Product Photographers- How I price my product photography work.

As professional commercial photographer, I am regularly contacted by businesses seeking product photography for their merchandise. Understandably, my Clients want the best value possible, so I understand when they shop my offer.

I first price to win business. I don't price to negotiate. If the Client wants to haggle me down, I get annoyed. Mostly because my price is competitive and I know how much time is involved in getting the job done.

I try to keep my pricing model simple. This enables my Clients to estimate costs with some accuracy.

$400 is the minimum order- $25 per product shot.
Setup is a *****. If it takes me:

• Half an hour or more to build a photo set
• Half an hour to photograph one item
• Half an hour to take the set down (because many items photograph differently)
• Half an hour or more to coordinate invoicing
• Half an hour or more collecting and file delivery to the Client and
• Half an hour to edit (or more)

I will be making about $5 bucks or less to image a single product. All businesses have fixed operating costs and to offer a service that does not reasonably cover those time expenses is not a sustainable practice. Unless you have an assembly line process in place to manage your product photography, taking on two items that won't cover your basic costs is a stupid and poor use of your time.

To add to the above notion, $400 still does not cover my shop rate; but you don't want to alienate your best customers for small projects. So it is good practice to offer some pricing flexibility from time to time; moreover it is a good idea to offer the occasional favour.

My goal is to capture a reasonable shop rate for what I do. The guy who fixes your car charges $100 to $120 per hour. Offering this rate (or more) to your Clients is reasonable.

If you are running any business, you will have down time, research and development budgets, equipments expenses, not to mention costs in: advertising, rent, consumables, insurance, utilities, etc... One who doesn't charge sufficient amounts of money to run their operation is not looking at the big picture of running a company that will last. This company is not poised for growth and possibly working on the fringes of desperation. I am also likely to point that out to the customer in a competitive bid situation.

Once in a while I get a Client who asks me to work for free or at a discount and they'll promote my business. Once or twice I took the offer, but nothing ever pans out. I don't offer free or discounted product photography work anymore.

I am quite flagrant about chopping down competitors if they are charging considerably less than I do. I often point out that these guys do not know what is involved. Often they shoot from their bedroom or garage, lack insurance or use substandard equipment. A guy who produces product photography from a Mickey Mouse setup often produces Mickey Mouse product photography work.

Vendors who lack the margin to stand behind the merchandise seldom do. If you product photography fees are too low, don't expect great post service support.

Custom Product Photography assignments
I charge my shop rate for custom jobs. I do this when I don't know how to price because there is considerable custom work, project ambiguity or likely service creep (the project needs may grow).

Because I use an assistant, I work faster so my shop rate is a reasonable $125 an hour. I always provide a quote with terms because this makes the expectations absolutely clear. If I charge hourly, I prefer to overestimate the budget so I won't be the bad guy at invoicing time.

If the prospective Client is worried that I may over charge them out of fear of ambiguity, I have many credible references they can contact; if that is not enough I cannot help them.

Generally for large new Clients for brands I know, I forgo a deposit; big companies seem to predictably pay. For small companies I don't know, I request a deposit if the owner seems volatile. If the owner has vested a considerable effort into the project, I may forego a pre-payment. Small companies must pay COD if they are new; large companies often get 30 days terms.

Conclusion

Pricing is arguably one of the most important component of any business. Your price structure will determine your ability to turn a profit, make your offering better and poise your business for growth. Undercutting your competition as a default strategy lacks insight.


This is a setup for carpet product shots at Jules Design. This kind of setup takes a while to do and the size of the item requires special lighting and a high ceiling clearance. You can't shoot many items well from a non-studio environment. Price your product photography to capture the value you offer and to recover the time energy you spent.

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Jules Design

Toronto Commercial Product Photographer

"You'll promote my business? Brother, if I take pictures free for you, I won't have a business -- I’ll be running a charity for the undeserving!"

Like you, I got sucked in once or twice but not the third time.

Your prices seem low to me.

Thanks for an interesting post.

Good post. To emphasize a couple of areas

Jules Design said:

...
Setup is a *****. If it takes me:

• Half an hour or more to build a photo set
• Half an hour to photograph one item
• Half an hour to take the set down (because many items photograph differently)
• Half an hour or more to coordinate invoicing
• Half an hour or more collecting and file delivery to the Client and
• Half an hour to edit (or more)

I will be making about $5 bucks or less to image a single product. All businesses have fixed operating costs and to offer a service that does not reasonably cover those time expenses is not a sustainable practice.

Click to expand...

Jules Design said:

...

If you are running any business, you will have down time, research and development budgets, equipments expenses, not to mention costs in: advertising, rent, consumables, insurance, utilities, etc... One who doesn't charge sufficient amounts of money to run their operation is not looking at the big picture of running a company that will last. This company is not poised for growth and possibly working on the fringes of desperation. I am also likely to point that out to the customer in a competitive bid situation.

