How Does Commercial Photography Pricing Work?
When building the branding for your business, strong, high quality imagery goes a long way. Sure, in today’s day and age, it’s easy to take some quick snaps on your iPhone to showcase your products or services. But, to really stand out in the market, professionally taken lifestyle or product photography shots can really elevate your brand and take your product / service offering to the next level. Like a lot of things that have to do with running a business, understanding the pricing structure behind commercial photography can be a bit complicated. For many people, their first experience with professional photography is linked to something like wedding or engagement photography, where photographers offer set fee packages, keeping costs simple. Commercial photography is a little different. In this article, I’ll breakdown how commercial photography pricing works, and why it’s simpler to understand than you may think.
With something like wedding photography, photographers are able to establish a set number of deliverables in their packages and provide those packages to the vast majority of weddings. For instance, a photographer can offer a wedding photography package that includes 8 hours of coverage and 200 lightly re-touched images. Pretty standard, and would be an acceptable package for most weddings - regardless of the venue or location.
With commercial photography, package pricing becomes a little trickier. Why? Because there are a ton of moving parts and variables to consider, and no two commercial photography projects are the same. For instance, one business may need 50 simple photos of their products with a basic coloured background for their e-commerce store product listings, while another brand may only need three lifestyle photos of their clothing items being worn out in nature for an online ad campaign. While the first project is fairly simple, requiring a simple setup and a fairly repetitive shooting and editing process, the second one is quite complex, and requires way more variables. Some of the variables that would need to be accounted for include not only the photographer’s time for pre-production, production and post-production, but also hiring talent to model the clothing, location permits, and even travel costs if the location is far from their home base. The first project example doesn’t require a lot of the same variables, so it would cost less.
As you can see with commercial photography, a one size fits all photography package doesn’t really work. Projects are typically quoted on a project-by-project basis, thus leading to a bit of the confusion and frustration when clients are trying to find commercial photography pricing. The best thing to do if you’re interested in working with a commercial photographer is to reach out and gain a better understanding of their pricing structure, and get a quote for your project deliverables. Try and provide as many details as you can, including the number of shots you need, your desired location(s), if talent is required, and where you intend to use the final photos. This will help the photographer give you an accurate quote.
To help you understand how commercial photographers develop quotes (and how I develop commercial photography pricing specifically), here’s a breakdown of the elements that go into commercial photography quotes:
Photography / Creative Fee
Firstly, commercial photographers generally start their quotes by establishing how much time will be required to complete the project. This can be done through an hourly rate, however the standard for commercial photographers is to use a “Day Rate.” Why a day rate? Because, as most commercial photographers know, no photography project takes less than a day from start to finish. What may appear as just a two-hour photoshoot actually requires several hours of pre-production time testing equipment and setting it up, developing ideas and concepts, and hiring models / renting locations. Commercial photography projects also generally require a fair amount of post-production, including professional retouching and transfer of the final images to the client. So, a two hour photoshoot can quickly become an 8-10 hour project. Thus the day rate.
When determining a photography fee for a project, a photographer will simply determine how much time is required to complete everything during pre-production, production and post-production using their day rate and, sometimes, half day rate. The final photography fee will therefore be completely dependent on how complex the photography project is, and how much involvement is required from the commercial photographer themselves.
Talent
If you’re looking to have photos of your products taken without people in them, then this doesn’t apply. But, if you are looking for people to model your products, the talent needs to be hired for these types of shots. The cost of hiring talent varies, and is also determined by the length of the photoshoot, as well as how many models are required.
One way to avoid this cost (or keep it lower) is to recruit employees or friends and family members to model your products. This is especially beneficial for small businesses who have limited commercial photography budgets.
Once the commercial photographer determines the talent required for the project, they will add this into your quote as a separate line item.
Location
The next factor commercial photographers consider in their project quotes is location. If a project can be shot on location at their client’s office / facility, or even in the photographer’s own studio, this can be completely free. If the project requires a very specific scene, however, there can be added fees.
