How Jonathan Schuessler sells luxury wedding photography with video, SEO, and smart systems

Gary Pageau of The Dead Pixels Society interviews Jonathan Schuessler, a Heidelberg-based marketing expert, photographer, and filmmaker, about building a hybrid wedding photo/video business and a separate B2B marketing offering. Schuessler traces his start from building a DIY photo booth for his father’s weddings to shooting weddings in London and Germany, then pivoting hard after COVID to learn videography and agency marketing. He explains choosing hybrid coverage to future-proof his work, focusing on storytelling and audio, and describes technical challenges of solo shooting—especially redundant speech recording, timecode syncing, and using a Sony XLR hot-shoe setup for four-channel audio. His marketing strategy centers on filming short venue feature videos, repurposing them across YouTube, TikTok, and SEO blogs, building newsletters and programmatic local landing pages, and automating inquiry-to-brochure funnels, supported by AI-assisted culling/editing and select video AI tools.

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Transcript

Sponsors And Show Welcome

Erin Manning 0:00

The Dead Pixels Society Podcast is brought to you Mediaclip, Advertek Printing, and Independent Photo Imagers. Welcome to the Dead Pixels Society Podcast, the photoimaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pageau.

Gary Pageau 0:19

Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society Podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau, and today we're talking with Jonathan Schuessler, a marketing expert, photographer, and filmmaker from Heidelberg, Germany. Hi, Jonathan. How are you today?

Jonathan Schuessler 0:33

Hey, thank you for having me. I'm pretty good. Weather has just turned nice. Looking forward to this.

Gary Pageau 0:39

So you've got a broad range of experiences. We're going to talk about filmmaking. We're going to talk about marketing. We're talking about a lot of things. But to first tell us a little bit about your business and how you got into photography, even to start with.

Jonathan Schuessler 0:52

Yeah, so I the first touch I had with photography was my dad was he he was like a high amateur wedding photographer when I grew up. So he would do like one to ten weddings each year. And when I turned like 16, probably, he came to me with this new idea at the time. He's like, I heard of photo booths. I seen some Australians building some. You know computers, right? You're a nerd. Can you help me build one? So 12 years ago, before iPads had the capability of doing that, we built this massive photo booth, screens on each side, people could take pictures of themselves, have them printed, but also there was like a slideshow in the back. And then I did that on his weddings, like for two, three years, whilst I was still in school. And then when I moved to London to do a gap year, I got a camera and I started taking some portraits of some friends, maybe a girl that I liked. And then somehow got my first wedding job that year in London. Kept doing some wedding stuff, and in 2019, had loads of shootings when I was back in Germany again, studying at the time, and I thought, I'm not really seeing myself going into what I what I studied, which was maths and sports. Maybe I should try to go further in this photography thing. So went to a workshop where which was very expensive, and I thought people that pay this amount of money, they take it seriously. These are the people I want to talk to. Right. Flew out to Mallorca, had 34 weddings planned that year. 24 was a second shooter, 10 of my own. Then COVID hit, and I had loads of time. So I spent all that time learning at the time videography, and also started to work in an agency. So started learning the marketing, started learning how to do video, and really, on one hand, build up my wedding business where I'm now like an entry-level luxury wedding photography and filmmaker, usually hybrid on the day, just myself. And I'll have a small team of three this summer helping me get through all that huge amount of editing. And on the other hand, I'm help helping mainly service-based businesses with strategic marketing, SEO, and testimonial videos. So yeah.

Gary Pageau 3:34

So you really didn't come into photography with a burning desire to be a, as you said, entry-level luxury photographer, right? No. But you kind of reached that. So what was the marketing decisions you made to say this is the market I want to approach? What was your your business decision on that?

Jonathan Schuessler 3:56

That when I started taking it more seriously, on the time I was at Nikon, so I had Z6, Z7, first mirrorless cameras for Nikon. I saw they could potentially be really, really good at filming as well as photography. So I spun it myself. But I thought, well, if SSDs, or not anymore, but if they get cheaper, right? Cameras get better, and they will be able to do 8k60 raw, and there will probably be some sort of automatic culling device. At the time, AI was like in my maths bubble. IT guys were already talking about AI stuff. So I thought maybe at some point weddings would just be filmed, and then you would have the AI take like stills from the video. Right. Because 8k, 16k, whatever, right, is definitely good enough for consumer photography.

