I have decided to write this article as a result of a current race to the bottom in pricing for wedding photography and videography, a supersaturation of the market with ‘photographers’, while at the same time client expectations going up and up, in particular with respect to professional photography turnaround times and low prices.

The audience for this article is someone wondering about doing this professionally, hobbyists, semi-experienced professionals thinking they have to cut their costs, and of course, prospective clients who might want to understand how our business works.  To see my conclusions and main points, feel free to jump to the bottom of the article.

A basic assumption that I am making is that a professional doing it as their main occupation, is:

  • Providing a high quality service to his or her customers, and delighting them with what they offer
  • Doing it sustainably, meaning
    • Not sacrificing work-life balance
    • Doing the tasks needed to continue getting the leads and jobs for years to come
    • Covering their costs and having a salary that will enable to both live relatively comfortably, have a family if desired, and retire comfortably some day – knowing that there is no pension building automatically when you are self-employed

It is difficult to explain to a customer who sees a starting price for the same perceived service that is half of another’s price what the difference could be. So what happens when someone is not charging what they should be?

To illustrate this, I thought I would tell a little story about ‘a photographer’, who for one reason or another decides to charge significantly less than what is needed to do this professionally and in a sustainable long term way. Shall we?

There are lots of reasons a photographer might decide to charge less than what is needed.  It happens.  So our story begins there.

  • Photographer decides to charge much less than what they should to run a sustainable professional business
  • Photographer sees an inevitable, necessary, and significant increase to their workload
    • Inevitable, because people are always looking for a good deal. Especially right now online or on certain wedding aggregator vendor sites.  There are a LOT of people prioritizing a good deal (from a potentially overworked photographer) over a professional high quality service.
    • Necessary, because the revenue needed to maintain a decent standard of living and cover their costs stays the same, while the number of jobs needed to meet those needs has to rise.
    • Significant because each wedding doesn’t just come with the wedding day, but 2.5 to 5 hours of editing after the fact.
  • Wedding season is going hard and fast, and our photographer has a hard time delivering their promised images on time – or goes insane with little sleep to get it done.
    • With everyone looking for very fast turnaround times these days, it is tempting to overpromise how fast you can deliver photos.
    • With each 8h wedding comes 20 to 40 hours of editing.
    • If you are working on 4 weddings at a time, that is 80 to 160 hours of editing work.  Minimum 2 full work weeks for editing without breaks, and not including the shooting time over the weekends.  And this doesn’t count the many other weddings that predate those four that have to fit in there.
    • The result of trying to do all this work is little sleep and going insane, which leads to worse work
      • A tired shooter is not a good shooter
      • A tired editor takes shortcuts and delivers sub-par images
  • Wedding season ends, and photographer is still going insane finishing all the edits from their overly busy summer.
  • While they are busy catching up, their clients are getting more and more impatient that they have’t received their photos yet – or are receiving sub-par work created by a photographer taking shortcuts.
  • It’s the off season now. Our photographer is wondering if they want to book as many weddings the next year and punish themselves with the workload they have had.
  • Photographer decides to book fewer weddings, but gets a part-time job to supplement their income from not quite making enough money from fewer weddings.
  • Part-time work interferes with their ability to do their wedding work, and the problem of too many weddings continues next year, even with supplemental income.
  • Photographer gets burnt out because they are overworked.
  • Photographer’s past clients are not happy, and photographer doesn’t get a great reputation, so they continue to book clients looking for a good deal instead of building a great network of past clients and vendor partners.
  • Photographer does this for a couple of years and realizes it is not worth the mental strain to keep going and to provide a high quality service, so they either:
    • Quit the business, OR
    • Realize they have to charge a lot more to continue doing it in a reasonable way, and end up charging what their hard-earned experience is worth.

There are of course photographers that do not rely on their wedding photography for their living, maybe they they have a full time job, they are already retired, or for whatever reason have no need for much income and a lot of free time.  The latter are pretty hard to compete with, but fortunately for the professionals, not that common!  But even they will start to realize that doing it for too little is not worth it.  In any case, those very reasons people can do it cheaply also make it impossible for them to (sanely) deliver a high quality service with reasonable turnaround times and make enough money from it to consider it a profession and to retire comfortably in the future. They simply don’t have enough time.

So some main messages to leave you with.

To people wanting to get into this profession:

  • Don’t jump in full time until you know that you are able to delivery a professional service, or can go for a while without a lot of income.  Start by shooting part-time (while holding another job) as a second photographer for someone already established and running a successful professional business to understand what it takes to do a great job and keep going year after year.
  • Beware the perils of ‘discounting’ and underpricing.  You (and your clients) will suffer later on when you overbook yourself.
  • Really understand the numbers of running a business.  Check out my blog post on that very topic.

To clients wondering if there’s a catch with that really cheap photographer you found

If you see a price that is too good to be true, it probably is.  A photographer lowering their price well below average is likely not a professional, and so doesn’t need the money to live, or will be overbooked in short order, and in either case, you will have to watch out for the following things:

  • Can they deliver their images on their promised deadlines?
  • Is the quality of what you get what you are hoping for?
  • Will the photographer be kind of burnt out when it comes to your wedding day from having overworked themselves trying to make ends meet while at the same time delivering on what they promised?
  • Will the poor experience you have with them mar what is otherwise supposed to be a perfect day?
  • Will the images you have from that day reflect the joy and images that you want to see far into the future?
  • Will you wait waaaay longer than you would like to get your images when they finally can get around to them?

Too many times we have heard from clients who have been frustrated by their cheap photographer, for one of the most important days of their lives.