ShootCal: Scheduling, Studio Management & Galleries for Photographers
Plan every shoot around the perfect light.
ShootCal is the scheduling, studio management and photo galleries app built for photographers. It’s designed to help you from the first contact with a client to the delivery of the final pictures. The app features automatic golden-hour scheduling, online booking, client management, contracts, deposit tracking, and a public availability calendar. Use the native apps on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch, or the full web app on Android, Windows, and any modern browser. When the shoot is done, deliver it with ShootCal Galleries: elegant, on-brand client galleries with full-resolution downloads today and an integrated WHCC print store launching soon.
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Everything a working photographer needs in a calendar
Scheduling, deposits, clients, and the sun in one calendar, so the tedious parts handle themselves and you get back behind the camera.
Scheduling around the light
Golden hour, automatic
Set your city once and ShootCal calculates sunrise and sunset for any date, automatically timing your session starts around golden hour. Every calendar cell shows that day’s sunrise and sunset times at a glance. Fine-tune the defaults with your own session types to automatically schedule sessions.
Build your own session types
Create tailored presets for the work you do (e.g., Family, Weddings, Engagements, Real Estate, Mini Shoots) with default durations and all-day settings to make booking lightning fast. Choose to time certain session types to before sunset, at sunrise, all day for weddings, custom real estate shoot times, 30-minute mini shoots, and much more.
Type a session in plain English
Type a line like “June 30th Family pictures for the Smiths at sunset [email protected]” and it fills in the date, time, client, and email, schedules an hour before sunset, and sends the invite, all from one line of text. On iPhone, iPad, and Mac the parsing runs on-device.
Two-way Google Calendar sync
Create, edit, and delete events directly from the app, with two-way background sync so your changes update automatically. Add a client’s email and they get an automatic invitation, with a visual indication when it’s accepted. You are never locked into ShootCal, because everything is synced with your Google Calendar.
Weather and tides
Show weather, tides, and wind right inside your calendar. Every day shows the details a photographer needs to plan a shoot.
Online booking & availability
A booking page that fits right into your website
Share your booking page or embed it right on your own site. Clients pick a session, see real openings (a golden-hour type suggests times that end at sunset, with the day’s sunset shown), and send their request. Cover photos, prices, and durations come straight from your session types, and the whole page stays clean black-and-white so it blends with your brand, not ours.
Requests land in the ShootCal app on your phone, iPad, or Mac. Accept and it’s booked on your Google Calendar with the client saved. Prefer hands-off? Turn on instant booking per session type.
You can also show your open days publicly: a clean month grid of open, limited, and booked days for your website, with no event details ever exposed.
Studio management, built in
Your clients, deposits, contracts, reminders, and booking requests in one place, all synced to your Google account so nothing is locked in.
Import clients from your calendar New
ShootCal reads your existing Google Calendar and uses Claude AI to pull your past and upcoming clients out of your event titles, match each to the right session type (family, wedding, engagement, and more), and build your client list and booking history for you. I haven’t seen another photography app do this. You review everything before anything is added, and your calendar itself is never touched. Years of bookings, organized in a few taps.
Contracts your clients e-sign New
Create a wedding, family, or custom agreement from a built-in template, prefilled with the couple, date, venue, and package, then share the signing link. Your client reviews and e-signs from any device with a tap, you are notified the moment they do, and a signed copy is saved to your own Google Drive. (Templates are a convenience, not legal advice.) See how contracts work →
Track deposits and see your numbers
Mark sessions paid or unpaid with a single toggle, color-coding your events green (deposit received) or red (no deposit) on both the app and your Google Calendar. When Wave or QuickBooks marks an invoice paid, ShootCal flips that booking’s deposit to received for you. You also see your business at a glance: bookings this month and year, sessions by type, deposits paid versus pending, and a month-by-month trend, all built into Clients & Booking. See payments & deposits →
Deposits sync from Wave & QuickBooks
Keep invoicing in Wave or QuickBooks Online the way you already do. When a payment comes in, ShootCal matches it to the right booking and marks the deposit received on your calendar automatically. It is read-only, so it never changes anything in your accounting. See how the deposit sync works →
Remind clients automatically
ShootCal can email your client a friendly reminder before their session, sent from your own Gmail. Choose how many days ahead, and write your own message or use the built-in one. Fewer no-shows, zero manual follow-up.
Reply by email and it’s marked done
Booking requests land in your inbox. Just hit Reply to answer the client, and they get your message along with a tidy copy of what they asked for. ShootCal quietly marks the request handled: no app to open, no status to tick off, and the conversation stays in your Gmail. Prefer to work in the app? One setting flips it.