Gary Pageau 5:17

Right.

Jonathan Schuessler 5:18

So I thought, okay, video will be taking over the most amount of photography. So I thought, okay, I want to do photo and video at the same time because my camera can do it. I need to put in the work to get on the same level that my camera is. Right. Sony released their A7 IV, I switched over, the camera was already a lot better again than I was. And at this point, after six years of trying to do photo and video hybrid, I finally reached the point where I would say I can bring the camera to its maximum wedding days. Now a75 is out. I haven't used it on a wedding day yet. We'll do this here. And that just kept on leading me into this. Like because I'm so specialized, I I don't have any other people that really do the same thing.

Gary Pageau 6:15

So what's your decision and to shoot video first? What was compelling to you about shooting video? Was it just the fact you'd have so much more content to choose from in order to get it to get that perfect picture?

Jonathan Schuessler 6:30

I thought I want if I want to do this as a business, I want it to be some sort of future-proof. Right. And I always have been intrigued with audio. I was pretty bad at doing audio at first, definitely. Both my brother and sister amazing singers, and my brother is a DJ in singer now. And my sister won like some junior competition in singing for Germany.

Gary Pageau 6:57

Yeah.

Audio Backups And Timecode Workflow

Jonathan Schuessler 6:57

And then also I really loved storytelling. I've been reading books as a kid. Yeah. You couldn't catch me before 3 a.m. closing my book, right? Yeah. I really wanted to include that in my work as a photographer, and the way to do that is video. So and I want to give the best client experience.

Gary Pageau 7:16

So talk a little bit about the challenges in managing those kind of events, the luxury markets, the de I assume there's some destination things. I know you've shot some uh events overseas, for example, as a solo shooter. What are some of the things you've had to cope with as someone who does that?

Jonathan Schuessler 7:38

Yeah, so my first the the biggest problem definitely is audio because you can if you're thinking hybrid, you think I have to take stills at this point at least. I have to take stills, I have to make clips, and I have to record audio. Right. The biggest struggles are well with audio, you need backs up backups on backups on backups because you can't control them in the moment when you're behind the camera, unless you have an extra audio person. But if you're a hybrid person, you need backups on backups. So I'll have like a recorder recording the mic, then I have some problems. Sometimes the tech is bad and it's just like over like overexposing, pretty much. Yeah. Or you have some interference with some phones or something. So I'll have like a backup on the mic. But then you will always have some father of the bride that thinks he's a loud speaker, and he's like, Oh, I don't need the mic, right? Puts the mic on the ground. So the mic's on the ground, and right for if the couple does that, I have the groom also with a backup on him that's invisible. But if it's not the groom, but it's it like father of the bride could be extremely important to the video, right? And not only the video, if I sell the send them like the speeches, and maybe their dad dies like the next year, they want that speech, right? And I'm the one that didn't perform, right? So I really needed to have an option to record on my camera. And the problem that I had until this year was I wanted to work with time code, which is very specific, and most wedding filmmakers don't use it, but it makes it so much easier if you're switching between photo and video on the same camera to synchronize afterwards, right? So I want my editor to just have it in a timeline already set up. I don't want her to sit there for a full day just moving clips around because the auto audio sync doesn't work. So I want time code, but at the same time, I do want if this happens, and it does happen nearly every wedding, this specific thing happens. I need to have a shotgun mic on my camera. So I just found the nerdiest tech in Sony, Germany, and he told me there's this like XLR grip that slots into the hot shoe of the Sony, and you can then turn the Sony to be four-channel audio, which is something that I've never heard before. No one told me this. Right.

Gary Pageau 10:36

I've never heard that that's a consented Sony, it's a very specific mount, right?

Jonathan Schuessler 10:43

It's just the Sony thing, and so I now have an XLR shotgun mic at the same time, two lanes being time code, yeah, and that's been amazing. Okay, but yeah, it's and you're doing all this yourself.

