Shoot booking with travel-distance pricing, e-signature contract workflows, client-owned gallery portals (RLS-protected), and automated mileage logging for wedding, portrait, and commercial photographers.
Photography is a location business. You book clients in their suburb, drive 45 minutes across town for a 2-hour session, then travel back to deliver gallery proofs online. Your invoice should reflect the work: session fee + travel time + mileage. Your contract needs signatures (theirs, yours, sometimes a property owner's if shooting on location). Your gallery needs to be private — each client sees only their own images, never another client's work. You need all three locked down before a client books, and none of this should involve email chains, DocuSign subscriptions, or manually typing mileage into a spreadsheet. Velocity X is built for photographers. Distance-aware pricing, digital contract sign-off, RLS-gated gallery portals per client, and automatic mileage tracking — all in one workflow, no SaaS nickel-and-diming.
This is how independent photographers finally stop leaving money on the table.
Why Shootproof and Zenfolio Miss the Travel Business
Shootproof and Zenfolio dominate the photography world, but they're gallery + marketplace platforms — not booking systems. You're paying $10–20/month to host proofs and sell prints; neither one handles travel-aware pricing, contract workflows, or mileage tracking. If you're shooting on-location (weddings, portrait sessions, corporate events), you're doing the math outside the platform: "Client is 60km away, that's 90min drive, I'll charge $300 travel + $2000 session fee." Then you email a contract. Then you manually log mileage for tax. Then you upload proofs to Zenfolio and hope the client figures out how to view only their work without stumbling into another client's password-shared gallery. Three tools. Three vendor relationships. Three failure points.
Velocity X collapses all three into one workflow that understands photography work from the ground up.
The Architecture — Distance Pricing, Contracts, Galleries
Travel-aware booking and automatic pricing. When a client books a portrait session, they enter their location (address or suburb). Velocity X calculates driving distance from your studio (you set the origin point once). If they're under 20km, session fee is $1200. If they're 20–50km, it's $1200 + $150 travel surcharge. Over 50km, it's $1200 + $300. The pricing rule is set once; every quote auto-calculates. No mental math, no forgotten surcharges, and the client sees the total before committing. You can also offer fixed-rate travel packages (e.g. "anything in metro = flat $200 travel") or hourly mileage rates ($0.80/km) — whatever your business model is.
Digital contract workflow with e-signature. After booking, Velocity X sends the client a contract (you write it once as a template, autofill client name / date / location / total price). They read it, tick "I agree," and sign digitally via built-in e-signature (no DocuSign, no extra login). You get a timestamped signed copy; they get one in their email. Some studios also use this for property-owner consent forms if shooting on someone else's land. One contract template can branch: use "Studio Shoot" for indoor work, "Location Shoot" for outdoor, "Wedding Ceremony + Reception" for two-phase events. All signed digitally before the shoot happens, zero handshake-and-hope.
Client-owned RLS-gated gallery portal. After the shoot, you upload edited images to Velocity X. The system creates a private gallery URL (unique per client, token-gated with Supabase RLS). Only that client can view their images; they can download originals, order prints, share a sneaky preview link with family. No password fatigue, no "why can I see another photographer's work here," no sync'ing files to cloud storage and hoping the password doesn't leak. You grant view/download/order access per client on shoot publish. See Supabase Storage image uploads with RLS for the underlying security pattern.
Automatic mileage logging and tax reports. Every time you drive to a shoot (origin point to client location, round-trip), Velocity X logs the distance against that booking. At tax time, you export a report: 127 shoots, 4,320 km total, 40% deductible (ATO rules vary, but the system tracks it all). No spreadsheet, no guessing whether that 45-minute drive was 32km or 38km. Every booking has mileage attached.
Why This Beats the Scattered Workflow
Most photographers are running Zenfolio + Notion + Google Maps + email contracts + a mileage CSV. That's four tools holding your business logic. One change (e.g. "travel surcharge is now $200 flat") means updating Notion and remembering to mention it in your next invoice template. Velocity X centralizes the entire shoot lifecycle: booking → pricing → contract → mileage → gallery → delivery. Change the travel rate once; it applies to every new booking. Signed contracts live in one place. Mileage auto-logs. Galleries are always private. You're not thinking about plumbing; you're thinking about the next shoot.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I set different pricing for different session types?
Yes. Headshot sessions might be $400 + flat $50 travel (short, close shoots). Weddings are $3500 + $2/km. Portrait mini-sessions are $200 + $100 travel. Each session type has its own pricing rule; the system auto-applies based on what the client books.
What if a client cancels and I still drove there?
Mileage logs attach to bookings, not completed shoots. If you drove 60km to a cancelled session, you can manually flag that mileage as a "travel-only, no session" entry for tax records. It lives in your annual report but doesn't appear on a client invoice.
Can clients download high-resolution images from the gallery?
You control it per client. Some photographers allow full downloads (wedding clients, usually). Others restrict to low-res proofs, requiring print orders for originals. Both permissions toggle per gallery.
How long do galleries stay private after the shoot?
However long you want. You can set an expiry date (e.g. "galleries auto-lock 12 months after delivery") or leave them open indefinitely. Some studios archive after 2 years to reduce storage costs.
Do I need to use Velocity X's contract template, or can I upload my own?
Both. Use the built-in template (which auto-fills client data) or upload a PDF you've already designed. The system handles e-signature either way.
Is mileage tracking automatic, or do I have to log it manually?
Automatic. Once you set your studio location (one-time setup), every booking calculates driving distance. The system logs it; you review and export at tax time.
The Bottom Line — Booking Built for Photographers
Photography studios deserve software that handles travel pricing, contract sign-off, client-private galleries, and mileage tracking without spreading across five different tools. Velocity X collapses the entire workflow into one system: distance-aware booking, e-signature contracts, RLS-gated gallery portals, and automatic tax-ready mileage reports. See pricing and features. If your studio is still emailing contracts or logging mileage in a spreadsheet, let's fix that.