Follow-ups in your calendar
Set follow-up to-dos that show directly in your calendar, separate from events, and check them off when they’re done. For example, set a reminder to deliver a client’s gallery in two weeks right from their original session. Your to-dos are backed by Google Tasks, so they stay in sync across your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and the web.
Apple-native, private by design
Apple Watch and widgets
A watch complication shows your next event, plus a fast, streamlined watch app that lists the next 30 days. Home-screen widgets show just what a photographer needs: client names, times, location, sunset/sunrise, and tides. There’s also a Names Only complication that shows just the client names, a real help at a wedding when you are juggling the couple’s and the family’s names.
Private by design
ShootCal signs in through Google’s own secure login (OAuth), so your password never touches ShootCal, and your calendar data stays in your Google account, not on a server I control.
Free while in beta
ShootCal is currently free during beta. If pricing changes later, it will be announced before it takes effect. Your calendar data stays securely in the Google account you already use, so you are never locked into a closed calendar platform.
Plus a 100% native Swift app, with iCloud settings sync across all your Apple devices. See ShootCal in action →
Made for Apple: Mac, iPhone, iPad & Apple Watch
The web app has the full ShootCal toolkit (calendar, clients, online booking, contracts, and deposits), so you can work from any computer or phone. The Apple apps add the extras only a native app can: home-screen widgets, an Apple Watch app, and sunrise, sunset, tides & weather built into every day.
Client galleries New
Deliver photos your clients will love to download.
ShootCal Galleries gives you elegant client galleries under your own brand: your logo, even your own domain (clients.yourstudio.com). Clients get full-resolution downloads, online proofing with favorites they can send back in one tap, and a gallery that opens like a website, not a folder. No client accounts or sign-ins required. A built-in print store is launching soon: prints, canvas, metal, acrylic, and framed wall art from a pro lab, paid straight into your own Stripe account with 0% commission on paid plans.
Publish straight from Lightroom Classic with the ShootCal plugin: your collections become galleries, re-edits re-publish in place, and uploads go directly to cloud storage. Start free with 50 GB during beta (20 GB after), then 100 GB for $12/mo or 1,000 GB for $25/mo, billed month-to-month with no annual contract.
The story: why I built ShootCal
I’ve been a professional photographer for 20 years, and scheduling around Myrtle Beach was the least fun part of the job: looking up the sunset for every date, doing the golden-hour math, and tracking who had paid a deposit. I didn’t want to pay for an expensive monthly CRM, so I built ShootCal to automate those exact tasks, then shared it so other photographers could take their time back too.
– Ryan Smith, Ryan Smith Photography
Photographers, share your experience
Using ShootCal in your business? Tell me how it’s working for you and I’ll feature your review right here on the site.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. ShootCal is free while it is in beta. If pricing changes later, it will be announced before it takes effect. Your calendar remains in your Google account, so you are never locked into a closed calendar platform.
Set your city once and ShootCal calculates sunset and sunrise times for any date, automatically setting your session start times based on sunset or sunrise. Every default time is fully customizable with your own session types.
Yes. You create, edit, and delete events directly in the app, and two-way background sync ensures your changes update automatically.
Yes. Open the web app in Chrome or Edge and click Install in the address bar. ShootCal then runs in its own window like a native app, with a Start-menu and taskbar icon, session reminder notifications, and no browser tabs. Everything stays in sync with your Google Calendar, same as on any device.
Yes. Turn on online booking and your availability calendar becomes a request form. A client picks an open day (and a time slot, if you offer them), sends their details, and the request lands in your ShootCal inbox. You review it and accept to add it to your calendar, or decline with a quick reply. Nothing is booked automatically unless you turn on instant booking for a session type; otherwise every request waits for you to accept.
Yes. Toggle any session as deposit received and it color-codes green on both ShootCal and your Google Calendar (red when nothing is in yet), so your paid and unpaid bookings are clear at a glance. You can also connect Wave or QuickBooks Online so a paid invoice marks the deposit received automatically, right on the booking.
No. The public availability calendar on your website shows only which days are open, limited, or fully booked. Event titles, locations, and details are never exposed.
Yes. ShootCal Galleries delivers your finished photos in elegant, on-brand client galleries: full-resolution downloads, online proofing with favorites, a Lightroom publish plugin, and your own custom domain on paid plans. A built-in print store is launching soon, with prints, canvas, metal, acrylic, and framed wall art from a pro lab, paid straight into your own Stripe account with 0% commission on paid plans. It’s included free with 20 GB (50 GB during beta). Explore ShootCal Galleries →
Start planning around the light
Free while in beta. Your calendar stays yours.
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