Gary Pageau 10:59

I mean, now I understand why you want to retire at four, because it sounds very stressful.

Jonathan Schuessler 11:05

Yeah, it is, and I see why most people do it. Some most people in the luxury market they do video as two or three people.

Gary Pageau 11:15

Oh, certainly, absolutely, plus the drone guy and the yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you do drones as well?

Building Style Around The Client

Jonathan Schuessler 11:20

Yeah, I do, but not for ceremony and stuff. Yeah, I would love to have it out, but it's just too much. Yeah, yeah. When it comes to like dinner, I'll fly it once before the day like really starts. I'll fly it once, yeah, just to have some like cutoff shots. Yeah, b b-roll and whatnot. Yeah, but like not b-roll in the natural, like just like having it like split up, right? But going from one scene to another, you're just so used from film and TV that you'll like zoom out and then slowly like have like a wide shot, have a detail, and then start being after already hearing the audio, right while going in there.

Gary Pageau 12:02

I think it's interesting how the visual language of video expectations are changing. I remember when people were pretty satisfied with a wedding storytelling event, whether it's video or photo, that were you know, very traditional, right? They just want to capture the moment, document that it happened, and now you have you know TV-driven expectations where the bride and the groom are going to do certain things that they either saw on TV or they want to reenact. There's gonna be video things they want to do. It's almost like, you know, I don't know if I call reality TV art, but it's art influencing life, if you will. Yeah, 100%. So when you're communicating with clients on this, I'm curious how that discussion happens. They're like, Well, we saw this on this thing. Can you do that? Is that what you get?

Jonathan Schuessler 12:59

Sixty days before the event, they'll get a questionnaire. What TV shows do you watch? What art do you do you go to any museums? What music do you listen to? I want to understand. And that's obviously something that you can't do if you're charging a thousand euros for a wedding, right? But I want to at least sit down the week before the wedding and be like, okay, is there anything that I can incorporate in this? And then also I'll ask them, Do you have a mood board? Brides to be, they'll have some sort of mood board that they made of how they want their wedding to look, what pictures they want. And I want to understand their visual language, but at least I knew what like what I can look for if I have to choose in a moment.

Gary Pageau 13:51

So that's a very marketing-driven approach, right? Where you're not trying to impose your style, which is kind of like old school for treature, right? They hired X person because that person was going to be doing it in a certain way. I'm thinking like the old school Dennis Reggie or somebody like that, where it was like you you hired the photographer for that style, whereas you're doing more of a customer-driven approach.

Jonathan Schuessler 14:20

Yeah, I always work the way that I would have worked in the agency, right? I wanted to try out what their hidden CI is. Because most companies that I work with were like local companies that didn't have like a big marketing division that sent me the CI. I needed to figure out, hey, what is this company about? And why does the CI that I am doing match that right? So I'm gonna I'm doing that both in marketing and in Weddings. So, what do you mean by CI for those who don't know? Corporate identity is usually certain words and colors and styles that have you need to have like a language that speaks through all of the stuff that you're doing. Not all your marketing has to look exactly the same, but it has to make sense that it's part of your marketing.

Gary Pageau 15:19

Right.

Jonathan Schuessler 15:20

Every company has this. This is from fashion brands. I've shot the German president last year, they all have a certain style where, like the president, he had a rule that camera had to be above his chin level. Right. That's something that I got beforehand, yeah, and that's what I had to do, right?

Gary Pageau 15:44

Now now, for those who may not know, I I know why you did that, but can you say why you why you did that?

Venue Videos That Drive SEO

Jonathan Schuessler 15:50

Oh, yeah, he's a bit older, and he his neck is not as crisp as it might used to be. Exactly. Yeah. So no, that was actually like a request I got from his PR person.

Gary Pageau 16:04

So let's talk a little bit about how you market. What is your marketing approach? How are you using video and other things, and how has your success been with that?

