Husband and Wife Photographers: How Catherine and Yann Faucher Work and Sell as a Team

Working with your spouse is something plenty of photographers dream about, and plenty dread. Catherine and Yann Faucher have been doing it for almost two decades. Yann opened his studio at 20; Catherine joined him a few years later, “for love”, and never left. Together they photograph weddings, maternity, newborns, families and businesses, and they've built their model on selling products rather than digital files.

Talking with Anthony Heukmes, founder of Fotostudio, they explain how they share the work without stepping on each other's toes, how they stay profitable when there are two of them on every client, what happens in their viewing sessions, and why photo competitions changed their career. If you're one half of a husband and wife photography team, this one is for you, and it's just as useful if you're a solo photographer wondering whether to offer prints and albums.

Who are Catherine and Yann Faucher?

Catherine and Yann Faucher are husband and wife photographers based in Brittany, near Rennes in western France. When the episode was recorded in spring 2021, their studio was in Janzé, a small town of around 10,000 people, where they had been working for 22 years.

• Yann opened his studio at 20. He does all the shooting: couple sessions and wedding coverage, studio sessions (maternity, babies, families) and commercial work (corporate headshots, product shots, company reportage).
• Catherine joined him 18 years ago, after several jobs that had nothing to do with photography (a construction company, a car dealership, the commercial court in Rennes). She handles all client contact, by phone and email, the admin, part of the post-production, the sales and the deliveries. She also covers weddings and assists Yann on newborn and toddler sessions.
• Their awards: the title of Portraitiste de France, a French national portrait competition, with an Honneur distinction in 2015 and then Excellence Major in 2017 (ranked first), a wedding QEP (Qualified European Photographer) from the FEP, the Federation of European Photographers, and a place on Team France for the World Photographic Cup, wedding category.

Today, according to their website studiofaucher.com, Studio Faucher is based in Châteaugiron, about ten minutes from Rennes. They offer maternity, newborn and family sessions (in the studio or outdoors, with or without pets), professional portraits and corporate reportage, wedding photography in Brittany and destination weddings, as well as ID photos, prints, photo restoration and photo and video digitization. They also run one-to-one photography training.

1. How do husband and wife photographers work together?

Their answer boils down to one idea: each partner has their own role. Yann is behind the camera; Catherine takes care of everything around the session. On the day of a baby shoot, she welcomes the family, gets them ready and takes them up to the studio, and then Yann comes in for the photos. With a one to three year old, he focuses on the images while she gets the child smiling and relaxed.

“Because we each have our own tasks, there's no competition between us.”

Yann Faucher

No competition, two offices

That's the difference Yann sees with couples where both partners are photographers doing the same job: if you take the same kind of pictures, comparisons creep in fast (“you sold more than me”). Not in their case. They have two separate offices, and each respects the other's territory: Yann never walks into the projection room while Catherine is with clients, and Catherine doesn't call him while he's on an engagement shoot with a couple. In summer, when he heads off to photograph couples by the sea, they both get a little breathing room.

Train together to think alike

Another key: they take the same training courses, dozens of them over the years, on shooting as well as on running a business. That's why Yann can hand his post-production over to Catherine: she thinks the way he does. And if one of them falls ill, the other can step in. For Yann, this isn't even about being a couple: a photographer who hires an employee should aim for exactly the same setup, with clear roles and a shared vision. It's also what Gardères & Dohmen, a wedding photography duo, describe in another episode of the podcast.

2. How do you keep enjoying the job after 20 years?

Anthony asks it straight out: after two decades, isn't burnout lurking? For Yann, nothing has really changed, and the first reason he gives is the ability to say no. Early on, he wanted to do everything: fashion, advertising, the lot. He soon realized he wasn't good at all of it. Since then, every year or two, the couple goes through a round of training to add another string to their bow, seeking out the best photographers in each field. At the time of the episode, it was classic cars photographed in the studio.

“You have to stay curious all the time and keep reinventing yourself so you don't get bored.”