Jules Design

Toronto Commercial Product Photographer

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I see far too many beginning photographers price based on their shooting time, without allowing for all the other time that goes into a job, much less running a business. I see a great many work-from-home photographers pricing at levels that must be paying them minimum wage or less if they really figured all the time they put in. And then they wonder why they cannot quit their day job.

Gato

you could be correct - I may need to increase some more, btw I just did

Here in Boston, I charge either per shot ( $ 250. ) 1/2 day ( $ 1250. ) and full day ( $ 2000. ) Plus, $ 100./hr. for Photoshop work.

For every hour I spend shooting behind the camera, I spend another hour behind the computer. And as you know, clients usually want jpgs, Photoshop ( when they have the software )and Tiffs. Sometimes in sizes to fit their layouts. After which I have to upload the files to the Cloud.

As you mentioned, set up can take a while. Hopefully, the set up can be used for at least a few similar shots.

Your 1st shot should be a minimum of $ 250. After the first, you could maybe lower the price to $ 100. Then, at least you would be covered for the set up time.

Also, replacing your equipment. Ever had to replace a flash tube ( $ 85. ) or a 250w modeling light ( $ 25. ). One little tap or a drop and you have to replace both. Who will pay for that?

To be a successful photographer, you need 3 attributes:

1. Good at your craft

2. Great personality

3. Great business sense

If you're missing any one of these you will never make a good living. And if you have only 2 you might clear $ 75,000/year. Only one and you can be part of the national average for photographers, $30,000.

Good luck ( which you will need? )

Great info. Thanks. I have some questions I was hoping I can get answered and your post has helped me figure a few things out.

I was interested in pricing. I'm a semi-pro photographer, but not for product photography. Years ago, I did do product photography for a friend that started a jewelry biz and a hair product company. I mostly do landscape and astrophotography (by preference), but the last two years I've been roped into head shots and portraits, which I also love. I have all professional equipment - pro level cameras, L-lenses, pro lighting, etc. So here's my "dilemma":

I have a buddy that works for a large mattress company. As a favor, I was going to shoot a few mattresses that they needed as an emergency. This factory/showroom is in SoCal, and their corporate office is in Chicago. Normally they would ship the beds to Chicago from various factories across the country and have them photographed there. For this particular shoot there was not time. I stepped in as a favor for a shoot of 1 bed, three angles, with post silos and easy specs. Just a favor for my buddy who was going to buy me dinner.

So apparently they liked my work and wanted to hire me for another shoot. More beds, pretty much same shots and specs. I offered a trade and they jumped at the chance. So I got a killer mattress and adjustable frame out of the gig.

They wanted to hire me again, and I made the same offer for a bed and adjustable frame for my parents. All good.

Then they hired me for another pretty easy shoot, that turned out to be 24 shots. Post silos and corner closeup. I charged $1500.

The next shoot was pretty much all day, with the final product being 39 images. This was was alot of work in post for various reasons. One of the factors was that I had to shoot a mattress flat, then put it on an adjustable frame and bend it to fit. Good learning experience and everything came out great. They loved it and have three more shoots scheduled for me, and my buddy is saying they want to do the photography here in SoCal and not have to send the product to Chicago. All great, but I do have a real job that I love so I don't want to take on more than I can chew. Also, I haven't invoiced them for this shoot yet, but it was alot of work, with the shoot itself but especially post. I'm hoping to get some idea of what I should charge.

Another thing I'm not sure about....the retail company that the mattress company was making the beds for is a major National retailer. They have asked if I would be interested in doing a shoot for them. They contacted me through my website though, and didn't go through the mattress company. Is this some type of conflict of interest? Seems like they would have just asked the mattress company for the info on the photographer. Not really sure how all this works.

But anyway, they are giving me a lot of work, which I really appreciate. But if they are wanting to move photography operations/logistics, it occurred to me that I might be underselling my services. I want to be fair, and I appreciate the work, but I'd like to be competitive and reasonable in my pricing. I'm new to product photography, obviously, but I must be doing a pretty good job. Any info or help would be greatly appreciated. If you'd like to see a sample of the work I've done for them I can send samples.

Thanks.

PhotoWux said:

Any info or help would be greatly appreciated.

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These posts in the 'Pro Digital Talk' section (as Amateurs talk about equipment, Pros talk about money, and Masters talk about light) may help answer some of your questions:

Value to them

How do you do your invoicing?

Licensing fee as set percentage ...

How much to charge for licensing

What is it worth?



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Cheers
Ashley

www.ashleymorrison.com

Not a photographer, but worked closely with small businesses for years. Many new business owners far underestimate the amount of time and expense needed to run the show outside of their primary craft. Tends to lead to trouble when it comes to service, pricing, and follow through.