Jonathan Schuessler 16:37

Yeah. So I have always been of the idea that I want to approach marketing in a way that everything I do now is a small step towards something bigger. I don't want anything that is turn and burn, right? I want to build platforms that help my users because I always think it's never about me, it's never about my art, it's always about the person that wants to hire me for whatever reason. Right. I need to talk about how I can help people, and that's been very basic, right? Everyone in marketing probably has read Donald Miller, but so what I did for my wedding business is very multi-layered. So I have this series of luxury wedding venues. So I started when I started, I was like this low photography, right? So I started doing like mid-level wedding venues. I would ask them, hey, can I show up? Can I show the place for couples that would like to get married here, right? And most of them didn't reply. Now everyone replies, but that's because I didn't have anything to back it up. But what I do is I show the place because most of those places they have like four or five photos of specific rooms on their website, and then they'll have some like couple photos that photographers then send them on their Instagram. But no one really shows how the room feels, how it looks, what the light is like, if you can have your grandma come up to the room or if there's stairs that might stop her from getting there. Right. I'll just have short videos of usually about two minutes that I can cut down into three TikToks of 40 seconds, and then I'll have a blog that's incorporating the YouTube video and also the same in text form. And then I'll place these on all accounts. I have like the full video on YouTube and then snippets on all other platforms. So I'm showing off now like 40-50 luxury wedding venues around southwestern Germany and some overseas, but mostly here, because I wanted to make my business family friendly, so I thought I need to be the big fish in the small pond.

Gary Pageau 19:10

Right.

Jonathan Schuessler 19:11

But these videos they're leading to my website, but also the blogs because of the videos doing so well, the blogs perform exceptionally well for Google. So people see me before they even look for a photographer. They're just looking for the venue, which is definitely the first thing that they're looking for. Sometimes I get messages comments being like, Hey, where is my boyfriend? I want to book this wedding venue, right?

Gary Pageau 19:42

So that's an interesting point you just raised about being a partner to the venue, right? Because that's very key, I think, in today's marketing, where brides and grooms, but mostly brides, are really buying a whole experience, right? This is their big day, they're buying this whole thing. So the venue itself is sort of a another party to the event, and for you to feature that and highlight that is a great way to showcase not only your work, but showcase the venue as well.

Jonathan Schuessler 20:21

Yeah, and it's the only thing that's getting booked before me. So I have couples that now have seen my face, they've probably spent multiple like they watched multiple videos, right? And the algorithms keep feeding them my videos because once they're in, they're in. I had last year like 1.6 million females between 25 and 35 from Germany watch those videos, which is nearly 100% market share. And they they've seen these videos, right? One thing that happened from that 10% of the venues that are filmed are now on their preferred vendor list. But it's great. Like I get free inquiries now through those. Right. And some of the venues use those videos for their marketing. Like when a couple in inquires them, they send it out to them in directly. And one of the venues that does this, they get like 10,000 inquiries every year. Right. So I have this. I do have like educational comp content about planning a wedding. Right. What you need, I have like a newsletter that couples can get every month with all the to-dos that they need to do to not forget anything, and have like a stress-free wedding. And then I am really deep into SEO. So I have very specific programmatic SEO landing pages for all sorts of different towns, all sorts of different keywords. So I show up for a lot of things. And as soon as people see this, they've already seen my videos, they've already seen me, and they haven't seen anyone else that they see in their search results page. Right. So they're more likely to click on me, and then they're more likely to inquire me. And then I have a very Automated email funnel after. So if they inquire me and I'm still available today, they get my brochure within 10 minutes. And they can also, as soon as they inquire me, they can automatically take a call through something same as this podcast that you set up, like a county link. So usually I talk to them within 48 hours. Now it's a bit longer, but I talk to them in the same week. They've already had my brochure. They've seen full gallery. They have something that if they inquired me late in the day on work, which is very common, most brides inquire me around like 3 p.m. They have something where they're like, okay, we have this call tomorrow, and they have something to show their boyfriend to like show them, hey, this is the guy that I want us to book. And if he's smart, he says yes.

Gary Pageau 23:20

Yeah.

Jonathan Schuessler 23:22

If otherwise they would be like, Oh, I haven't seen anything. But with the brochure, it's so much easier.

