What are you actually paying when hiring a photographer?
Hello everyone :)
I have been quite busy with some personal happenings lately but I definitely want to try to be more consistent with writing. I already have a list of some topics that I would like to cover in the future :)
So today’s topic is about pricing. I have already talked about it a bit in Photography business guidelines, but I would like to dedicate this post fully to this topic. So let’s start :)
I have been struggling with setting my prices and my pricing system for so long. Little part of this struggle was simply because I didn’t believe in myself and my work enough. I finally found my way and I will share it with you. Just before starting this topic I want to say that you as a photographer have to figure out how much you value your time and work, and you have to believe in that. You also have to be comfortable with the prices you set.
Since I have became a freelancer, I have changed my pricing system a few times, and the one that I have recently fully embraced is the one I will share here with you. So before we start this pricing journey, think about what are all of the things that your final price has to include and how much you have already invested? The price that the client which is hiring you is paying has to cover your time, knowledge, experience, practical work, post production, equipment; if you are a freelancer, then add rent, bills, food, life, savings, insurances etc..
In my opinion photographers are often underrated and clients that are hiring them are very often not really happy to pay. So after you thought of all of these things, now you should check your environment and see how your colleagues around you are charging for their services (this is more just to have some idea). This is important if you are not sure if you should charge 50e or 250e per hour, and let’s say that getting 250e per hour as a junior photographer in Berlin, is less possible.
So let’s get to the pricing system that you can use to set up your own final fee :)
hourly rate for photo session
hourly rate for post production
hourly rate for your equipment
licence
I will now go deeper in to each of the segments and explain what they mean. Firstly, hourly rate for photo session means your fee per hour for coming to the location and doing the photo session. Depending on your knowledge and experience your rate will be higher or lower.
Your hourly rate for post production will usually be different (and lower) than the hourly rate for photo session. This is the fee that your client will pay for you to retouch the chosen photographs. In case you are hiring an external retoucher, your client should pay for those costs.
I think the first two were quite clear, and that the next two need a bit more explanation. So when you see the hourly rate for the equipment, this is something that doesn’t necessarily have to be stated separately, you can include this in the hourly rate of photo session if your equipment is not changing much from a session to a session. In case you use completely different equipment, and you have a lot of it, it is very useful to state it in the price list. This hourly rate of equipment basically means that your client is paying an hourly fee for the equipment that you will use during the photo session. The equipment means your camera, lenses, lights, tripods, laptop, even the programs that you have to pay for, and so on. In case you need to rent some specific equipment that you don’t have, the client should cover these costs.
The last section is licence, this means that you will give a specific permission to your client in which way they are allowed to use the photographs. Most common limitations are medium (meaning social media, web page, printed magazine etc), time (meaning for how long the client is allowed to use the photographs), and location (sometimes photographers will limit the client to a geographical location, for example: the client is only allowed to use these photographs for their printed magazine in Germany). I personally never use the location limitation, and the most common one I use is medium because giving permission for digital usage and print is different.
Now that I have explained the system, you hopefully got some more idea of how you could charge your clients, but you might still be lost.. so let’s go a bit more in detail. I will focus on the first section here, which is your hourly rate for photo session. This rate means that the client is paying the fee for your time that you spend working for them, but how to calculate this fee? what does it depend on? what should be included?
In my opinion, this fee should cover the knowledge you have, the experience, and of course your practical work. As a photographer with a Bachelor Degree in Photography and 6 years of experience, I believe that I can charge a certain fee for my work that I feel comfortable with. I’m not saying that someone with a BA in Photography will necessarily do a better job, but the chances that this person has a much broader knowledge are a lot higher. Should you go to university, to be a great photographer, or not, is a topic on its own and I will cover it soon and share with you my experience and why I made a decision to quit studying Architecture and start studying Photography.
But let’s get back to photography fees.. another important point here is that most of the photographers are freelancers, this is just how our world currently works. This means that a photographer has to earn for all of the life expenses, nothing is covered by anyone else but the photographer. Health insurance for freelancers are very often higher than for the full-time employees, also in this case the photographer pays this fee fully and not just part of it.
The last but not least point I would like to mention is, that it takes a lot of courage to go fully into freelancing in this industry and it is not easy but if you are consistent and you figure out the way to work it out, it gives you a lot of freedom!
I will end this post here, and I hope you like it and that it brings some clarity. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions or ideas for the new topics I could cover in the future :)
Love,
Ena :)
