The yearly maintenance your photography business is overdue for, cut into fifteen minutes a day.
30 days, one small task at a time, no weekends. We lay your business on the table, find what's alive, what's rotting and what's already dead, and you go into 2027 with the boring, load-bearing parts fixed.
Day 1 is Monday, October 19 · Enrollment closes Sunday, October 18
How many of these are you?
- 01You raised your prices in your head back in March. Your pricing guide never heard about it.
- 02Your welcome guide is long enough to need its own welcome guide.
- 03A client moved her session three times this year and you answered "no worries!" every time.
- 04The photos on your homepage are from two years ago, and you've made much better work since.
- 05Ask you who your ideal client is and you'll say "fun" and "laid-back" and then trail off.
- 06"Redo the about page" has been on your list since spring.
- 07You answer inquiries from the school pickup line at 3:15 and hope the reply sounds like you.
If you nodded at two or more, your business is due for an autopsy. Most photography businesses are, every single fall.
Day 1 is Monday, October 19
This is maintenance, and you can't skip it.
I live on a farm. Every fall, when harvest is done, the equipment comes in from the field and gets torn down, cleaned, greased and fixed before it sits for the winter. Nobody likes doing it. Everybody who skips it pays for it in the spring, usually at the worst possible moment.
Your business works the same way. All year you were in the field shooting, editing, answering emails at night. Meanwhile your policies got soft, your pricing fell behind your costs, your website kept showing work you've outgrown, and your client materials picked up pages nobody reads.
That stuff is boring, so it lives on the back burner. It's also the part that decides whether next year is calmer and better paid, or a repeat of this one.
Responsible business owners do this once a year. We're going to do it together, and we're going to have fun doing it.
15 minutes a day · no weekends
Same surgery. Much smaller cuts.
Last year's Autopsy worked. Students raised their rates, rewrote their policies and cut their client guides in half. It was also a college-level workload dropped into the middle of wedding season, and too many people got buried under it.
So I rebuilt the whole thing. The material that got results stayed. The hours went. Every day now has one small task that takes about fifteen minutes, every week has one minimum you can hit even when life happens, and it all lives in an app that remembers where you left off.
- 4 weeks that turned into 5
- About 3 hours of homework in the heaviest weeks
- Worksheets scattered across Google Docs
- Live classes you had to sit down for
- 30 days, locked from the start
- One small task a day, no weekends
- One companion app that holds everything
- Short lessons you can watch anywhere, plus live working sessions
Or 2 weekly payments of $100
Six weeks, one part of the body at a time.
A new week opens every Monday. You get a short lesson and one small task each day, and every Friday ends with a single starred minimum, so you always know what counts.
Gather the Body
Pull every link into one place: website, about page, pricing guide, welcome guide, Instagram, your inquiry reply. You can't fix what you haven't looked at.
The Diagnostic
Alive, rotting or dead. You rate your offerings and pricing, your client experience and policies, then your website and marketing, one short day at a time.
The Brain
Who actually booked you in 2026, best and worst. What your favorite clients had in common, what they want, what they're afraid of and the exact words they use.
The Gut
Policies and pricing. Where you got burned this year, payment and booking rules, cancellations and delivery timelines, and a real look at what a shoot costs you versus what you charge.
The Eyes
Pull every 2026 image you're proud of, cut it to your top 10 to 20, find the pattern in them, and compare it to what your website is currently showing people.
The Skin
Homepage headline, a Mini StoryBrand for Instagram, your about page, your inquiry page and first reply. Friday you swap in your best new work and post the before and after.
The Heart and Bones
Cut your welcome guide down, rewrite it in your own voice, and write a letter to past clients. Thanksgiving Thursday and Friday are off.
Enrollment closes Sunday, October 18
Built for photographers who are still in season.
One task a day
Each day opens one task that takes about fifteen minutes. Do it with your coffee, between galleries, or in the car before pickup. Weekends are yours.
A star every Friday
Every week has one starred minimum. If life eats your week, you hit the star and you're still in. Everything stays open once it's out, so there's no such thing as behind.
Live working sessions
We meet on Wednesdays and work on that day's task together. Bring questions, bring your half-finished policies. Replays go up for anyone who can't make it.
I read your work
Post your minimum in the community and I'll reply to it, usually within a day. There's also a Feelings Room, which became everyone's favorite room last year.
Live sessions Wednesdays at 8am PT, with replays
Everything lives in one place.
I built an app for this class. Each morning it shows you the day's task, links you to its short lesson, and sends you to the right room when it's time to post. On some days you type your answers straight into it.
- No login. Open the link and you're in.
- Save it to your phone's home screen like any other app.
