Or, how much does wedding photography cost?

Why am I writing this post? It is the most common question for prospective brides and grooms! And we want to help explain what’s going on, from our somewhat unique perspective. I am an engineer turned photographer turned co-owner of a photo/film-making business – so I’d say I look at these things a little differently from a lot of other photography businesses.

In addition, I’ve read lots of other posts that try and explain why wedding photography is so expensive, but I think a lot of them fall short on actual numbers and analysis. Yes, the perceived value of wedding photos is very high! It is very true. It’s a big day with lots of stuff going on that you’ll want to remember! The work we do is important.  But not a lot of the blogs I’ve read actually go through the numbers and justify the costs in dollar values.

First off I would like to say, there will be variance! Maybe they are new and starting out – and don’t expect to earn as much. Or maybe they are VERY VERY good, and in VERY HIGH Demand, in which case, they can charge a lot more. Maybe they live in a place where rents are higher (or lower), where their shooters cost more (or less).  Also, none of these estimates include travel.

So let’s begin, shall we?

DISCLAIMER: Some of this may be a bit dry to read!  But it really dives into the nuts and bolts of running a photography business. And while I love taking beautiful photos, once an engineer, always an engineer – this is how I think.

Overhead

Any photography company has  overhead and activities that are not specific to a particular wedding.  These costs have to be covered one way or another.  What are the fixed expenses for a photographer?

Gear

A busy, professional, and experienced photographer might need the following gear.  This is more or less what we have.

Gear

Cost

2 camera bodies at about $4,000 each

$8,000.00

Up to $10,000 worth of lenses if not more

$10,000.00

Several flashes at around $500 each

$1,000.00

Studio Lights with stands

$1,500.00

Total

$20,500.00

The government tells us our capital cost investments (like camera gear) depreciate over 5 years. And photographers need to buy a new camera every 3 years or so (technology changes, cameras break), and lenses every 6 years or so – that has been our experience more or less.  So dividing the initial investment over 5 years is a pretty good estimate of the annual cost of maintaining and having the gear we need to do the job, even after the first 5 years.  That’s $4,100 per year, or $342/month.

Advertising and Subscriptions

Another category of expenses are the software, advertising, and other subscriptions that we need to do our work. Not every photographer will use the same tools we do, but we’re not that unusual, so I’ve used our platforms.  For example, some photographer might not use Adobe or GSuite or WeddingWire, opting for “who knows what”, Apple “something-or-other”, and going to wedding shows.  I am simply sharing my experience, as an ‘average’ wedding photography company.

Subscriptions

Cost/Month

Cost/Year

Adobe Creative Cloud – photo editing software

$100.00

$1,200.00

GSuite – email and other very useful tools

$75.00

$900.00

WeddingWire or other such thing  – a lead generating platform

$200.00

$2,400.00

Google Adwords – we have to pay to play – and part of that is advertising

$500.00

$6,000.00

Totals

$875.00

$10,500.00

Utilities & Rent

Of course, as a business, we have utilities and rent.  You may say ‘but most photographers can just work anywhere! They always meet me in coffee shops!’.  There is still a cost even associated with those things.  Let’s be fair and acknowledge that a business owner would like an office they can go to and have their computer set up nicely (after all, computer work is the bulk of what we do).  The government even recognizes this as a cost – giving home-based business owners a tax deduction of their mortgage or rent for a home office. We need phone and internet service too.

Utilities & Rent

Cost/Month

Telephone

$50.00

$600.00

Internet

$100.00

$1,200.00

Rent

$1,000.00

$12,000.00

Totals

$1,150.00

$13,800.00

Other Marketing Activities

There are also other activities that any photographer has to do to keep the lights on.  Clients don’t just drop from trees!  Before you can serve them, you have to find them (or they have to find you), you have to consult with them, sell to them, etc. There are lots of ways of doing this, but we’ve put an example breakdown below.  Some people might rely more on social media, or blogging, or newsletters, or networking, or any other way of marketing, but either way, that is still time spent doing marketing activities. Note that the rates we’ve used here, from experience, I think are more or less what you’d have to pay for someone else to do these things full time – that is, what a blog writer, social media manager, content creator, etc., might ask for if they were employed full time in a company – so I think it’s fair to do the same rate for our hypothetical solopreneur photographer.  The networking, I feel, is a higher value activity more related to sales.

Marketing Activities

hours per week

rate

Cost/week

Cost/month

Cost/Year

Blog Writing

2

$30.00

$60.00

$260.00

$3,120.00

Managing Social Media

2

$30.00

$60.00

$260.00

$3,120.00

Developing new marketing material, content creation

3

$30.00

$90.00

$390.00

$4,680.00

Networking (about 3h per week and add $50 for expenses)

4

$50.00

$200.00

$866.67

$10,400.00

Total

$21,320.00

So, what is the total cost of all these fixed expenses and marketing activities, on an annual basis?