Catherine Faucher

Reinventing yourself for loyal clients

Their clients come back every year or every other year. The challenge is to offer them something different each time. Each of them looks for ideas on their own (Instagram, Facebook, trends), then they decide together. Catherine gives the example of maternity work: a few years ago they invested in maternity gowns, but to create images true to their own style, without copying colleagues who specialize in it.

Several sides rather than one specialty

People often told them to specialize, “like they do in the United States”. They chose the opposite. Yann can't wait for wedding season, and then he's happy to get back to family sessions in the fall. In a single week he might shoot a wedding, a newborn and a big multigenerational family session on Sunday. That variety, he says, is what keeps him from wearing out.

3. How do you stay profitable with two people on every shoot?

It's the objection Anthony expects from many listeners: “I already struggle to pay myself, and there are two of them on the same client.” Yann lists the steps, in order: find what you love to photograph, work out your overheads (two salaries and a studio, in their case), then get to know your clients. For them, word of mouth is still the best advertising.

A calculated price, not a gut-feeling price

Catherine insists on doing the math. They learned it with PhotoCoach, a French business coaching program for photographers (first with André Amyot, then Marie-Astrid Dagas): every business has to be profitable. For each type of session, they know how much time they'll spend on it. From there they work out the average order value they need to cover all their costs and pay themselves a decent salary, then the number of clients they have to find. If they're short, that's when it's time for promotion, marketing or partnerships. To run the numbers for your own business, a photography price calculator gives you a first baseline from your costs and goals.

“Everything is calculated. When we do a photo session, we know how much time we're going to spend on it.”

Catherine Faucher

Never undercut your prices

Catherine's advice to beginners is blunt: don't try to be cheaper than the photographer down the road. You'll attract clients who only come for the price. The day you need to raise your rates to make a living, you'll lose every one of them, because “there will always be someone cheaper than cheap”. Samuel Malarik, who trained the couple in in-studio sales, makes the same case in his episode on running a profitable photography business.

4. Why stop selling digital files?

For private clients, Studio Faucher sells physical products only: albums, wall art, framed prints. Files are reserved for business clients. The decision goes back to 2015. That year, on Samuel Malarik's advice, they flew to the WPPI convention in Las Vegas and sat in on the wedding talks. They saw American couples buying an album and not caring about the files at all. Back in France, they made up their minds: no more files.

Weddings: an album instead of a USB stick

At first, couples still asked for the files, pointing to other photographers who sold nothing else. So the Fauchers worked on their products: high-quality albums you can't find online, with acrylic, wood or genuine leather covers. The result, according to Yann: 90% of the couples who contact them never ask for the files anymore. They come for a beautiful album to keep and share with the family. That's a strong selling point for any wedding photographer who wants to stop competing on the price of digital files.

Portraits: be clear from the first contact

Catherine sets expectations as soon as someone inquires: with them, you leave with wall art, albums or framed photos. The studio's gallery only displays wall art and only has albums to leaf through. The website says so too. She won't book someone for a session if they expect to get their files: no ambiguity, so no disappointment.

“A client who only wants files isn't our client.”

Yann Faucher

Believe in it yourself

For Yann, it all starts there: being convinced of what you sell, and knowing when to refer a client who only wants files to another photographer. Anthony backs this up from what he hears from Fotostudio users: many photographers want to sell products but don't dare say no to files. Their message ends up sitting on the fence, and the sale never happens.

5. What happens in a viewing and sales session?

After the shoot, clients come back to the studio to see their photos. Catherine welcomes them in her projection room: a slideshow set to music on the big screen, then picking the images together in ProSelect, the sales software they use. Yann just pops in to say hello and make sure they like the photos, then slips away. “Selling isn't my thing”, he says with a laugh: he'd give everything away to everyone.

“When I turned the lights back on after the slideshow and saw my couple crying on the sofa, I thought: this is just incredible.”

