Whether you are just starting out or you have been shooting for years, pricing is always top of your mind. For a long time, I just plucked figures out of the air, which made for very awkward conversations when clients wanted to know various ways to save money on a shoot. I eventually got my arse in gear and had a long (like a week-long) sit down and I went through everything in the smallest detail. Today, I give quotes with confidence, knowing that if a client says no, I am simply not the photographer for them.
What Is the Going Rate?
Each city seems to have a bit of a going rate/rates. Photographers at a certain level charge X amount and those who are better charge Y. Sitting in-between these “going rates” can lose you a lot of work. If there are clients with £500 or £1,000 budgets and you are sat in the middle at £750, it is unlikely that either will book you. So get to know these rates. Ask questions. Being cheeky pays off.
How Much Does It Cost You to Work?
Knowing your numbers is vital. You need to understand how every penny is accounted for. I have met photographers who are starting out and charge so little that they end up essentially paying to go to work. Once you know these numbers you will feel a lot more comfortable giving quotes. After you’ve totted up your living costs, photography costs, and probably some sort of pension savings, you need to think about how often you can get work and therefore at what price you need to be charging. If there’s anyone wishing to buy your service at that price or not is a completely different matter, but this is a great starting point to work out prices and viability. You can also cross-reference this with the point above to work out if your plan has financial viability.
Understand How Much Each Aspect of the Job Costs
I regularly have clients who say they do not have the budget for me, but that they would like to work with me. I am sure most of us have been in this situation. When I want to work with them too, I can remove certain production costs from the shoot to lower the price of the job. Rather than saying, “Yeah, I'll knock £100 off that,” which makes you sound like you plucked your number out of thin air, understanding your production costs allows you to offer a reduction in fee while explaining what they will be sacrificing on the day.
Cash Cow or Portfolio Work
This concept was given to me by my partner Holly. I am now a firm believer that every job should be one or the other. If the money is poor and what you produce is of no use to you, don’t do it. The three types of jobs I take are ones where the budget is tight but the final image will be something that I can use to get more work, where the budget is high regardless of the final photograph, or, hopefully, where the budget is high and the photography is going to generate more work. Anything else is politely rejected.
Be Confident
This sounds really obvious, but it takes time and practice. A supermarket doesn’t feel the need to justify their prices, so neither should you. And much like supermarkets, some are cheap and lower quality and others are expensive and higher in quality. Whichever one you are at this moment in time, own it and don’t worry about those who shop elsewhere. Once you have looked at the going rates, the amount of money it costs you to work and live, and if the job sits in the cash cow or portfolio world, you should be able to confidently give a quote.
Do you have any methods that you use for quoting on work?
You also need to consider usage. A photo used nationally or regionally is worth more (to the client, and therefore the photographer can charge more) than the same image used locally or in a small low circulation publication.
Mr Hogwallop is right on-point about including image usage when pricing photography assignments. Too many professionals skip this critical business element.
Images produced by US-based AND international photographers (including portrait and food photographers working in the UK) need to be timely registered with the US Copyright Office to have leverage against third-party infringers or clients who skip payment or go back on their licensing agreements.