$49,720

And that is not even talking about working with any particular single client!

Figuring out the Cost Per Wedding

Now the fun bit: figuring out what to charge. For simplicity, we need to make a few assumptions here.

  • The average coverage time we have used is 8h. It’s a bit on the low side for full day weddings, but often we shoot shorter ones too.
  • We have assumed that a full-time professional photographer can shoot about 25 8h weddings per year.

Why 25 you might ask?  For two reasons.

  1. Burnout

I’ve shot 31 weddings in a season, and it was too much!  By the last one I was counting down the hours til I was done – and that’s not fair to the customer, and not a great feeling for the photographer.  I was burnt out.  Do you really want a burnt out photographer handling the memories of one of the most important days of your life? I think not.

  1. Time

A photographer doing this full time doesn’t have time to do all the activities needed to maintain their business for much more than that.  It would be a full time job.  See below:

Item

N

Weddings per year

25

Shooting hours per wedding

8

Editing hours per wedding

32

Total hours per year

1000

Total hours per week

19

Other Activities

Hours/week

Networking

3

Blogging

3

Developing marketing materials

2

Client meetings, 4h/client, 25 clients per year

2

Editing prints, managing printing

2

Making Albums, 1/4 of clients, but like 40h/album

5

Total Hours per Week

17

Total weekly work time, solid, without lunch or breaks

36

So you see, it is really a full time job, just to do 25 weddings in a year.

First Way to Figure out the Cost Per Wedding

The simplest way to determine how much to charge per wedding, is to take the average salary an experienced wedding photographer, who can book 25 weddings, deserves in a year, running their own business, then add the overhead costs (gear, utilities, rent), and divide by the number of weddings that it is possible to do in a year.  What’s a fair annual salary for a professional photographer with years of experience and knowledge?  We’ll assume about $70,000, in our Canadian market. A very popular, in-demand, highly experienced photographer might get double that, while someone starting out might look for half.

  • Weddings a photographer can do in a year: 25
  • Annual salary before income tax: $70,000
  • Total annual expense in overhead: $33,204
  • Second Shooter Costs: $10,000
  • Total revenue needed annually: $113,204
  • Total revenue needed per 8h wedding? $4,528

So with this method, an average 8h wedding, with two photographers, should cost about $4,528

But that’s not good enough for me.  I like to dive a bit deeper to understand the root costs of things. Hence the second way to figure out the Cost Per Wedding, below.

Second Way to Figure out the Cost Per Wedding

The second way to figure out how much a wedding should cost is to add up all the activities that need to be done to carry out each wedding, and add the overhead that each wedding has to provide for. A few things to note:

  • The rates we have used are the average market rates to have a decent lead shooter, 2nd shooter, and photo editor, as subcontractors.
  • The rate for client communications and sales is a high value, client-facing activity, so we’ve assumed the same rate as our lead photographer.
  • Editing takes the bulk of the time for each wedding – in our business, it’s just about 2 hours for each shooter hour. So each hour shot with two photographers takes 4 hours to edit. For an 8 hour wedding, that’s 32 hours of editing.

The total time spent communicating with the client, from lead to job done, I’ve estimated as a minimum as below.  It can be way more or way less, I’m sure, depending on the photographer.  It’s probably a bit more than this in our business, but I’m being conservative.

Activity

minutes

Booking a call

30

Having a call

60

Finalizing the booking

20

Meetings before the wedding

60

Location scout

30

Image presentation

45

Total Hours per client

4

So we add that to the actual costs on the wedding day, and the editing costs.

Per shoot costs

Hours

Rate

Total cost per wedding

Lead shooter

8

$80.00

$640.00

2nd shooter

8

$50.00

$400.00

Editor

32

$25.00

$800.00

Client communications, minimum, from lead to job done

4

$80.00

$320.00

Equipment, advertising, networking, and other costs, divided between the year’s weddings

Total Annual Cost

$54,804.00

$2,192.16

Total cost
  • $4,352.16

So an 8 hour wedding, with an average professional, experienced photographer dedicated to doing the best job they can for you, is $4,352.16.

Do you notice something? That is almost the same as the simpler first method for determining the cost of a wedding!

Of course, as mentioned at the start, there are tonnes of variables that can impact this.  The cost will change depending on:

  • Market
  • Popularity of the photographer
  • Experience of the photographer
  • Whether there are one or two shooters
  • I’m sure a bunch of other factors I’m not listing here.

So the question is, how important are these pictures for you?  And what level of service do you expect?  Those are huge.  A professional, experienced, photographer is dedicated to their work full time – and delivers a service they can be proud of, and that clients will love – all while sustaining that for years and years.

In the end, you get what you pay for.