Why does professional photography cost so much?

A BREAKDOWN OF WHERE YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY INVESTMENT GOES

“Photographs are one of the few investments that gain value over time.”

MYTH: Wedding and portrait photographers make a lot of money.

FACT: Although I love my work, it isn’t glamorous. And my take home pay is actually a very small fraction of what I charge.

The goal of this post: To educate potential clients and future photographers about the costs of running a successful photography business.

Many people are often shocked by how much it costs to hire a professional photographer in today’s market. Some people even say, “You’re a wedding photographer? Wow, you must make lots of money…because you charge thousands of dollars for only one day of work!” Oh, my friend. If only you knew. What I am about to say is true for all professional photographers, but especially for film photographers. As photographers, it is a lot easier to devalue our time as opposed to an actual dollar amount of overhead spent per wedding. Let me break it down for you:

*These percentages are specific to my business, simply due to where I’m at in my business growth. Often, all the money has to go directly to overhead and taxes. But hopefully this will change over time as I am able to raise my prices to where they need to be.*

Taxes - 30% Remember when you got your first job and you expected a nice chunk of change in your first paycheck? And then you noticed all those tax deductions? Yeah. When you own your own business, there is no one to automatically deduct the necessary taxes besides yourself. And you have to pay the full 15% in social security.  I need to set this 30% aside automatically for every job I take. (I’m telling myself this too!) If I end up not owing 30% at the end of the year, the excess can go toward savings or overhead.

Overhead – 50% Being a professional photographer is DARN expensive. Beyond the normal phone, fax, computer, office supplies, website, etc. overhead, there’s membership fees, license fees, marketing, cost of sample products & albums, massive backup drives, insurance, continuing education to stay on top of the latest trends, equipment rentals, Adobe Lightroom & Photoshop software (and yearly upgrades) – I could go ON & on about this category.  And since I am a film photographer I have to allocate money for buying film and then developing/scanning costs. If you add it all up, I have to plan on spending approx. $500-1000 on film costs per wedding – film costs $5-9 per roll, then $26-54 for develop/scan per roll, then fedex shipping to and from the lab – and I shoot 15-40 rolls per wedding depending on how many hours I’m hired for. It’s kind of the invisible category that people tend to overlook but it allocates a whopping 50 percent of every dollar that comes my way.

*Why not just shoot digital, you ask? Wouldn’t it be cheaper? Well, yes and no. Digital photographers (myself included) spend countless hours in front of the computer editing and post-processing images. When I was shooting digitally, I would often spend 15-25 hours of processing time per wedding. Photographers should be paying themselves for this time, but many don’t. By shooting film, I am effectively outsourcing this processing work to my professional lab. And by shooting film, I believe I am giving my clients my best work and photographing the way I am most passionate about. I am not willing to give my clients any less.

Business Savings – 10% Savings for emergencies, equipment, etc. Just like you should have personal emergency savings, you should have business savings.

Owner’s Draw – 10% Owner’s Draw means money in your pocket. It’s like you are taking cash out of the business cash drawer. This is the category people often assume is the big one.  Nope. Maybe it is for your business model, but it isn’t for mine. In general, 10 percent is what I actually get to “pocket.” At times, due to the stage I’m at in business, this often goes toward the overhead category. Hopefully with time, this will change for the better – it should be approx. 30%.

Owner’s Draw isn’t always for fun things, however: this is also to pay our personal bills (*sigh* adult responsibilities). Pay the mortgage. And save for retirement. And save for vacations. I have over $50k in student loans to pay down, not counting my husband’s (he has more than me!) And then comes the expenses of children, when that time comes.

So in case you haven’t been adding all this up in your head, here is the breakdown:

• Taxes 30%
• Overhead 50%
• Equipment Savings 10%
• Owner’s Draw 10%

Equals 100 %

$2,000 for a wedding photographer:

• Taxes 30%  $     600.00
• Overhead 50%  $     1000.00
• Savings 10%  $     200.00
• Owner’s Draw 10%  $     200.00

So, $200 is my take home pay. Even when you change the Owner’s Draw to the ideal 30%, that is $600 for a $2,000 wedding.

If you are doing the math and thinking, Lindsay: stop complaining! $600 / 8 hours of shooting = $75 per hour…. erase that concept from your mind!

There’s countless behind-the-scene hours that go into a wedding. I don’t just say that to make it sound like “so much work” goes into what I do, so I can charge more.  It’s completely and totally legit.  I tend to invest approx. 45 hours of time in one wedding (start to finish: i.e. consultation, engagement portraits, travel time, preparation, wedding, backing up images, answering emails, editing, album design, etc.).

So, if you confirm that math $600 / 45 hours = $13.33 per hour.

And for every $30 dollars of that, I’m not even touching $20 (into 401K and student loan bills it goes…)

If you go back to the current realistic amount of $200 / 45 hours = $4.44 per hour (not even minimum wage!)

One more example. It’s pretty common for NEW photographers to charge for a session and images on CD. Let’s be generous and say they are charging $200:

• Taxes 30%  $    60.00
• Overhead 50%  $    100.00
• Savings 10%  $    20.00
• Owner’s Draw 10%  $    20.00

Hmmm, “pocketing” $20 for one session is kind of depressing.  They probably spend 6-8 hours (maybe longer) on shooting and editing this session.  For example’s-sake: if they spent 6 hours on it, they are making $3.33 / hour.  YIKES!

If you made it this far, you are either really excited about numbers, you are curious why photographers are “so expensive” or you are struggling with finding a balance with your photography business cashflow.

My answer? It’s not easy but I hope this breakdown helped put some perspective on what you need to do. Bottom line is… the pricetag looks pricey. But when you realize the ESSENCE of photography is ART AND BUSINESS… we’re not making fortunes. We’re TRYING to make a living. HUGE difference.If you have any questions as for what goes into the development of the images, don’t hesitate to shoot me an email.

Adapted from Heather Lilly’s original post here. Thanks for such a great article, Heather!