Why are Professional Photographers so expensive?
In this digital age where everyone has digital cameras, scanners and home “photo printers”, when people can upload their photos to a local drug store website and pick them up a few hours later, we hear this all the time – How in the world do Professional Photographers charge "X" amount for an 8×10 when they cost just $1.50 at the drug store?
Here’s why.
Simply put, you’re not just paying for the actual photograph on paper, you’re paying for time knowledge, professional equipment and expertise in creating the image itself. First, let’s look at the actual time involved. If you don’t read this entire page, please read this first part.
For a one to two hour portrait session:
- one hour of travel to and from the session
- one to two hours of shooting
- 30 minutes of setup, preparation, talking to the client etc.
- 30 minutes to load the photos onto a computer (2 – 4 Gb of data)
- 30 minutes to back up the files on multiple external drives plus DVD’s
- 3 – 4 hours of Photoshop time including cropping, contrast, color, sharpening, saving a copy for print and a copy for the internet and backing up the edited photographs
- 2 – 3 hours to communicating with the client, answering questions, processing their orders and payments, ordering their prints, verifying prints and packages, scheduling shipments and/or deliver personally.
You can see how a one or two hour session easily turns into more than ten hours of work from start to finish. So when you see a Photographer charging a $100-$300 session fee for a one to two hour photo shoot, you are not paying them $100/hour.
Now lets look at the expertise in creating the image itself. Did you know that the average 3-4 day “workshop” in the photography world will cost the photographer an average of $1,700 for the workshop plus air fare, plus food, plus hotel, plus, plus, plus, easily adding up to $3,000.00. And this does not take into account the cost of the time spent away from the studio and most importantly the time spent away from family.
For an eight hour wedding:
- I won’t bore you with the details, but an eight hour wedding typically amounts to at least one full 40+ hour work weeks worth of time. Again, if they are charging you $2,000 – $4,000 for an eight hour wedding, you are not paying them $500/ hour. The typical wedding will have 40 hours of work going into it AFTER the wedding in post processing and editing time, upload time, back up time, album design time, revision on the album design time, etc., etc. In addition, all of the little “things” that go into creating custom packages, the album, the proofing, the prints, the parent albums, are not only expensive for the photographer to buy, but also require a lot of time to handle and produce.
Now for the expertise.
Shooting professional photography is a skill, acquired through years of experience. Even though our cameras and many lenses are professional grade, taking professional portraits involves much more than a quality camera. Just as a professional chef requires more than a quality stove or oven.
Most Professional Photographers take years to go from buying their first decent camera to making money with their photography. In addition to learning how to use the camera itself, there is a mountain of other equipment involved, as well as numerous software programs used to edit and print photographs, run a website, etc.
And let’s not forget that you actually have to have people skills, be able to communicate, make people comfortable in front of the camera – and posing people to make them look their best, yet completely natural in a photograph is a skill all by itself.
Think of it this way – the next time you pay $100 to get your hair done, a pair of scissors only costs $1.50. But you gladly pay a lot more to hire a Professional to actually do the job.
Conclusion
I hope that those who have taken the time to read this page will have a better understanding of why professional photographs cost so much.
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