Why does Photography cost so much?
This is the start of a series of blogs on the real cost of wedding photography, and to be honest, photography in general.
This first post is about the kit that is used.
I use Professional Canon cameras and have done for years and years and years – I am a member of the Canon Professional Network. I find them easy to use with a large range of lenses available to me as well as providing everything that I need in a camera.
The kit I use currently are two Canon EOS 5D MArk II. A fantastic piece of 21 megapixel camera equipment that gives me outstanding images every time. Why two bodies? Well, it saves changing lenses to often and I have found that changing lenses in dusty churches is a pain for getting dust on a sensor and the other reason is back-up. That is a word I will use a lot of in this series of postings. You can never have enough backup!!
Clients are paying me to photograph their wedding – so it is vital (I’ll say that again VITAL!) that you have a back-up camera. If you find a wedding photographer relying on just one camera run a mile. What happens if that camera decides not to work? (And yes it does happen, even with Canon kit!!).
Cost of two Canon EOS 5D Mark II – £3400
Then we have the lenses. I use four main lenses:
Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS L USM – cost £2539.00
Canon 24-70mm f2.8 L USM – cost £999.00
Canon 17-40mm f4.0 L USM – cost £596.00
Canon 24-105mm f4.0 L IS USM – cost £928.00
I also use a 50mm f1.4 that is the cheapest lens I have – £99
S0 that little lost costs around £8000.00
How about flash units? I have two Canon 580 EX II Speedlights – cost £399.99 each.
So you can see that with the standard kit I use the total cost is knocking on around £8500.00
When you add filters to the lenses (for protection more than anything else) and the other little bits and bobs my whole camera set-up is close to £9000.00
… and you can see the difference in the quality of images I produce from you ‘Uncle Robert’s” consumer level DSLR with a standard kit lens – especially when you want an image enlarged!
I need to ensure that all my kit is serviceable, up to date, clean and will function when I need it to. That means replacing the kit everything three years, so every year I need to save about £3000 just to set aside for new kit. A professional clean for a pro-level DSLR will cost about £70. Per camera.
Cost of Photography – Part 2
This is Part 2 of a series; Part 1 dealt with how much professional camera kit can actually cost and can be found here.
All of my wedding packages include all day wedding photography and a pre-wedding shoot. In Part 2 of this series I am going to briefly discuss the cost of the pre-wedding shoot. I call the Pre-Wedding shoot Day 1 as it is the start of the time it takes me fully service the brides and groom
I say cost but to be honest it doesn’t cost the bride and groom anything – it is included in all of the standard packages and all of the bespoke packages I put together. (Ok, to be even more honest the cost is included in the mark-up etc but that would be giving away another part of this series!)
A pre-wedding shoot is a great thing for both the couple and myself. It allows us to get to know each other better, get to practise some of the poses that they wish to use, they get used to having a camera in their faces and being told to “smile with your eyes!” all the time by me but, and this is the most important part, they get used to having me around. I mean, lets face it, I’m gonna be with the bride for 10 hours and probably more. That’s a long time – so she needs to make sure that she feels totally comfortable with me, my photography and my tea making abilities!!
Anyway, a typical pre-wedding shoot will take about 1/2 day. Thats about 4 hours and will include my travel time to and from the venue the couple have chosen and the shoot itself.
After that it will take me about another 1/2 day to sort the images out, colour correct them etc and upload them to my secure website (click here for a preview).
So a pre-wedding shoot takes about 8 hours of work, or a full day to most people.
We now need to start the ball rolling and think about how much do photographers earn!! A teaser for Part 4!!
If for example I would like to earn £50,000 BEFORE tax, National Insurance, Pensions etc etc. To work out the day rate I need to charge therefore is pretty simple. 50,000 / 270 = 185. Why 270? To take into account holidays, time off, bank holidays etc etc
So each day I need to work I need to earn £185
There are lots of questions I am sure you are dying to ask and this is a pretty simple explanation remember and the real maths are a bit more complicated. But ask yourself this:
“If I my wedding photographer is only charging £400 how does he or she make a living?”
I had a client in July who in all honesty expected me to offer a pre-wedidng shoot and a full day of wedding photography for £250 and that included ALL of the images from the pre-wedding shoot AND the wedding itself.
I am a firm believer that quality costs. If the price seems to low, it generally is for a reason…
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Cost of Photography Part 3
So now we have worked out how much the kit costs – £9000, how many hours it takes for a pre-wedding shoot and some insight into how much I need to earn.
This 3rd part is going to look at the wedding day itself!
Remember that Day 1 is the pre-wedding shoot
Day 2
I offer 10 hours of photography as standard, and to be honest I am often working for about 12 hours on the day by the time you have included travel time etc.
At an average wedding I will take about 100 images per hour doing both reportage and formal style photography, 10 hours x 100 images = 1000 images. Yes that sounds a lot – it’s my choice and my style of photography!
Day 3
The day after the wedding I will download the memory cards and backup the RAW files to a couple of external hard drives and onto DVD.
