Why Wedding Photo's Prices Are Wack?

[johne37179]

<p>Wedding photography is a strange business. Weddings are not held 40 hours a week, yet you want a specialist who may only shoot once or twice a week. That means you have to pay for the rest of the time as well. In advertising where I worked for years, my typical final product was a single image shot to a concept provided by the client. It might take many images to get that one. For the wedding photographer, he or she must produce hundreds of images over an event (maybe several days with rehearsals, etc.), but no do-overs. It is hard to compare a wedding photo to any other photo on price alone.</p>

[james_smith55]

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<p>If that's the case, a $100 perfume should only sell for $5. -<a href="../photodb/user?user_id=6522143">Green Photog</a></p>

</blockquote>

<p>You obviously have never seen the marketing budget at Yves Saint Laurent.</p>

[james_smith55]

<p>Nikki Wagner gratuitously padded her expenses. I'm pretty sure she uses her home, car, and fuel for other things other than shooting weddings. Lumping all that in together is a bit dishonest and calls into question the veracity of her argument, which isn't good considering her audience is already incredulous. If she is deducting the entire cost of her car, home, and fuel bill on her taxes she is going to jail. Well she will be put through a painful audit first... then jail.</p>

<p>Having said that most lay people don't know how much a professional costs or how to value their services. A lot of professionals make it look easy because they have years of training and experience. That is what you are paying for... in addition to <em>reasonable </em>expenses. How many of you have gone to the doctor and seen them for 5 mins and got a nice $50 bill later? Were you pissed off? The doctor can see you for 5 mins because they have spent six figures of their own money and years of their life getting trained to the point they can <em>safely </em>diagnose you in 5 mins. On top of that if they are incompetent and misdiagnose you and something horrible happens they have a $1 million insurance policy to compensate you for your loss. If you google your diagnosis and you are wrong... what then? $50 is very cheap.</p>

<p>Being a decent amateur inappropriate people ask me to photograph events for them for free every once in awhile. First of all I'm insulted. I never work for free. Secondly I advise them that I would not trust anyone to photograph my wedding unless they have done it before and had professional equipment. I would demand that they had at least two cameras in case something went wrong with one of their bodies. Frankly I would skimp on other aspects of the wedding (ie the flowers, the cake, etc) before I skimped on the photography. Years from now you won't be showing your grand children a decayed flower or worse a wedding cake (after you've eaten it).</p>

[james_smith55]

<blockquote>

<p>That being said, I tend to feel that even if the bride in this situation had paid $1k, $2k or ANY amount above the cost of her cake, it is very likely that negative ranting about cost would have followed. Wack, but true.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Bruce Ortego, you are 100% correct. The photographer's response was unprofessional. I think it is important to educate clients. I would have framed my response around a fictitious client. Or say something like many people are surprised by the cost of wedding photographs. And then gone on <em>politely </em>to give an explanation. I wouldn't use my personal numbers and I would relate it to other industries. I would frankly encourage consumers to shop around and ask questions such as may I see a sample of your work. But in all honesty most clients in any industry don't make too much of a fuss about costs. They may groan a bit or try and get a slightly better deal but they won't see your $3k advertised price and then come in and ask for $300. GET RID OF THOSE PEOPLE. Every business person I talk to regardless of industry says that business is not worth it.</p>

<p>You want to gently educate <em>reasonable </em>people. You want to totally avoid mental patients.</p>

[james_smith55]

<blockquote>

<p>It would seem to me that one advantage of charging $3K to shoot an event is that you weed out potential customers who still use the word "wack," and do so in ALL CAPS. The photographer gets paid a living wage and doesn't have to work for annoying functional illiterates- that's a win-win.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Eric Friedemann, you've pointed out something a lot of amateurs don't realize. The bridezilla's response was not only expected it was actually the desired result. You do not want this person calling you up. Post the $3K price and let someone else develop an ulcer running around like a slave for peanuts. This is not the type of business anyone with dignity wants. The people at the Bentley dealership do not give explanations for the the $250K price tag on a car that <em>only </em>has two doors.</p>

[dave_redmann]

<p><strong>This photographer wants to make a decent income working part-time.</strong></p>

<p><em>I photograph an average of 20 weddings per year . . . . After spending 8-10 hours at your wedding, I then come home to my home office and spend about 20-25 hours editing your images, creating your album, blogging about your wedding, posting pictures on facebook, ordering you prints and burning your DVD’s</em></p>

<p>Okay, so her basic work takes, by her estimate, 560 to 875 hours a year. I realize that running a business involves substantial time overhead (bookkeeping, marketing, etc.), but a US-standard work year is 1920 hours, so by her estimate, she works about half-time. I am for tax purposes at least self-employed, and we <em>try</em> to turn 50% of what we gross into income for the members (owners) of the company (LLC); halve the gross and our income would be zero--barely enough to pay employees, office rent, etc. She needs to either shoot portraits, senior pictures, other events, whatever the rest of the year, or she needs to get a part-time job, or she needs to live within what's left.</p>

