨ The following products will now always have the SoftTouch finish

  • Premium Prints
  • Premium Plaques
  • Luxe Prints
  • Titled Luxe Prints (coming soon)

🖼️ Improved 2D & 3D renders (especially Luxe)

  • More accurate lighting and better overall presentation.

🎯 3D renders prioritized in store sheet

  • The first three supported products now show as 3D when available.
  • Premium products take priority, but Luxe can now appear too depending on your offer.

Faster, higher-quality background generation

  • Better results, quicker turnaround.

📝 Caption fields no longer require every line

  • Customers can fill what you want, skip what they don’t.

🖥️ Dashboard Improvements

🔎 Smarter search across events & reports

  • Partial matches now work helping you search your events when you can't remember their exact names.
  • E.g. “mustang prom” will let you find “Mustang High School Prom 2025”.

Faster reports & charts

  • Reports pages and dashboard landing load quicker and use fewer resources.

🎨 New “Green Screen” node in Candy Image Studio

  • Instantly convert backgrounds into a green screen for use with your other editing workflows.

🧾 More flexible Offer creation

  • You can now duplicate any existing Price Level when creating an Offer, not just your own or prebuilt ones.

💳 Accounts must now have ACH set up before creating events

  • This has been a point of confusion for some users for some time.
  • By simply requiring ACH info, we can avoid a lot of accounting confusion for photographers down the line!

💰 New “Payout Breakdown” on Order Details

  • Visual, color-coded breakdown of order totals for better clarity.

📱 Capture App 5.4.2 (iOS & Android)

🛠️ Fixed an issue where the background removal popup would reappear after confirming and exiting shooting mode.

That’s the week!

Client Outreach is the star of the show here—it gives you a whole new way to stay connected with your customers beyond the event itself.

Pair that with better product presentation and faster tools, and you’ve got a strong upgrade across the board.

More coming soon! 👀

Candy 🍬

Weekly Recap: Smarter Upload Errors, Better Luxe Renders & Invoice Fixes 🍬✨
Feature Updates
March 27, 2026

Weekly Recap: Smarter Upload Errors, Better Luxe Renders & Invoice Fixes 🍬✨

2
 minutes read
Hey photo friends! 👋

This week’s updates are all about clearer feedback, smoother retail rendering, and a few helpful fixes across the Dashboard, Check-In, and Capture App.

🖼️ Retail: Better Luxe 3D Renders

A few important improvements landed for Luxe products on retail:

Luxe Prints 3D renders now work correctly for horizontal images

💡 Luxe render lighting improved so products look more natural and less over-bright

📱 Mobile cropping on 3D renders is much more stable and performant

  • Fixed an issue where gesture-based cropping could crash on mobile devices

If you’re selling Luxe products, this should make the preview experience feel more polished.

📤 Dashboard: Clearer Image Upload Errors

The Image Uploader now does a better job explaining what actually went wrong:

🚫 Oversized files now show the real reason

  • Instead of a vague “Error uploading,” files over the limit will correctly say the image is too large

📏 File size is now included in the error message

  • Example: File size is over 20 MB (25.3 MB)

🌐 Network issues now say “Network Error”

  • Much clearer than a generic upload failure

🔁 Automatic retry for network errors

  • The uploader will now retry up to 5 times before giving up

A small change, but a much better experience when uploads hit a snag.

🧾 Dashboard Fixes & Improvements

📄 Profile invoices fixed

  • Invoices from January onward should now load correctly
  • Invoices are also now easier to find through Sidebar Find and Candy navigation

👥 PhotoRosters wording updated

  • “Members” is now “Contacts” for better consistency across NowCandid

📊 Participant image counts fixed on the Event Participant List for certain Positive ID edge cases

🎨 Fixed an overlay importer edge case that could make Events appear twice in the list

🤳 Check-In Improvements

📋 Fixed the list of existing check-ins going off-screen for accounts with a lot of check-ins

✍️ Some check-in copy was updated for clarity

📱 Capture App 5.4.1 (iOS OTA)

🔒 Fixed PhotoBooth and Selfie Check-In Station close buttons not working on devices without a passcode set up

That’s the update for this week! Better Luxe previews, clearer upload feedback, and a handful of fixes to keep things running smoothly.

Keep creating magic,

Candy 🍬

Let’s get in touch

If you’re a photographer looking to add NowCandid services to your wheelhouse – set up a call by clicking the button below.

How to customize formatting for each rich text

How to customize formatting for each rich text

How to customize formatting for each rich text

How to customize formatting for each rich text

How to customize formatting for each rich text
How to customize formatting for each rich text

What’s a Rich Text element?

The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

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