Additional information for client.

Break down of service costs and what you are getting for your time and money.

My Average Wedding Photography Coverage (with assistant): $2000

Day-Rate of Photography Assistant: -$200

Subtotal: $1800

Again, approximately 50% of all income goes to business costs, leaving about $900 gross.

Client email and phone communications: 1-3 hours per wedding.

Pre-wedding equipment prep: approximately 1-1.5 hours.

Average travel to and from wedding: 2-3 hours

Early arrival to venue for assessment and lighting prep: 1 hr.

Actual shooting time: Most weddings are 6-12 hours of coverage, so let’s make it 8 hours.

Image culling (sorting through approximately 3,000-6,000 files, pre-edit): 5-6 hours.

Image editing and gallery prep: 12-30 hours.

Client gallery fees for shooter pays- $50-$100

Total: 29-50 hours per wedding, which averages 39 hours per wedding.

Billable rate: $900 gross divided by 36.25 average hours per wedding = $23.07 per “billable” hour.

This is, of course, assuming a full-time workload, but wedding and portrait photography is highly seasonal, and variability year-to-year comes with the territory. While most full-time photographers gladly take on as much as they can handle, the amount of work that comes around changes not only depending on the time of year and the weather, but also the economy and how saturated the market is. If, as in Portland, there are lots of aspiring photographers flooding the market in a race-to-the-bottom, there is not only less work for the dedicated professionals, but also a lower value placed on the work itself and perceptions of what it ought to cost. So financial fluctuations season-to-season and year-to-year are financial realities that photographers have to be prepared for and take on as a risk of the industry.

I hope this clears a little bit up, and ideally, it takes some of the feeling of being snookered out of the process of looking at photography prices. Almost nobody, no matter how it seems, is getting rich off of this profession. Even when the sticker price is a little shocking at first, you can hopefully take heart in knowing that you are paying a modest living wage for professional services, and in doing so, your business allows a working-class small-business owner to put food on the table and keep a roof over their family’s head.