<p>Also, as others have pointed out, only modest fractions of many of her items of so-called overhead are properly attributable to her business--she wants to say that all of her car, house, etc. are business expenses. (But of course if you accept her numbers, it's obvious she's not getting rich doing this.)</p>

<p>Look, it is now, and has always been, hard to make a good living as an artist or "artist" or especially "fine art" artist. If you want to do it, either accept that usually the income is modest, or do it part-time and do something that pays better part-time, or be well toward the top of the art-sense-plus-business-sense scale. And if you want to <em>maximize</em> your chances of getting rich by working, become a brain surgeon, or get a law degree from a top law school, or an MBA from Wharton or Harvard or Kellogg--not a wedding photographer.</p>

[sven_felsby]

<p>1920 hours a year? One would think the american economy would be the strongest of all, given that amount of labour. But I digress.<br>

Nikki is preaching to the choir in this thread - non-photographers cannot grasp the work involved, and maybe cannot not even appreciate the results. No need to rant about that, let their cousin use his p&s and shoot for clients that realise the value of a professional.</p>

[Marcus Ian]

<p>I was just confused by why she has a 10-22/3.5-4.5 listed as professional equipment, since she uses two 5D2s... I can see a 17-40/4 or maybe a 16-35/2.8, but the 10-22 doesn't work particularly well on the 5D2s ;-) maybe if she figures out the dif between EF-s and EF or L she can charge more?</p>

<p>Of course I'm not serious... but getting that outraged over stupid people posting stupid things on the *gasp* internet! (the gall!) means she really has too much time on her hands... maybe a part time job is in order ;-)</p>

[yvonne_selnick]

<p>The Economic Law of "Supply and Demand" factors into the Wedding Photographer compensation. I teach Photography at a major University and am seeing hordes of students thinking that they can make a living in Photography - particularly in Wedding Photography.<br>

Whenever any profession becomes inundated with practitioners, the return for an individual practitioner diminishes. It's not about what the service is worth in real terms as much as it is about the vast numbers of photographers competing for the business.<br>

There are always rare cases of certain photographers who command whatever price they want, but that is exceedingly rare these days. </p>

[steve m smith]

<blockquote>

<p>1920 hours a year? One would think the american economy would be the strongest of all, given that amount of labour. But I digress.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p><br /><br />A general rule I learned a few years ago is that you only have about one thousand working hours per year for which you can charge people for your services (in any business, not just photography.)</p>

<p>This is about twenty hours per week. Any other time put in is usually periphery activities which would be difficult to directly charge a customer for.</p>

[seragram]

Why r wedding planers, cakes. DJ, doctors, dentist, health insurance, flood insurance, car mechanic, tax code, food

prices........

Get my drift. Ask uncle Bob to bring his Point and shoot and take some snap shots and after honeymoon go to wallmart. I

hear they have low price on picture. books. You will have pictures to remember your day. Beleave me when u show your

grand kids. Who realy care how much you paid. If you need picture album that looks like Bride magazine. Now you know

the. Cost.Ome last thing.,if things don't workout with hubby.

It will hurt less to cut wallmart prints in half than pro lab's because they are cheaper! LOL

[richardsperry]

"If you've ever paid $400/hr for a lawyer, $2,000 for a 2 hour structural inspection of your home by an architect, or even

$500 for a plumber to unclog your sewer drain"

 

Interesting. All if those professions require licensing.

 

Photography and being a "pro" photographer does not.

 

You can not do any of those jobs for me and get paid(legally) except photography. Anyone can be a photographer, and

legally get paid. If you come over to my home and clean my drain, I don't even have to pay you if you are not licensed.

 

Possibly, one of your avenues is to form together a group and petition your State government to regulate your business's and require licensing.

[steve m smith]

<blockquote>

<p>Interesting. All if those professions require licensing.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Licencing for a plumber? Not in my country. Separate mandatory qualification for working on gas, but that's all.</p>

<p>Can't really see why you would need to be licenced to unblock a drain or change a tap washer.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Possibly, one of your avenues is to form together a group and petition your State government to regulate your business's and require licensing.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I would rather petition for de-licencing professions that don't really need it rather than add more legislation.</p>

[don_pedrino]

<p>That was a great response to the Craigslist Insulter. It is So true that it seems expensive at first but then after you really look into it, we have to try to make $100,000 a year just to net $50,000. My wife and myself have been running some numbers and it looks like you need to assume about 25% of your gross income for COGS and another 25% for taxes. Its NOT easy! <br />