Why Photographers charge so much. Or do they?

If you’ve ever wondered why photographers charge as much as they do, or if you’re a photographer whose prices have been challenged before, you are not alone. In my 15 years career as a professional photographer, I’ve witnessed it all.

Now that photography has become everyday practice in most people’s lives, it’s easy to wrongly believe that being a photographer compares to snapping shots on a smartphone and applying a few general adjustments on a slider.

On top of that, the vast (VAST!) majority of a photographer’s work happens behind close doors. This leads to lack of information and understanding of all the work photographers do before and after a shoot and all the costs that the profession entails.

So let’s take a moment to break it down. 

How much do photographers really work, and why are some session fees so ‘high’?

WORK HOURS

Let take it from the top: for every shoot, whether it lasts 1 or 8 hours, a photographer can easily spend days working on it.

‘How on Earth?!’, you ask?

First of all, the prep. There’s backwards & forwards emails with the client, questions to answer and guidance to dispense, mood boards to make, links to send, contracts to fill out and invoices (and subsequent reminders) to set up.

Then there’s the gear. Batteries need to be charged, memory cards need to be formatted, and everything needs to be packed before each job and unpacked afterwards. This includes one or more cameras, multiple batteries, multiple memory cards, multiple lenses, light units and modifiers, light stand, clips, blankets, any props, little toys to distract the babies, umbrellas for rainy weather, and sometimes clothes. Any blankets, soft toy, or garment used on a session also has to be washed and dried before the next.

Getting to most locations (that, by the way, need to be scouted and discovered) can take an average of 30 mins including finding a parking space, and same coming back.

Once home, we unpack our bags (see point above), and download and double-backup the images on our hard drives.

Image selection is what comes next. This can be a lengthy process, and the most important of all.

Out of a 2h session with children, for instance, a photographer can easily return home with over 1500 images, which they’ll likely need to narrow down to 70, or 50, or less. 

Images aren’t just picked for being pretty, either. Of course the best shots always make it in the selection, but to make a gallery good, images need to be selected meticulously.

A good gallery is a varied gallery with a balanced mix of closeups, portraits and longer shots that complement each other beautifully. This balance, out of thousands of images, can take even an hour to achieve.

That’s when editing begins, the lengthiest part of the post-shoot process. Editing a gallery of 40+ images can take 10 minutes to some and hours to others. I belong to the last category, and I would argue that most serious photographers spend a good amount of time editing their work carefully and meticulously so that it’s a perfect final product that satisfies the client and the photographer’s style and artist vision.

Editing includes not just good colour grading, that’s achieved through the careful balance and never-ending tweak of tens of colour-grading settings, but also rotating, cropping, selected exposure and contrast in different parts of the image, sharpening, adding or minimising texture, liquifying, clarity, cloning & healing of imperfections, dodge & burn, and many more adjustments that it’d take too long to list.

Even taking an average of 10 minutes per image, means that it can take a photographer 500 minutes to edit a gallery of 50 shots. 

That’s 8.3 hours for editing alone. Without the selection, without the backup, without the shoot, without the admin, without the social media and website updating. 

I leave the math to you.

After editing each image and assessing the gallery as a whole to make sure it looks consistent and varied at the same time, we export all the files with the right settings and metadata and create a client online gallery. The images are uploaded, the gallery settings (which can differ from shoot to shoot) are chosen, the image cover is set, and an email goes out to the client with in-depth explanation on how to download the files, purchase extras, leave a review and more.

Sometimes questions follow the delivery of a gallery too, which we are more than happy to receive and need to make time to answer.

Then there’s the time we spend sharing our images online so the world knows who we are and what we do. In today’s day and age, this is essential. From updating our website with new images, to blog posts, and post on at least two social media platforms per session with engaging text and a long list of researched and tested hashtags.

New enquiry? Great! Start from the top. :)

MAINTENANCE

Our equipment is delicate and expensive.

Did I mention expensive? A combo of camera and two lenses, average camera bag, memory cards, hard drives, and a computer for editing can easily cost around £10,000. Considering that some genres of photography require the use of two camera bodies, the estimate is only bound to increase.

And this equipment needs to be maintained, and sometimes replaced. 

