The hidden truth of photography price
In many years of doing photography, we have a lot of wonderful clients who supported us on every possible way. But sometimes, new client came in and questioned our price, said that we were overpriced. We understand client’s standpoint, and we would love to express our idea about this pricing expectation.
Photography as a business
Photography is a business. It’s a business that supply photography service to clients who in need. This also creates different segments, serving different needs of differrent clients. Each segment would have its own price, like every other business.
Why is so different in price between people?
You may see many guys offer service for cheap, really cheap. And you expect a studio, or a production house would do the same. The output is the same, it’s just photo.
Then why it is so different in price?
The devil is in detail.
Let’s take a simple example. Any car can take you from A to B. Every automotive company can supply you a car to take you anywhere you want. Then why a Roll Royce is massively more expensive than a Toyota?
They’re both car, but not all cars are equal.
It is the same to image making.
The image you see, sometimes take more time and effort to create than you may think.
The mentality of photography as part of business
An image represents your product, your company abilities, and tell people what you have and what you want them to believe. People see your image many times before they decided to buy from you. So you need an image that can impress people, not in a bad way, but in a subtle and smart way, they dont even recognize your appearance. That leads them to buying decision later. And a good image will help you win more people.
Some may say it’s just photos, but real business man will see it as an asset. A good asset helps you win more clients. Otherwise, it’s wasted money, a sunking cost.
Producing good image, image that help you attract customer requires experience. It’s not only just photography experience, it’s about market experience.
Commercial photography is never separated from marketing strategy. You need a strong vision with clear strategy to lead your company ahead of competitors. From that vision, we define the broad stroke of image making process.
Commercial photography is not just taking photos. It needs a strong foundation, your vision, our skill and market insights. No matter what market you are in, those things are always expensive.
It’s not taking photos, it’s project management
When you open your phone and take pictures with your phone camera, it’s a simple snapshot. Anyone with a phone with camera can do that. Or anyone with a camera.
But when you taking photos for specific purpose, thing become complicated right away.
Let’s take an example. You want some photos for social media. You just need few photos. Anyone can do it, so let’s find cheapest photographer out there and save some bucks.
That wont works out for your brand, because you walk on a path with no destination.
Strong brands know their audiences. They study the audiences and build their marketing plan around them. They all develop comprehensive guideline to match produced content to their brand. Every copywrites, every images are designed to attract their intended audiences.
When photography has to follow specific guideline, it’s become complicated. The simple photoshoot becomes a visual project and requires a lot of brainstorming to bring image to life. It could require special tools and skills, work in tight production timeline, spend more time in post production to get images right.
Every steps require creativity and labor, lots of them.
Sometimes you see us doing it so quick and you think we overcharge. But truth is, we’ve harnessed our skill for years to deliver good work in short time. As oldage said, if you see someone doing it effortlessly, it’s done by a professional.
What seems cheap may turn into sunking cost you dont want to mention for years. So spend your money wisely!