Gary Pageau 23:28

So do you ever do is all your marketing digital, or do you do bridal expos and that sort of thing?

AI Editing And Faster Delivery

Jonathan Schuessler 23:35

And I did it two, three times. The first time it worked out quite well. Second and third, not too much. It's mainly digital. Uh, but since I'm on the preferred vendor list of some some venues that feels more analog, and some of those venues they have like test dinners with all their couples. Uh, it's usually in like October, November. Right. I sometimes attend those, but it's also not too yeah. Most couples want it to be easy from home digital.

Gary Pageau 24:10

Now you say you employ an editor to manage the video editing piece. You're not doing that. Are you looking towards any like AI tools or anything like that that might help with that?

Jonathan Schuessler 24:20

I've been using First Imagine now after shoot for the past three years, I think, for photo editing. Uh so the wedding that I just shot this morning, I had it call my wedding, and then I set and re-colled it. So basically I'm setting it to uh something like 20%, usually gives me 25, and then I take half of those pictures out. Some have to retake, but it's easy. I can just sit down, take an Xbox controller, scroll through them, have the wedding called within like one to three hours. Right. And then I have it pre-edited with the AI, put some like conversion on there, and I'll send it out to the editor. So I've already done the culling, and it's already got look that I decided what the colors should look like for the day.

Gary Pageau 25:16

Sort of a first draft sort of thing.

Jonathan Schuessler 25:18

So and I can also do like the preview. So usually I take around four hours on the Monday after the wedding, and it's done to like 40-50%. Right. He's he's doing the next 40%, he's sending me over the rest. Usually everything's fine. I'll just put some highlights, upload them to the gallery, and then send it out. So I'm really looking to deliver this year even faster, maybe within two weeks. Okay, and then I also have a video editor, and she is gonna do one video each month. I'm barely using AI for that, for the main cutting. I use the DaVinci AI audio for to get to 95%. It's better than I could have done it myself, which is crazy to me, but there's no way I'm as good as this. Right. It's only messing up like once every minute for like five seconds or something, and I'll have to fix that in the end. Don't use it for any color grading. I I don't trust it with that. What else do I use it for? Yeah, obviously, shake reduction, right? Or stabilization is very good.

Gary Pageau 26:36

So, what are the things I've figured out when I talk to photographers and things about AI, and you know, there's sort of used to be that panic, it's gonna replace them, but really it's more of a workflow and productivity tool as opposed to a replacement for you.

Where To Find Jonathan

Jonathan Schuessler 26:52

100%. And it's not just productivity, it can like I can take so much more specific actions in photos that I wouldn't have time before because I would be so focused on fixing white balances, highlights, black points, whatever. I would have not taken out like trash bins that weren't orange beforehand, right? Right, but now because Janitor of I is so easy in Lightroom, I can just take out so much stuff that takes me like five seconds of time that I would have used for other stuff before. Right. But now my images are just way better because of it.

Gary Pageau 27:35

So, where can people go for more information about what you do and learn more about what you offer?

Jonathan Schuessler 27:44

Yeah, so I have two separate businesses basically. So if you I look for that's like my business to business site where I do most my service-based marketing, uh, and then you want to tell Shisla, so Jonathan with a T H C H S C H U E S S L E R dot com. That's like my wedding focus business. You can find me basically on all platforms, and I do most of my stuff in German, but also translation for YouTube and stuff is very good. And there I do have some English landing pages, but I need to make my homepage also to be toggled on enough in English, but that's in the near future.

Gary Pageau 28:32

Well, with all the AI productivity you're gonna have, you're gonna have time for that now.

Jonathan Schuessler 28:36

I yeah, and my wife, who I just employed for four hours a week. Yeah, she used ChatGPT, and my brochure should be in English. Nice uh within like the next hour, probably.

Gary Pageau 28:51

Jonathan, it's been great to meet you and appreciate your time and look forward to hearing more about your future success.

Jonathan Schuessler 28:58

Thank you so much for having me.

Erin Manning 29:02

Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at www.theadpixels society.com.