This is a guest post by Jimmy Moncrief, a wedding photographer in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and co-founder of Ciderr.

Every decade there is a new technology that usually disrupts an industry. Ten years ago, there was a max exodus from film to digital due to the rapidly falling prices of digital cameras and the rapidly declining costs of post-production in digital format. Yes, I understand digital photography was around earlier than this, but digital really gained traction about ten years ago.

A couple of days ago, I was very fortunate to speak with Mike Hanline, the President of WHCC. I was fascinated by the fact that his lab went completely digital in 2000. This prescient move, was well ahead of the industry. Now, WHCC is an industry leading lab provider because they embraced new technology ahead of their time. Below are three companies that are disrupting the photography business with new technology.

“The status quo sucks.” – George Carlin

Ciderr – big brands have always used wedding registries to increase brand awareness and to increase sales. Ciderr, now gives that power to photographers and other wedding vendors. Ciderr, lets businesses upload their products and services in a registry. All high-quality wedding vendors get some variation of this email: “I love your products, but can’t afford them.” Now they can! The wedding vendor, can offer the bride and groom a personalized registry. The bride and groom pick the products and services they want, and then create their personalized registry. Then the bride and groom share the link via email, facebook, and twitter and get their friends and family to help pay for that portion of the wedding!

Pinterest – yes, it’s significantly smaller than Facebook and Twitter. The media reports traffic to be in a range of 10-15 million, while Facebook has over 850 million and Twitter has over 100 million. However, it has better referral traffic for your website. Shareholic.com reported in July that referral traffic from Pinterest was greater than Twitter, SumbleUpon, Bin and Google! Essentially, this means Pinterest might bring a smaller amount of traffic to your site, but it will be higher quality.

I love how Melisa Jill organizes and displays her photography on Pinterest.

Sticky Albums – Sticky Albums lets you create digital photo album – which your clients can save to their iPhones and iPads as a separate app. This is how the vast majority of clients want their app anyway, so it is a great convenience for the client. The best part however, is how this service helps your marketing. All the photographs include your logo! So when the client shares these pictures, your brand is being marketed.

In summary, photographers are in a great position to embrace new technology for marketing and establishing a competitive advantage. I would love to hear in the comments how photographers are using the above mentioned resources for their photography business. Also, please let me know of any other innovative businesses out there helping photographers grow their business.