🥽 Invisibly Safe

Now is NOT the time to play it safe in your wedding business.
Most photographers aren’t failing or struggling to book because their work isn’t good. They are failing because it’s careful. It’s SAFE.

The baseline of competence in our industry has never been higher. And everyone is doing everything RIGHT. Good photos, good website, good socials, good email.

But safe equals invisible.

So this is your reminder… if you want to hit 2026 in top form, stop playing it safe and doing what everyone else is doing. Try some things!

So here’s a few ideas/bold advice:

Images: cinziabruschini

Enquiry replies
Everyone sends the same boring enquiry responses!! YOU WILL BE INVISIBLE if this is you. So change it up. And please don’t use Chat GPT. It’s trained off everything else out there… Write like YOU.
- please save your money and don’t buy someones email templates!
- and worse, please don’t fake enquire and steal someone else’s email…

Editing Tones
Don’t be scared to try something new in your editing this editing season. YES we know you want to get through it, but you are also posting now to book for next year… SO try something. We’ve been eyeing Bottega 53’s latest editing moves, getting warmer and boldly colourful - embracing the way the light naturally is rather than fighting it.

Compositions while culling
Keep an eye out while you are culling this editing season for compositions and frames you might normally pass over and see which feel GOOD! Include them in your selects and see if you can make them work.

Socials
Post how it feels, not what it looked like.
Everyone’s playing it safe with perfectly curated grids and polished carousels. We KNOW you’ve got other gold sitting in your folders:

The frames that feel real. Post those.

Loved this single image from Daniel Kim this week - proof that one honest frame can hit harder than ten perfect ones. All of Daniel Kim’s work is a very good example of this actually…

UN-MISSABLE

❗️Workshops

image behind by annaroussos

Join Lensel PRO and get the best monthly workshops

Next Workshop:
JOSE VILLA - “Editing Iconic Images”
Wednesday 5th November 6.30PM CET / 12.30PM ET / 9.30AM PT
Replay available to view next day

FAQ’s

YES, workshops are live and online meaning you can be there to interact and ask questions!
YES, replays of all workshops are available the next day if you can’t make it live.
NO, workshops are not available as a one off purchases. Only as a part of the annual Lensel PRO membership.
YES, people can join from all over the world.
YES, much more is included in the PRO membership including full newsletter access and our exclusive community hub.

Past Workshops available to view now:

Danilo and Sharon - “Editorial Posing”, Anni Graham - “Cohesive Colour Stories”, Greg Finck - “Luxury Service”, Daniel Knight Harris - “Mastering Film for 2026”, Joel & Justyna - “Composing Memories”, KOKO King - “Manipulating Light”, Lost in Love - “Solo to Studio”, Benjamin Wheeler, Daniel Kim.

JOIN LENSEL PRO TO ACCESS MONTHLY WORKSHOPS

NEWS

The News this Week

Luxury Leica. This week Leica announced a new range of branded leather goods. From film roll holders to wallets. It’s VERY nice, and VERY Leica.
Your Contax G2 just got more expensive. An image of Sabrina Carpenter using a Contax G2 is doing the internet rounds today. And so while G2’s were already expensive, will this will make the spike even more?
New Film Camera Offerings. 2025 has been the year of NEW film cameras. From Lomography, to Pentax, to Analogue, there are many new options. This video is the perfect quick look at each.
Capture One. In a week of updates, photo editing software, Capture One also announced new Combined Masking, Retouching and Contact Sheets. See all that’s new here.
A Corporate Wedding? This groom sold ad spots on his suit and 26 companies actually decided to buy them.
Sony Updates. A big firmware update is now available for Sony A9iii and A1ii cameras. Promising even better autofocus.
The Ultimate Small Flash. 2025 has also been the small flash year. But this one might just be the best of the bunch.
Marcijus combines photography and AI imagination. This is far from AI slop. It’s using AI to dream up unique, inspired by the real world weddings scenes. And you need to see it.

WORKFLOW

💡 Lightroom’s New New

Images: couplet.photo and efegepho

3 BIG Updates in Lightroom for Wedding Photographers.

First, a new bold version of the Lightroom logo. Not so exciting you say? Can’t even notice the difference? Us too.

Well, let’s quickly get into the good stuff.

All announced this week at Adobe Max. And ready for you to update, install and try out right now!

1️⃣ Ai Assisted Culling
A big bold move, we like it! With many Ai workflow companies paving the way, it’s interesting to see Lightroom now integrating some of the ideas to help select your photos. For now, in Lightroom, the options are BASIC. But may help speed you up in your family photos sections with options like: Eyes Open and Eyes Focus

New Assisted Culling in Lightroom

2️⃣ Variance Slider: A skin tone game changer.
The variance slider inside the colour mixer has been available inside Photoshop for a few months now, but now it’s in Lightroom too.

The Variance Slider helps to even out contrast on a particular colour. For wedding photographers this is going to be perfect for micro skin tone adjustments. Mask out the skin, play around with the varience and even out the skin tone! See a full tutorial about how to use it here.

Images behind: kindredweddings and alex.prov

3️⃣ Generative Remove Improvements
Generative remove has been AMAZING for helping us clean up our photos right? BUT it means we’ve been spending longer than ever selecting objects we want to remove.

But hopefully that might start to change…

With this update, when you select an object, you can just roughly highlight it and Lightroom will detect the object and adjust your selection. It will even find and reflections or shadows associated with that object. (like below)

Go update that Lightroom and try it out!

FULL WEDDING FEATURE

🎞️ Instinct, Film and a Little Chaos: Inside Jes Workman’s Career Defining Wedding

Full Wedding Featured from photographer Jes Workman

Flights cancelled. Timelines wrecked. Film rolls flying. OH and did we mention, the most incredible dress, styling and crowd??

This wedding from photographer Jes Workman had it all: chaos, creativity, and a career-defining breakthrough.
This one’s a must-read.

The wedding featured from the photographer’s POV.

READ IT HERE

INSPO THIS WEEK

WHEW this newsletter is LONG. So here’s just one inspo highlights for the week.

⬇️ Go be inspired by this incredible studio session for WED STUDIO’s latest bridal collection. The angles, mood, and model direction are just so good.