Pricing Your Photography

If you’ve ever asked, “What should I charge for my photography?”, this class is for you.

Pricing is a difficult part of running a business for many photographers and the truth is that the answer to the above question varies dramatically. To help you overcome this challenge, this class provides an overview of the costs you should be looking at that will help you determine your pricing.

Karl discusses day rates, outside services (retouchers and models, etc.), set building and props, agents, equipment and studio rental. He also looks at usage fees and how you can find the right balance in what to charge.

In this class:

  • The costs of running a business
  • Day rates – what are they and how do they work?
  • Usage fees – what they are and when to apply them
  • Advantages and disadvantages of working with agents
  • What to consider when pricing your photography

Please find the accompanying documents for this class here or in the Downloads section.

Questions? Please post them in the comments section below.

Photography pricing

Comments

  1. Hi Karl,

    For clients who do not have usage rates charged, say a local mom and pop company looking for content for social media and images for local advertisements, do you still have them sign a licensing agreement to cover items like the length of usage, how the images can be used, and when the photographer can use those images?

    Additionally, is there anything that would need to be included in an agreement that would make the license null and void to protect the photographer’s property in cases where the company misuses the images (they stated they would only be used on social media/website, but then start using them in print advertising) or the company gets sold?

    Again, I’m thinking of cases where the license fee wasn’t applied in the first place, since it was intended for local advertising rather than a regional, national, or global campaign.

    1. Hi, for small ‘mom and pop’ company no not really as it would likely be better to do just a buyout for them to own them images so you’d incorporate that into your agreed day rate / post work etc. If they were a medium sized company from things like law firms, food manufacturer, bank etc etc then I’d have a licensing arrangement that would cover a time period for them to use the images (unless it was their own people in the shots and then it’s lifetime as it’s not really worth it). It all depends on the level of creative input you as the photographer are putting into the job. For example I once had to come up with a series of creative images for a law firm where all of the executions were my ideas, one of the shots was of a ballerina from above (you can see it on my website in the people section). I gave them an exclusive 2 year license, they used it for 2 years and then as it happened they were bought by a bigger law firm who had a different style of advertising. I retained the rights to that shot and I’ve sold it many times over as a stock image for various things including a NY times best seller book cover, that image has made me more money than the original job did BUT and here’s the important thing: It was my creative input that made the shot and that’s where you need to negotiate who owns what based on the work put in. If you become the ‘art director’, the ideas guy, the photographer and the consultant then you own a lot more of the image than the client should. But it doesn’t always work that way, everything is a negotiation but as long as everyone understands at the start of the project and is happy then that’s where you start.

  2. Hi, I’m not sure about the licensing fee for packshots (white BG). It is about 100-300 photos per month, but the client distributes these photos to his dealers (around EU), so it is about 10-20 sites (Czech Republic, Slovakia and a few countries within EU). Could I ask for help on how to set the license fee correctly when the price per photo without license would be say $10? Thank you very much!

    1. Hi, I would say it would be uncompetitive to add a usage fee to simple pack-shots. Their will be many pack shot providers who do not charge a usage fee for this sort of work, usage fees are more applicable to ‘campaign’ advertising style imagery where the photographer is making more creative input into the success of the campaign.

  3. Hi Karl, first time comment here. Is the day rate still applicable if you have 3 to 4 models to shoot for a campaign or will you charge your rate per model?

    1. Hi, If you can explain what you mean a little more I’ll try to answer, for example are you shooting fashion on models for a label or are you shooting portfolios for the models etc etc? I’m not quite sure what you mean by rate per model? As mentioned in these classes we shoot either Day Rate or Half Day and then Post Production fees and usage fees.

      1. Ah yes sorry. I was commisioned to shoot for a local brand here in the Philippines for their 2025 collection of MTB gears and apparels. There are 3 riders that I photograph with 5 different jerseys and gears each. I already included transpo and meal fees, equipment rental fees, assistant fee. I just don’t feel like I charge them enough day rate fee for it if I just shoot 1 rider for 5 jersey for a day.

        1. Hi, in commercial photography you need to apply a day rate that ensures you are profitable throughout the year and that is competitive based on the standard of your work and other photographers of the same standard. For example it is ok to be 5x more expensive than another photographer if your work and service is much better. But going back to the pricing, most commercial photographers in the UK, Europe and USA operate on: 1. Photography day rate/creative fee plus expenses for rental, catering etc. 2. Pre-production testing and post production work (this rate in my case is half my day rate). 3. Usage fees (usually only applicable to bigger campaign work)

  4. How is usage fee priced? I didnt see anything in the video.
    Example:
    1 year internet use or
    3months print in UK and EU, or
    6months print worldwide
    There are many permutations.

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