I can’t think of many issues with pro photographers with the quality of pictures, but had to stop working with one because of service and follow through. Sad too, because her images of the kids were fantastic. But you don’t want to wait until they’re walking to get their six month photos.



Good post.

Thanks so much. Still a bit confusing, but I'm seeing the light.

I'm liking the $/shot model. Question though: What would you charge for a close-up of a previous shot. For example, this client has the main shot of the bed. They also want a shot of the corner of the bed, and a shot of the ribbing detail. The corner shot is just a crop of the original image, and the detail shot is just a close-up shot with very little post. Obviously I wouldn't charge full price for those. Any thoughts?

Thanks.

Reply if you want to, but Jules probably doesn't care any more.

PhotoWux said:

I'm liking the $/shot model. Question though: What would you charge for a close-up of a previous shot. For example, this client has the main shot of the bed. They also want a shot of the corner of the bed, and a shot of the ribbing detail. The corner shot is just a crop of the original image, and the detail shot is just a close-up shot with very little post. Obviously I wouldn't charge full price for those. Any thoughts?

Thanks.

Click to expand...

You need to stop thinking about the value to you, and start thinking about the value to them... or even to others.

The three main things which will determine the value to them, besides the number of images that they would want to use, is the 'Media use', the 'Period of use' and the 'Territory of use'.

More use = greater value to them.

Less use = less value to them.

So the more boxes they need you to tick...



.. the more they will be willing to pay - irrespective of how much or little it costs you or how long it takes you.

Because it's not about you - it's all about them and the value to them.

--
Cheers
Ashley

Great points. Thanks.

I am a consulting civil engineer and have heard various versions of the following story for several decades now. It's another way of saying the value of your service is very often much more than the cost of the time spent.

This post is long, but I hope you will find these lessons useful.

PhotoWux said:

There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired. Several years later his company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines. They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine fixed, but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past.

The engineer reluctantly took the challenge. He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day he marked a small “x” in chalk on a particular component of the machine and proudly stated, “This is where your problem is.” The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again.

The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges. The engineer responded briefly:

One chalk mark………………….$1

Knowing where to put it……..$49,999

It was paid in full and the engineer retired in peace

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When we develop fee budgets for engineering projects, we start with a Work Breakdown Structure. We list tasks such as project management, meetings, travel, the cost of subconsultants such as surveyors and geotechnical engineers, preparing reports, performing engineering calculations, preparing the drawings that will go into a plan set (for which I prepare a preliminary sheet list), preparing specifications, assisting the client with bidding the project out to contractors, providing engineering services during construction, and a bunch more. Then we assign various staff members at their billing rates to their tasks (our billing rates are intended to cover salaries, overhead, and ~10% profit and they are usually about 3x salary), add non-labor costs for things like mileage, add a contingency, do some multiplication and addition, and arrive at an estimate of the fee that it will take to complete the project. We usually iterate this process to come up with a fee that both the project team and management can agree on. This fee, minus the contingency, is the lowest fee we will accept. So, if the client wants the project for even less and won't budge, we walk. Sometimes, though, the project has a value to the client that somewhat to greatly exceeds our fee estimate. In those cases, we will increase our fee appropriately*....kind of like in the story, but not as much. I have been doing this a long time and rarely fail to meet or beat my budget estimate.

So, for you, for a particular project, I suggest estimating your total time and that for any assistants before the shoot, at the shoot, and after the shoot (including time spent on the computer), the cost of rental equipment (if any), business management and overhead costs, travel costs, etc....whatever costs can be associated with a shoot. That should be your lowest acceptable fee. Then look at the value to the client as best you can. If your budget exceeds the value to the client it's probably not worth pursuing. If your budget is less, then it probably is worth pursuing (excepting of course if the client is a pain to work with, then it might not be worth pursuing after all).

* My best example of setting a fee based on the value of a project to a client, rather than setting the fee based just on the effort involved is this, and I will likely never have such an opportunity again since I am nearing retirement.

I was the project manager and lead civil engineer for three correctional institutions for a large government agency. I worked as a subconsultant to the project architect. My boss came up with the fee for the first project (before I came to work in that office), which was about $450,000. He goofed because he forgot to include about $20,000 worth of work, so we exceeded our budget, although we still made a profit. The contract for this project included a provision to possibly add a second project, which they did. I prepared this budget (about $500,000, which included $20,000 that I could move to the first project to heal that budget and make management happy). Because of the many similarities between these two projects, I knew that much of my design for the first project would be directly usable for the second project...sort of like selling limited edition prints . This is pretty rare in civil engineering because most of our projects are very site specific. However, in this case the site specific parts of the project were limited mostly to the grading and drainage design. In the end, I was able to bring in the project about $200,000 under budget. Since our fee was lump sum, this was pure profit. The third project was quite a bit different and there was less opportunity to reuse elements from the first two, but I still priced for value instead of costs and cleared an extra $40,000 or so.