If the scene calls for a studio rental, the commercial photography pricing will need to factor in the studio’s hourly rate for the duration of the photoshoot (and potentially a bit of extra time for setup and tear down). Similarly, if the photoshoot requires some scenes shot in the great outdoors, permitting fees may apply. Even in public spaces, commercial photography may not be allowed without the appropriate permit, so these fees need to be applied to ensure your commercial photographs can actually be used for commercial purposes.
Again, if the client can provide their own location, this will save costs for any commercial photoshoot and eliminate the need for requiring permits.
Props
Depending on the location you’ve chosen, you may not need any props at all. But, for certain types of commercial photography, props are essential for bringing your products and services to life.
Take, for instance, product photography. Sure, you can take classic white background photos of your products for your e-commerce store, but, for certain products, you may want to convey a specific emotion and feeling. While changing the background colour in these shots can go a long way, sometimes adding in elements, such as geometric blocks, rocks, plants, textures and more, can really help create a dynamic scene for your potential audience to relate to.
Similarly, for lifestyle photography, there may be certain elements that are required to elevate your scene and truly showcase what you do. This could be as simple as placing the tools required for a specific service into the frame, all the way up to even a car! When chatting with a photographer about commercial photography, try and keep in mind the look and feel you’re after with your shots, and even suggest some potential props. This will help ensure you receive the most accurate quote.
Depending on the type of props your photos require, your commercial photographer may already have them on-hand, which will eliminate or lower the prop fee. But, if they need to purchase any additional props, this will definitely be added into the quote as a separate line item. To help lower your fee, you could also provide props if you and your business have key elements that you’d like added to your photographs.
Travel & Meals
Most photographers wont charge a travel fee when they’re working on a photo shoot within their own town (or generally close to it). The farther the photo shoot is away from their home base, however, the more the travel fee will be. This can really start to grow for photo shoots that require a flight or a very long drive, as you will need to account for the photographer’s flight cost and accommodations for the duration of their stay while working on your project.
Similarly, depending on how long a photo shoot is, photographers may add in a fee for lunch for their crew. In addition, for those projects mentioned above that require a flight and accommodation, you would also be expected to pay for their meals throughout the duration of the trip. So keep that in mind when hiring a photographer from out of province!
Usage Fees / Licensing
Usage fees and licensing is always the interesting element of commercial photography quotes. It may seem strange that, after paying a photography fee as well as all of the other add-on element costs, you need to pay an additional fee to actually use the photos. Why is that?
A commercial photographer’s photography fee is simply for their time to come and shoot the photos, edit them, and handle any other administration work that is required. A commercial photographer holds the copyright, however, for any photo taken during that shoot. That means you need permission to use them.
Things get a little tricky with commercial photography simply for the reason that businesses are planning on using these photographs to generate income. As such, a photographer will license the images they’ve snapped to ensure they are compensated fairly for the planned usage and scale of the ad/marketing campaign utilizing their images.
Generally, a commercial photographer will ask you how you intend to use the final images, and what the scale of your planned advertising and / or marketing campaign will be. The intended usage can simply be posting the photos on social media or your website, or all the way up to utilizing them on a billboard or national magazine advertisement campaign. For the scale, this generally means the amount of money being spent on the campaign, and how many potential people will see the image(s). For smaller businesses, the images may only be shown to a few thousand people through social media advertising. For larger businesses, the images may be shown to millions of people through the same social media advertising channel. In general, the greater the scale and intended use, the greater the licensing fees; the smaller the scale and intended use, the lower the licensing fees.
This is generally how commercial photographers are able to work with both large-scale clients and small businesses. The photography fee remains the same no matter the client size, however the licensing fee is able to be adjusted based on the client’s intended use and overall population reach.
Conclusion
Commercial photography pricing has a lot of elements to it, making it a bit more complicated than a standard wedding or portrait photography package. But, once you gain an understanding of the different elements that commercial photographers take into account when putting together a quote, you can provide your commercial photographer with the details needed to provide an accurate quote, or even figure out ways to reduce the overall project cost.
If you’re looking for an Oakville Commercial Photographer to snap lifestyle images for your business, I service the Oakville, Mississauga, Burlington, Toronto, Hamilton and GTA. Reach out at the link below to set up a discovery call!