How Much Should a Photographer Charge? (Updated for 2024)
In this guide, I’ll break down five essential factors to help you confidently determine your photography rates. While I’ll focus on portrait photography — specifically headshots, model tests, personal branding, and commercial shoots — the pricing principles I’ll share are adaptable to other photography genres as well.
I'll also provide insights into my own pricing for different types of portrait work and suggest fair rate ranges for photographers at various experience levels and markets.
Whether you shoot portraits or other genres, these recommendations will help you set rates that reflect your value and expertise.
5 Factors That Affect Your Rate
Factor #1: Your Skills and Experience
The better your work is, the more money you can command for your services.
But your skills with the camera are only part of the equation. Your experience level also affects how much you can charge your clients.
Let’s say you’re shooting a commercial campaign. Are you comfortable directing the talent?
Do you know which lighting setups you need to use to get the required shots?
Are you able to move quickly between setups and stay on schedule?
If you’re shooting a model test, do you have a reliable makeup artist and hairstylist to work with?
Do you know what market the agency wants to place the talent you’re shooting with and what style you should be going for?
Do you know how to coach the model with posing if they aren’t experienced?
Your clients aren’t just paying for great images; they’re paying for the peace of mind and reliability of working with a professional who can deliver precisely what they need. Your ability to skillfully navigate any pitfalls and adapt to any situation only gets better the more experienced you are.
Factor #2: Your Cost of Doing Business
Think about everything you’re paying for to be a working photographer.
Your camera and lenses.
Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.
Website.
Client photo gallery service.
That fancy iMac you just bought to edit photos on.
External hard drives for all your photos.
Memory cards.
Lighting gear.
And let’s think beyond gear and subscription services. What about education to hone your craft? Workshops, conferences, and online courses?
And it doesn’t stop there. Let’s say your business is an LLC. Gotta file that annual report ($200 in North Carolina) every year.
What if you want to outsource some work to earn back some of your time? (Smart move, by the way.) Accountants, bookkeepers, assistants, graphic designers, web developers. They all cost money, too.
Lastly, what we all hate the most is taxes, which, if you’re self-employed, can eat up to 30-40% of your gross earnings.
Remember, gross sales do not equal net income. In other words, charging $1,000 for a shoot is not the same as profiting $1,000.
After paying fees and taxes, your net profit (what you get to keep) is probably closer to $600-$700, depending on your specific expenses and tax liabilities. That’s why it’s so important to know your costs—so you can charge enough to cover not only them but also your profit.
Factor #3 Your Local Market
I live in a small beach town in North Carolina. My rates will be quite different from those of a photographer who lives in New York City.
Large markets have many big companies with sizable budgets compared to small towns and cities with more modest economies.
But while it’s true that your location does affect your pricing to a certain degree, don’t let it limit you. Just because you live in a small town doesn’t mean you can’t make a good living with photography. It just means that, everything else being equal, the average cost of your services won’t be the same as someone who lives and works in a major market.
Factor #4 Type of Shoot
Different projects have different scopes.
Retail photography, otherwise known as consumer photography, is when you work directly with the client to take portraits for non-commercial use. This kind of photography tends to be more straightforward and formulaic.
For example, my signature headshot sessions are typically an hour long and include two retouched images. For this reason, my pricing is always the same.
On the other hand, whenever I receive an RFP (Request for Proposal) for a commercial project, there are always so many variables to consider.
The production might require that I provide the talent, rent a studio, scout a suitable outdoor location, bring in a makeup artist and wardrobe stylist, and deliver a library of images within two business days of the shoot.
(I should mention that such complex productions generally necessitate at least half a day of pre-production work, something you absolutely should account for in your fee.)
My rate for these commercial productions is always much higher than my retail photography gigs, and you can see why — there is a lot more time and effort involved.
For some shoots, all the logistics are planned for you; you just need to show up and shoot. For others, you have to play the producer role and take charge of planning all the logistics. Charge accordingly.
A note on image licensing: It’s standard to license images to your client in commercial photography. Licensing your images means charging a fee to grant your client permission to use your images within a defined scope.
Why is this important?
It ensures that you’re paid fairly for your work. If a company plans to use your image to advertise locally, you can charge a small fee. If, on the other hand, they want to take out a billboard in Times Square, you can charge quite a bit more.
For large commercial projects, it’s not uncommon for the photographer to earn more through image licensing than they do from their day rate!
The industry is shifting, and licensing doesn’t quite operate the same way it did twenty years ago, but you should absolutely factor this into your rate.
Factor #5 Post-Production Time
Your job isn’t over when the shoot is complete, which is why you need to account for all the work you’ll be doing in post-production when pricing your services.
In the past, I used to spend two or three times as much time in post-production as I did on the actual shoot. (I have a team of trusted retouchers now — one of the best things I ever did for my business.)