Catherine Faucher

“Nobody will ever want to come back”

That's what they thought when Samuel Malarik first introduced them to in-studio sales. In reality, everyone comes back, even from an hour and a half's drive away. Couples living in Paris whose weddings they shot make the round trip several times, for a maternity session and then a newborn. The box of tissues is always on the coffee table.

For Catherine, simply sending an online gallery would leave “a sort of unfinished feeling”. At home, clients put off looking at their photos until tomorrow, then the day after. In the studio, the photographer shares the moment with them. If you want to set up this kind of appointment, a well-prepared viewing session lets you present the images, let the client choose and offer your products, all in one place.

What if the client doesn't buy?

It's every photographer's big fear: preparing a slideshow for nothing. Yann admits it happens, rarely. When it does, they don't blame the client: they figure they didn't explain how they work clearly enough at the start. Catherine adds that it's no big deal: the client may come back in one, two or three years for something else. And most people know when they walk in what they'll leave with: a wall art collection, an album, or both.

6. How do you keep clients for years?

Studio Faucher has been photographing some families for more than ten years. The record: one family photographed four times a year for 12 years, on each of the children's birthdays and at Christmas. At weddings, Yann sometimes spends more time greeting past couples among the guests than introducing himself. They all call the Fauchers by their first names.

During the pandemic, those bonds counted for a lot: clients called to ask how they would manage without weddings, then used their newly free Saturdays to book a family session they kept putting off, or to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary. To nurture those relationships without spending your evenings on it, a CRM for photographers keeps the history of every family and every session.

Together, even abroad

When a couple session takes place outside Brittany (Scotland, Iceland, Corsica, with Prague on the schedule), Yann simply tells the couple that Catherine is coming too. The couple pays for flights, rooms and meals. None has ever said no: to them, the studio is both of them.

7. What if you work alone?

Anthony puts himself in the shoes of the solo photographer, who already has to juggle everything: shooting, marketing, admin, and now product sales on top. Yann says again that photographers who work alone “deserve more credit” than they do. But Catherine adds a nuance: many of their photographer friends work alone and do very well, as long as they organize themselves properly and don't mix everything up.

She mentions photographer Martin Morel, who puts on a jacket when he switches into sales mode: a way of clearly separating the two hats. Beyond that, three levers: training (a photo nailed in camera saves hours of editing), reliable lab partners so there are never any bad surprises with albums and wall art, and tools that save time on paperwork. Catherine mentions using Fotostudio as their CRM and for email follow-ups, which automated workflows send at the right moment without you having to think about it.

8. Why enter photo competitions?

The couple's competition journey began with a setback. In 2013, they went for the Portraitiste de France title and didn't get it. Yann took it as a serious wake-up call: their work was good, but their peers didn't recognize it. So he drew up a list of the ten French photographers he admired most, and they trained with them, year after year. What came next: Honneur in 2015, then Excellence Major in 2017, finishing first.

“It's a good challenge, it makes you question your work. Criticism is something you have to accept.”

Catherine Faucher

What competitions bring you

• Knowing where you stand: Portraitiste de France is judged on prints, with criteria covering lighting, print quality and posing.
• Questioning yourself: when they win nothing, they analyze what was missing compared with the trendier “young guns”.
• Opening doors: wedding training courses, a partnership with Dreambooks Pro, meeting photographers from all over Europe.
• A different kind of publicity: a half page in color in Ouest-France, a major French daily newspaper, and clients walking through the door shouting “World champions!”.

The flip side: looking out of reach

Catherine has a warning: with all the awards, some clients assume prices will go up with every title. Theirs hadn't changed in a long time, but you have to find the right balance. At the time of the episode, they had actually eased off on Portraitiste de France and were preparing a training course on something else: how to run a studio as a couple, with both weddings and portraits, and who does what.

Episode recorded in spring 2021, during the pandemic. The studio was then in Janzé; it is now based in Châteaugiron. The training projects and trips mentioned relate to that period.

Mistakes to avoid as husband and wife photographers

FAQ: husband and wife photographers