--

'Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?'
…Winston S. Churchill

skysurfer5 said:

I am a consulting civil engineer and have heard various versions of the following story for several decades now. It's another way of saying the value of your service is very often much more than the cost of the time spent.

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The question is, do you believe you are providing your clients with 'a service' or are you simply providing them with some images to use?

Images which you own, because you agreed beforehand to employ yourself to create them... for them and possibly others to use over the years to come.

For example, some images to use exclusively, in one of their magazines for one month, in various parts of the world...



.. or some images to use in a magazine that is owned by someone else, for one month, in a much smaller part of the world - plus on the cover too...



.. or some images to use in one of their other magazines, for one month, throughout the UK & Ireland only...



.. on a 2nd Rights or non-exclusive basis!!

--
Cheers
Ashley

Jules Design said:

Because I use an assistant, I work faster so my shop rate is a reasonable $125 an hour. I

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Jules Design said:

$25 per product shot.
• Half an hour or more to build a photo set
• Half an hour to photograph one item
• Half an hour to take the set down (because many items photograph differently)
• Half an hour or more to coordinate invoicing
• Half an hour or more collecting and file delivery to the Client and
• Half an hour to edit (or more)

Click to expand...

Sounds like this poor guy wasn't even making minimum wage according to his breakdown, certainly nowhere near his $125/hour. Working from home as a customer service rep for Amazon now?

Engineering and photography (and many other lines of work) are services. And those services include producing and submitting deliverables to the client.

For me, a deliverable might be a report, a set of plans and specifications, a computer model of a water distribution system, or something else that falls within the practice of civil engineering.

With photography, it might be one or more prints, it might be film negatives or slides, it might be digital files, etc.

In my line of work, reuse of my deliverables for another project without my express permission constitutes the practice of engineering without a license and this is prohibited by law. In photography, issues such as copyright, permission or refusal to reuse an image, etc. must be specified in the agreement.

So, service with deliverables.

skysurfer5 said:

Engineering and photography (and many other lines of work) are services. And those services include producing and submitting deliverables to the client.

For me, a deliverable might be a report, a set of plans and specifications, a computer model of a water distribution system, or something else that falls within the practice of civil engineering.

With photography, it might be one or more prints, it might be film negatives or slides, it might be digital files, etc.

In my line of work, reuse of my deliverables for another project without my express permission constitutes the practice of engineering without a license and this is prohibited by law. In photography, issues such as copyright, permission or refusal to reuse an image, etc. must be specified in the agreement.

So, service with deliverables.

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If you went out and took some pictures this weekend, which someone next month or next year wanted to use, would you still believe you were providing a 'service with deliverables’ or would you then just be providing them with a product, i.e. some images to use?

A quick google search, by the way, shows that the people in the Music business also ask these same type of questions, e.g. Can music be considered as a product, or it is a service? - as they too would often just sell the Rights to use their work, rather than always a performance.

One of the many answers, for example:

"Music per se is immaterial and informational, thus should be considered as a service, but the media that conveys it (CDs, DVDs, etc.) turns it into a product. The proprietorship laws the govern music making, performing and listening, also attributes to music characteristics of a product, that can be bought, sold and licensed; entirely or in parts."

As there isn’t a Rule Book or a governing body that says 'we must do this or we must do that' - and since you don’t need any qualifications to become a Photographer or a Musician or an Artist of any kind - then maybe it isn’t really like being an Engineer at all??

So time to "think different", as Apple would say ;-)

Bottom line, I don’t think there is a single right answer - just more questions than answers - but obviously before you would quote a price, you will need to know which one of the two it is, that you want them to pay you for.

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Cheers
Ashley

But now you have moved from contract work to "on spec" ("on speculation") work, which is completely different. With contract work, the conditions are established by agreement before the work is performed and the agreement specifies the deliverables and the conditions for their use/resuse. "On spec" work does not happen in my field, but is common in photography. It is also not a service like contract work is. Instead, it is simply results (hopefully) in sale(s) of an item, in this case a photo, maybe matted and/or framed.

One of my friends is a pro with more than 30 years of experience. He pays the bills with various types of photography, including events, products, agricultural, industrial, drones, video production, etc., and probably a few things I am forgetting. He used to do a lot of portraits and weddings, but now only serves as a second shooter once in a while for his daughter, who specializes in portraits and weddings, when her regular second shooter isn't available. All this is contract work. However, his passion is landscape photography, specifically the Sierra Nevada (Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon National Park, the more rugged eastern slope, etc.) and the California coast. He does several backpacking trips each summer and driving trips year around for "on spec" landscape photography. He sells enough to make it worth his while, but not enough to forego all the contract work he does.