How to Price Food Photography Campaigns

Working out how to price high end commercial food photography campaigns is incredibly hard, especially with no information online available. In this video I go over exactly how I go about pricing my larger shoots and everything that goes into creating the quote.

Photographers don't like talking about money. Myself included. Although the job shown in this video is not real, the approach and figures are accurate to what you would be expecting to put forward, some go in higher, some come in lower, as one would expect. This video looks specifically at the higher end of the market, although I plan to put out a local agency and also restaurant/cafe version of these in the future too. 

The video goes on to discuss how much a photographer charges as a day rate, how to calculate license fees, looking at which equipment is required, how to procure it and how to bill for it, as well as looking at what sort of crew you would need for this job, what the cost of hiring them may be and how many of each you would be expected to bring. From home economists through to digital technicians. 

One of the most important points is understanding the value of the work. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been invested before a project meets the photographer. As well as your skill set, they are also paying you to deliver the product on time and to brief, with this comes a lot of pressure and stress. 

Scott Choucino's picture

Food Photographer from the UK. Not at all tech savvy and knows very little about gear news and rumours.

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6 Comments

Love Scott's videos! Super informative, honest, and pretty hysterical. Crotch Rot is real... =P

Thanks Bert

Food photography. It doesn't move. It doesn't talk. It doesn't have a real world location. Really hard to do, Yeah I get it.

yes

another excellent high energy presentation...

Thanks Zak