Photography Pricing: How to Price Your Photography Business
Adrian and Bergit Barnett explain the art and science of photography pricing, including costs, competitor pricing, perceived value and how to build a profitable photography business.
Pricing is one of the most important parts of running a successful photography business.
It’s also one of the areas photographers often struggle with most.
How much should you charge? Should you match your competitors? Should you calculate your costs and add a percentage? Or should your prices reflect the value you create for your clients?
There isn’t a single answer that works for every photographer.
But understanding the different approaches to pricing can help you build a strategy that is both profitable and appropriate for your market.
What Does Price Really Mean?
At its simplest, price is the amount of money someone pays for a product or service.
But in photography, price also communicates something about value.
Two photographers can offer apparently similar services but charge very different prices.
Why?
Because photography isn’t a commodity.
The images, experience, expertise, reputation, service and relationship with the client can all be different.
That’s why simply looking at what other photographers charge isn’t necessarily the best way to determine your own prices.
Why Photography Isn’t a Commodity
In economics, a perfect market works most effectively when there are many buyers and sellers offering essentially identical products.
Think of standardised commodities where one supplier’s product is largely interchangeable with another’s.
Photography doesn’t work like that.
Your photographs aren’t identical to somebody else’s.
Your style is different. Your experience is different. Your creative process is different. Your client experience is different.
That difference is important because it means you don’t necessarily have to compete on price.
In fact, constantly trying to be cheaper than everyone else can be one of the quickest ways to undermine your photography business.
The Problem With Competitor-Based Pricing
One of the simplest ways to set a photography price is to look at what other photographers are charging.
It’s easy.
Search for photographers in your area, compare their packages and position yourself somewhere around the middle.
The problem is that you don’t know the economics behind their prices.
Their costs could be completely different from yours.
They may have a different level of experience, a different target market, different overheads or a completely different business model.
You also don’t know whether they’re actually making a profit.
A photographer charging less than you isn’t necessarily offering better value.
They may simply be charging too little.
The Race to the Bottom
We’ve all seen photographers enter a market by significantly undercutting established businesses.
It can appear to be an effective strategy.
But if your main selling point is that you’re cheaper than everyone else, there’s always someone who can charge less.
Eventually, that becomes a race to the bottom.
And low prices aren’t necessarily good for either you or your clients.
Low profit margins can mean longer hours, less money available for equipment and education, greater financial pressure and, eventually, burnout.
Being the cheapest photographer in your market isn’t much of an achievement if the business isn’t sustainable.
Calculate Your Costs
This doesn’t mean costs should be ignored.
Quite the opposite.
Before deciding what you need to charge, you need to understand what it actually costs you to run your photography business.
That includes more than the obvious expenses.
Consider:
- Camera and lighting equipment
- Computers and software
- Insurance
- Website and hosting
- Marketing and advertising
- Studio or office costs
- Travel and fuel
- Professional memberships
- Training and education
- Printing and album costs
- Accounting and professional services
- Editing and post-production time
- Your own working time
You need to understand the real cost of delivering your service.
Cost-Based Pricing
A cost-based approach starts with those expenses and adds a profit margin.
It’s a straightforward system and can be a useful starting point.
The problem is that costs change.
Equipment prices rise. Software subscriptions increase. Fuel costs fluctuate. Inflation affects almost every business expense.
Your pricing therefore needs regular review.
More importantly, knowing your costs tells you what you need to charge to operate sustainably.
It doesn’t necessarily tell you what your service is worth to the client.
That’s where another approach becomes particularly interesting.
Value-Based Pricing for Photographers
Value-based pricing looks at the perceived value of your service to the client.
Instead of asking only:
“What does this cost me?”
you also ask:
“What is this worth to my client?”
This can be particularly powerful for photographers offering a distinctive style, specialist expertise, premium experience or highly personalised service.
Consider a commercial photographer.
An image used in a small local advertisement may have relatively limited commercial value.
The same photographer could create an image for a major campaign that helps sell millions of pounds worth of products.