Next I will get down to editing the images. I use Adobe Lightroom v3.0 or Apple’s Aperture V3.0 to do this as it allows me to quickly choose the images I want and discard the images that are of poor quality (eyes closed, face pulling etc). During this time I will also do the basic colour correcting. Again this takes me a full day to do.
Day 4 & 5
I now do all of the major editing of the images such as resizing, cropping, touching up, airbrushing etc. I then export the images and upload them to a secure password protected website.
And that is it. Three days to shoot a wedding and get the finished images uploaded for the Bride and groom to view. I normally say it will take about 14 days to do this – if I have several weddings in a series I can sometimes fall behind – it the 14 days gives me the time to have an occasional day off.
Summary
We now have 5 days in which it takes me to complete a pre-wedding shoot, complete the wedding shoot itself and get the images uploaded to the secure website. I mentioned in Part 2 (see above) that I need to earn £185 per day. 5 days x £185= £925.00
Example for Package costing £800
Say I am asked to shoot a wedding that I have priced at £800
I need to take off the costs for the prints from the Pre-Wedding shoot and the wedding itself (three 12×16 prints) and the retail costs of album (My Artemis and Graphistudio albums include costs for prints as they are fully digital – worth remembering!). My profit margin on this package is very very low, and to be honest if all of my brides and grooms wanted this package, and all I did was wedding photography then I would go bust.
Once again, ask yourself the question. If a wedding package including album looks cheap or is advertised as being realistic what is being compromised to achieve that price? Album quality? Photography? Editing / Touching up? Basic colour correction?
Does this mean my other more expensive clients ‘subsidise’ this package – in a roundabout way yes. But I also do a lot of other photography such as events, portraits, balls, graduations, christenings etc etc which boost my day rate and ensure that I can still make a living when the main wedding season stops.
All I can say is that at least I am open about my pricing – have a look at Venture or many other wedding photographer’s website. You will probably not see a price list or guide on their website.
What next for that £925
That £925 isn’t all profit remember. I need to take out Tax, National Insurance, Professional Insurance, Mortgage, Car payments etc etc etc etc.
So the next time you think a photographer is being expensive for what you see as one day of work – think again!
Just a quick thank you for your interesting – open and honest article.
I really enjoyed this and look forward to more.
Jim
A comparable number of working days would be 365 *5/7 (i.e. work 5 out of 7 days like an office worker) then subtract 20 for 4 weeks holiday = 240.
50K before tax is the sort of money I’d love to earn. That’s a lot of cash and well over the average UK income.
According to http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=285 the median salary for a male at his peak earning potential is £31 K before tax. You wish to earn 50% more than that. And that takes into account your equipment charges which seem high considering a) the back up camera wears out in 3 years?? and b) you have not listed resale values from your old equipment (is it all really worthless after 3 years?). Do you need to buy new lenses every 3 years – do they wear out (I don’t honestly know).
What happens if the couple want some print outs – are they included or do you charge and make a profit on them?
At the end of the day it’s supply and demand, if your product is good enough to warrant £600 or £1500 or £5000 then that’s great and a reflection on your skill (or lack of competition) – hopefully skill!
Good luck but I’m not sure telling couples you’re paid 50K is going to help them swallow the bill!
Hi Ian
Many thanks for your comments, all valid in their own way.
4 weeks holiday is a lot for someone running their own business – but I take you point. Being self employed means that when I take holiday’s I don’t get paid for them – so I have to work harder / bring in more revenue during the periods I do work.
I didn’t say I wanted to earn 50k. I actually said “If for example I would like to earn £50,000 BEFORE tax, National Insurance, Pensions etc etc.” I in fact do earn much less than 50k before tax etc. The point was to give a round figure to the calculations.
Do I need to purchase new equipment every three years, especially on a backup camera? Yes. The backup camera is actually used during the shoot. I use two cameras not one. The chances of two cameras breaking down during a shoot are significantly less than one camera. So I use both cameras. Yes I suppose I could sell them after three years and get a small return – however after the number of actuations the cameras will go through AND the considerable wear and tear the re-sale value is not going to much.
Lenses are a different story – but they do wear out, screws become loose, elements fall out of alignment etc – they need to maintained etc Resale value in three years again isn’t going to be a great deal for a well used lens.
What tends to happen is that pro-photographers have a stash of old cameras and lenses “just in case” anything major goes wrong. The quality of these old bits of kit is not what I would like to use on a paying client.
What the client is prepared to pay is the great question, not just of photography but also of the world. The client will pay what THEY think your worth. Not what you think your worth. Currently my clients think I am worth between £800 and £1500 for their wedding photo’s. Competition is fierce in this area – anyone with a digital camera thinks they can make money from weddings – it just isn’t that easy.
What you are paying for is my experience of 20+ years. Anyone can take a great photo when the sun is out, blue sky is there and the grass is nice and green. The experience comes in when the weather is crap, the grass isn’t as green as it should be and the sun is just distant memory of summer…
Andrew Miller
Excellent article. Very interesting, many thanks.