Depending on how you prefer to present your pricing, you can either include your post-production fee as part of your general rate or break it out as a separate line item (per image, for example). However you do it, just make sure you account for the time you’ll spend in front of your computer editing.
My rates, broken down by shoot type
Without further ado, here is a rough range of what I charge based on the type of shoot I’m doing.
Individual Headshots
$400-$600 for individual headshot sessions, two retouched images delivered.
Group Headshots
$250 per person, one final image delivered per individual.
Note: I will offer tiered pricing with group headshots if it’s a high-volume shoot. For example, if the company hiring me needs 30 headshots, I might charge $175 per head instead of $250. This kind of cost-savings incentivizes them to knock out a bunch of headshots in one session versus just hiring me for two headshots.
Model Tests
Model tests are shoots with models recently signed to a modeling agency. The purpose of these shoots is to develop the models' portfolios so they can be booked for jobs.
For simple shoots that don’t require makeup, hair styling, or wardrobe styling, my base rate is $1,290 for three looks. That number goes up depending on how complex the shoot is (multiple outfit changes, multiple locations, etc.)
Personal Branding Shoots
$3,500-$7,500+
Personal branding is a buzzword that gets thrown around so often that its definition can be unclear. Personal branding photography aims to sell your client’s personality through a series of images that depict what they’re all about.
Branding photography has become especially popular in recent years due to a rise in entrepreneurship. Now more than ever, bloggers, YouTubers, solopreneurs, and all types of small business owners need a variety of professional image assets that they can use in their businesses—from their website to social media to online advertising.
There are many ways to charge for personal branding shoots, but I prefer to keep my pricing simple. I charge $1690 for the session and offer a range of image collections that are priced separately. This puts the client in the driver’s seat because they’re in complete control of how many images they purchase. Sometimes it’s 16, sometimes it’s 60. My price includes a license for them to freely use the photos on their site, social media, and paid advertising.
Commercial Photography
$3,500-$5,500 (Day Rate)
Simply put: The purpose of commercial photography is to sell something.
If the client wants to use your images to sell a product or service, it’s commercial.
Because the client will be making money off your images and these shoots involve a lot more on the production side, you need to charge accordingly. This is why it’s so important to always ask your prospective clients, “Where will these images be used?” before you send out a quote.
(Side note: It can be argued that headshots, model tests, and personal branding shoots are commercial, but for some reason, it’s not standard practice to license images for those types of shoots. I know, it’s confusing.)
My day rate for commercial projects starts at $3,500. This assumes a full day of shooting, generally ten hours or so. This fee does not include post-production, which I will generally charge per image.
If I’m asked to produce the shoot (find models, scout a location, provide makeup and hair), my fee goes up. I really want to stress this: A lot of time can be spent in pre-production. Every moment you spend coordinating a shoot should be factored into your fee.
A Note on Retail Boutiques
Retail boutiques, especially in small towns, need good photography to help sell their clothes. But you have to be careful here. Unless it’s a high-end store, boutiques generally have a minimal budget, so you have to determine if the amount of work involved is worth what they’re willing to pay you.
Remember, the boutique would be using your images to sell their clothes, which means it’s commercial photography. Your images are valuable to their business; do not forget that!
My best advice when shooting for boutiques is to shoot fast and efficiently, save time by limiting your locations, and try to batch shoot as many looks as possible so that you don’t show up just to shoot two looks.
It’s also worth trying to arrange some sort of monthly retainer agreement with the boutique so that you can work with them regularly.
Here’s how much you should charge for your work
Okay, by now hopefully you have a much better idea of what you should charge based on all of the factors I covered in this article. But some of you are still scratching your heads and saying, “I still don’t know what I should charge!”
Here are what I believe to be reasonable “starting” rates, assuming you’re a new photographer just starting to charge for your work and live in a small market. You should adjust these numbers upward based on the factors I covered earlier in this article.
Individual Headshots - $250
Group Headshots - $200 per person
Model Tests - $600
Personal Branding Shoots - $800
Commercial (Day Rate) - $1,200
Notice that there’s nothing less than $100 on there? That’s not by accident. Shooting anything for less than $100 is practically working for free. Don’t do it.
If you want to do photography for a living but can’t support yourself with your current rates, the answer isn’t to lower your prices to attract more clients but to find a main source of income.
There’s no shame in working a day job while building up your photography side hustle. That’s exactly what I did. I worked in higher education for two years before my income from photography surpassed what I made at my day job. If I had put pressure on myself immediately to make ends meet with my photography, I’m confident it wouldn’t have worked out.
Final thoughts
You didn’t become a business owner to struggle; you’re in this game to *thrive*. To do that, you have to take the time to understand your costs and what you need to charge to profit. The more you make, the healthier your business. The healthier your business, the more you get to serve your magic to the world, which means you AND your clients are fulfilled.
That’s a win for everyone, and it starts with you.
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Looking for more in-depth content on how to make more money with photography? Check out my online course, Getting Started with Portrait and Commercial Photography