The cost of creating the photograph might not be dramatically different.
The value of the photograph can be.
The same principle can apply to other genres.
A family portrait may have enormous emotional value to the people who commissioned it, even though that value can’t be calculated simply by adding together your shooting time, editing time and printing costs.
Your Photography Has More Value Than Your Time
This is an important distinction for photographers.
If you only price according to the number of hours you’re physically holding a camera, you can easily undervalue what you’re actually providing.
A professional photographer brings experience, creative judgement, technical knowledge, preparation, equipment, editing skills and years of learning to a shoot.
The client isn’t simply paying for the two hours you spent taking photographs.
They’re paying for everything that allows you to produce the photographs successfully.
That’s why hourly rates alone can sometimes give you a distorted view of the value of your work.
Positioning and Perceived Value
Value isn’t created solely by the photograph.
The entire client experience contributes to it.
Consider:
- How you present your work
- Your website
- Your branding
- Your communication
- Your expertise
- Your reputation
- The quality of your products
- Your customer service
- Your creative style
- Your availability
- The experience you provide
A premium service needs to feel premium.
If you’re positioning yourself at the higher end of your market but every part of the client experience looks and feels budget-oriented, your pricing becomes harder to justify.
Price and presentation need to support each other.
Does Higher Pricing Create More Demand?
There’s an interesting concept in economics known as Veblen goods.
These are products for which a higher price can contribute to their desirability because the price itself becomes part of the perceived status or exclusivity.
Luxury products can work this way.
Photography isn’t automatically a Veblen good, of course, but the concept is useful when thinking about positioning.
A limited-edition fine art print, an exclusive wedding package or a highly specialised photographic service can become more desirable when it is positioned as something distinctive rather than mass-market.
Scarcity can also contribute to perceived value.
If you release an artwork as a genuinely limited edition, for example, its scarcity becomes part of what the buyer is paying for.
But Don’t Confuse Expensive With Valuable
Simply increasing your prices doesn’t automatically increase your value.
Clients need a reason to believe the service is worth the price.
That reason might be your reputation, your style, the experience you provide, the finished product, your expertise or something else that genuinely differentiates you.
The key is not simply to charge more.
It’s to create and communicate more value.
Five Practical Principles for Photography Pricing
So, how can you put all of this into practice?
1. Don’t compete solely on price
There will always be someone willing to charge less.
Build your business around what makes you different rather than trying to win every client by being the cheapest.
2. Know your costs
Understand exactly what it costs to operate your business and deliver your services.
Your pricing needs to cover those costs and provide a sustainable profit.
3. Understand your value
Think about what your photography means to your clients.
What problem are you solving?
What experience are you providing?
What makes your work different?
4. Position your business deliberately
Your branding, website, portfolio, products and customer experience should all support the market you’re trying to reach.
5. Review your prices regularly
Your business changes over time.
Your experience increases. Your costs change. Your reputation develops. Your demand may increase.
Your pricing shouldn’t remain frozen forever.
What Should a Photographer Charge?
There isn’t a universal answer.
A wedding photographer in London, a newborn photographer in Manchester, a commercial photographer working for national brands and a fine art photographer selling limited-edition prints all have very different businesses.
Rather than asking:
“What should photographers charge?”
a better question is:
“What price makes sense for my costs, my market, my positioning and the value I provide?”
That’s a much more useful starting point.
Build a Photography Business That Is Sustainable
The ultimate goal of pricing isn’t simply to generate the biggest possible number on an invoice.
It’s to create a business that allows you to continue doing good work.
If your prices are too low, you may find yourself working longer hours simply to maintain the business.
If your prices are sustainable, you have room to invest in equipment, education, marketing and—perhaps most importantly—your own time.
Photography should be creatively rewarding, but it also needs to be commercially viable.
Your value isn’t determined by the photographer down the road who charges less.
Understand your costs.
Understand your clients.
Understand your value.
Then price your photography with confidence.
