When youʼre just beginning in the photography business, there comes a time, inevitably when need to set prices. There is little concrete information about how much to charge for your work but tons of opinions floating around various websites and blogs that often contradict one another. Be sure not to get lost down these rabbit holes because it will only make pricing more confusing than necessary.
How To Perfectly Price Your Photography Work
Remember, your photography is an actual business. You need to be prepared for the question - What is your fee? or How much do you charge for an image?
Despite your lack of fame in the photography industry, you still deserve to charge people a price for buying your work. You must be paid for your art and/or your service. Failure to do so would send the wrong message about your images and undercut any credibility as an artist.
While youʼll have to attach a figure to your work if you want to be a professional, itʼs better to think things through first.
Understanding What Goes Into Calculating Your Prices
There are lots of factors that you should consider when setting your prices, but the most urgent one is the quantifiable one of calculating your cost of goods. This is how much you pay to produce your photography, including the cost of labor and any materials you need. Weʼll start with that one because itʼs the easiest to figure out and can help you establish what you want as your profits efficiently.
Letʼs divide the cost of goods into the following sections:
1. The Cost of Overhead
Overhead is essentially all the activity related to running your photography business thatʼs not directly related to labor (read: taking pictures on a shoot). Therefore, overhead includes items like:
The cost of your camera and equipment.
The cost of replacing your camera and equipment due to natural wear and tear
Advertising costs
Software (Lightroom, Photoshop)
Postproduction equipment
Backdrops Rentals (if you have a studio)
Lighting
Business cards
Website
These are some of the most common overhead expenses youʼll immediately encounter as a photographer. If youʼre just starting out, itʼs necessary to stick to the basics as much as possible to keep said overhead costs down.
Now that the overhead is out of the way, we can move on to another important area that you need to factor in to your overall pricing.
2. The Cost of Labor
This factor is likely the trickiest to accurately figure into your pricing since a lot of it can be subjective. For example, if you love what you do – Iʼm going to assume you really love photography – then itʼs going to be harder for you to count parts of it as actual work or labor. But you have to anyway. Thatʼs the whole point of running a photography business.
Donʼt underestimate the value of your work.
Consider how long – in terms of hours – you realistically have to devote to any given project youʼre going to be working on.
Include very specific details in your calculations, such as:
How much time you may have to spend waiting on the models/subjects/assistants getting to your photo shoot
How much time youʼll spend setting up the equipment for a shoot
How long the post- editing process will take you
How long you have to travel to a client How long you have to spend with a client, getting all the details from him
3. The Cost of Your Materials Figuring out which materials go into your work is the easier part of pricing your work. For example, itʼs pretty straightforward to determine how much youʼll have to pay for shipping and handling and any packaging to house your prints to get them to your clients.
These hard costs also apply to digital services that you provide. Letʼs say youʼre using a cloud service to store your images, as well as numerous hard drives to keep your organized. Those count as material costs, too. The cost of the materials you use should never come out of your pocket! Thatʼs rule one of running a photography business as opposed to just doing photography as a fun hobby.
Then, Thereʼs the Issue of Perceived Value Perceived value is a very interesting aspect of pricing your work, and itʼs also subjective (unless youʼre a world-famous photographer already, of course). You need to sit down with yourself and ask yourself how confident you are in marking up your price to account for the profit that you want to make from selling your work.
So far, Iʼve only covered the expenses youʼll have to cover when figuring out pricing. Now comes the self-interest part of attaching some form of profit to your photography product and/or service. You deserve it for the work youʼve put in, but whatʼs fair and/or credible for where youʼre at as a photographer?
Consider a few things when figuring out your perceived value:
How confident you are in asking for the markup and how accurately you think it reflects your work?
The perception of the value of your brand and your work in the photography industry and marketplace
The actual quality of your finished product (read: how your images look and how you package your work)
Only you can determine your perceived value. If youʼve worked with bigger brands or clients and have years of experience, your perceived value will naturally be a lot more than if youʼve just started out. Thus, you can expect to mark up higher if you have a more impressive portfolio—and get what you ask for—than if you have a relatively thin portfolio and not so many years of experience.
Itʼs All Relative
It is clear that photography pricing cannot be set as an exact science, because there are too many factors to consider. Some of your prices will depend on measurable qualities like labor and overhead costs; however, the true profit in your work relies heavily upon how much you believe it's worth.
You may think you're worth something specific, yet the marketplace is likely to have a totally different idea of your worth. Be self-aware and be realistic.
Sure, you have to put in the work and build up your portfolio. But with a little patience—and maybe some luck (or just good timing)—itʼs not hard to find clients willing pay for what they really want: excellent photography services at a reasonable price.
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