Sometimes we need to invest in a different lens to be able to perfectly capture certain subjects. Other times, when we’re lucky, the maintenance is restricted to having our sensors and lenses professionally cleaned, focus-adjusted, or repaired. Any hard drives that are damaged or out of space need to be upgraded so clients photos can be safely stored and backed up more than once.

Sometimes, upgrading camera model requires upgrading the whole set of memory cards, too.

HIRING COSTS

For any person we employ to help us with advertising our business, SEO for our site or BTS content, assistants or digital operators, and for any rental of venues, studios, equipment or props that are essential to running our business and fulfilling our projects.

HOLIDAYS AND SICK DAYS

Professional photographers get sick too! But when we are, just like all other self employed individuals, we lose days of work and don’t get paid a dime. But we, too, need to pay bills and mortgage at the end of the month. This means that our average session cost needs to take into account that there will inevitably be days where sessions are postponed either by us or clients due to illness or other unforeseeable circumstances. 

Same thing goes for any break we need to take during the year that’s unrelated to our own illness, like attending a doctor’s appointment, having to be home with an unwell child, grieving a loss or moving house.

EXPERIENCE AND IMPROVEMENT

Softwares and equipment are in perpetual motion and improvement. Social medias platforms change, their algorithm changes, editing softwares change, client management softwares change. We need to stay in the loop and up to date and constantly learn new tricks of the trade by attending courses, tutorials or webinars.

TAX

20% of what photographers charge for each product (just like for other self employed people) goes straight into tax, so when looking at a photographer’s fee, make sure to deduct a 20% chunk (and all the expenses already listed in this post) before making the math of what they earn. 

IMAGE USAGE

For jobs of commercial nature, the fee charged by the photographer includes a license for the client to commercially use the photographer’s images for a certain amount of years in a certain type of way. Image usage on commercial jobs gives the client the right to use our images to advertise their services and generate revenue.

FIXED MONTHLY COSTS

A professional photographer runs a business, and as such needs to cover monthly costs that include: website domain (sometimes multiple), website hosting, email hosting with expanded storage, memberships to editing softwares, gallery platforms, client management platforms, accounting softwares and/or an accountant, equipment + public liability insurance, sometimes a studio, a vehicle, petrol and car insurance, and advertising & promotional expenses such as flyers, business cards and any paid promotion on or offline including adverts and boosted posts.

These costs, that can easily amount to hundreds of pounds per month, are fixed. This means that whether our business is in full swing or slow due to a variety of reasons, we still need to generate enough income to cover these expenses on top of our monthly living bills. 

But why do some photographers charge so much more than others?

Because everyone’s business has different overheads and every artist has a different level of expertise they bring to the table. Some may be photographing in their spare time and have a lucrative job on the side that covers all the living costs, other do it full time and need their photography to pay mortgage, bills, groceries, and make a decent living out of it on top. 

Some have 6 months experience and some have 16 years. Some will send you 60 shots and you’ll only love 6, others will have acquired the experience, through time and training, to deliver a gallery of 60 beautifully selected and edited shots and make you love every single one.

Whereas no one should feel obligated to book an artist they believe is overcharging, I believe that art prices shouldn’t be directly compared. Ever. Every business is different and, most importantly, every human creates different art with their different heart. 

Buy what you value.

CONCLUSIONS

With this post I’m not complaining about how hard photographers have it - we love our job and wouldn’t have it any other way. We love creating images that hit the nail on the head, technically and emotionally. We adore helping our clients, family and friends create forever memories that will bring a happy tear to their eyes. 

But it’s about time we shed some light onto the amount work photographers do behind closed doors and remember that photography is a job just like any other.

From the Cambridge dictionary: Job = the regular work that a person does to earn money.

With very few exceptions, office workers are paid the extra time they spend at their desks. 

Plumbers aren’t rewarded with a ‘thank you’ and a pat on the back. 

Shops wouldn’t entertain a request for free products. 

Counsellors wouldn’t be expected to entertain a client for more than 5 mins past the end of their therapy session.

Why can’t we treat artists with the same respect we have towards other professions?

Food for thought.

Love,

Rose Sol x