- Your answers save as you go, and a weekly case file download keeps a backup.
- On Day 29 it builds your coroner's report: one PDF of everything you did, start to finish.
- Optional AI prompts on the days they help. You write first, the AI tidies second.
Access through February 2027
On December 1 you'll have:
Policies written in stone
Payment, booking, cancellations, reschedules and delivery, each in one plain sentence you can enforce without apologizing.
A clear 2027 client
Who she is, what she wants, what scares her and the words she uses, drawn from the people who actually booked you.
Words that sound like you
A new homepage headline, about page, inquiry reply and welcome guide written for your people.
Pricing you've checked
What a shoot really costs you against what you charge, so the next price change comes from math instead of nerve.
Your best 2026 work up front
A refreshed homepage and gallery built from the images you're proudest of this year.
A creative brief and a coroner's report
The work you want to make in 2027, plus a PDF record of the whole autopsy to come back to next fall.
Day 1 is Monday, October 19
What happened when they did the work.
per shoot. One student raised her rates in the middle of the policies week, kept booking, and dropped discounts for good.
pages. Another cut her pricing guide by more than two thirds. Clients only look for the price and what they get.
ghosting. "So far no ghosting," from a student who simplified her pricing guide and tightened her emails.
Others streamlined their workflows, got serious about their contracts, and cut a pile of unnecessary pages out of their welcome guides and client materials.
Enrollment closes Sunday, October 18
Who this is for.
- You're a working photographer who books clients, whether that's weddings, families, couples or all three.
- You've been in business at least a year and have real material to examine.
- You can give it fifteen minutes a day.
- You suspect you're undercharging, over-explaining, or both.
- You did the Autopsy last year. Your business has changed since then and needs the next round.
- You haven't booked a paying client yet. Come back next fall with something to dissect.
- You want someone to critique your portfolio. I don't do portfolio reviews. You'll judge your own work against your own goals.
- You're looking for a done-for-you website rewrite. You do the writing, and I make sure it's good.
Or 2 weekly payments of $100
Hi, I'm Laurken.
I'm a wedding photographer and the founder of MotherPhotographer, the school I run for photographers who are building real businesses around real lives. I homeschool three sons on a farm in rural Washington, so I know exactly how much time you don't have.
I made the Autopsy because I run it on my own business every fall. It's how I catch the policies I quit enforcing, the prices that drifted, and the pages that stopped sounding like me. This year I made it small enough to finish.
Day 1 is Monday, October 19
Or 2 weekly payments of $100
- 30 days, one small task at a time, no weekends
- Short pre-recorded lessons in the classroom
- The Autopsy companion app
- Live working sessions Wednesdays at 8am PT, with replays
- The Homework Room and the Feelings Room, with replies from me
- Your coroner's report PDF
- Access through the end of February 2027
Day 1 is Monday, October 19 · Enrollment closes Sunday, October 18
Before you scrub in.
I'm still shooting and editing. Can I really keep up?
That's who I rebuilt it for. Each task is about fifteen minutes, weekends and Thanksgiving are off, and every week has one starred minimum you can hit on a terrible week. Nothing closes once it opens, and you have access through February, so you can finish in your slow season if you need to.
What if I can't make the Wednesday sessions?
Watch the replay. The lessons are pre-recorded and short, so the live sessions are working time and questions. You won't miss teaching by missing a live.
I took the Autopsy last year. Is this the same thing?
The bones are the same, and that's on purpose. This is a process you run once a year, and your business has changed since last fall. The diagnostic is new, policies and pricing get a full week, and there's a new week on pulling your 2026 portfolio and refreshing your site with it.
I'm not a wedding photographer. Will this work for me?
If you book clients, yes. Family, couples, newborn and brand photographers all have policies, pricing, a website, an inquiry reply and a client to understand. The examples lean toward weddings because that's my world.
Do I have to use AI?
No. About a dozen days have an optional prompt that works on what you've already written, and every one of those days also tells you how to do it by hand.
Is the app complicated?
There's no login and nothing to install from an app store. You open a link, save it to your home screen or bookmark it, and do the work on the same device. Once a week it offers you a backup file of everything you've entered.
I'm already a MotherPhotographer member.
Then you already have it. The Autopsy 2026 is included in your tuition and is waiting in your library. Don't buy it twice.
Enrollment closes Sunday, October 18
You can carry the same soft policies and stale homepage into 2027, or you can spend fifteen minutes a day fixing them.
Day 1 is Monday. Six weeks from now you'll have a business you've actually looked at, with the dead parts cut out and the good parts out front.
Put my business on the table $197Enrollment closes Sunday, October 18
