You should never be pressured into paying more than you can afford to pay for wedding pictures, but you shouldn't assume they are a rip-off or some kind of scam. After the guests are gone, the gifts are opened and the honeymoon is over, aside from your relationship, your photos are everything you have left. Good professional photographers offers you photos worth becoming component of your family's history. To learn more about our wedding photography service visit our wedding page.
Photographers do a lot more than just showing up and capturing. Below is a list of just a few items that are highly relevant to ALL professional photographers.
Expenditures Incurred by Most Professional Photographers
Advertising - Although it is good to get referrals from existing clients, typically that don't bring in enough revenue to support a sustainable business. Advertising is expensive. Web marketing http://andersoniiaq170.over-blog.com/2020/08/25-surprising-facts-about-nyc-photographer.html can range from $100 monthly for a small photographer, up to a few thousand dollars per month for a larger photography company. Other marketing costs include print ads, ads on event preparing websites and Google AdWords and other pay-per-click advertising. At the very least, you can be assured that 99% of professional photographers spend a significant amount on advertising which needs to be payed for.
Taxes - Just like anyone else, photographers pay taxes on their income. Not merely do they pay income tax, there is also to pay sales taxes. For school photographers, event photographers and youth sports activities photographers it is absolutely cut and dry, you pay sales tax based on the tax price for the area where you shoot. For our studio, that is Temecula, the Inland Empire, Riverside County, Orange County and NORTH PARK County, basically most of Southern California. That will take typically 8.75% of their fee right off the very best of the sales amount. In some cases, in many areas of the country, California included, professional wedding photographers must pay sales tax even if they're charging a flat charge for their service. Many photographers believe sales tax doesn't connect with "photography services", like wedding photography or event picture taking where they get paid a flat amount. Generally they are incorrect and can run into trouble with the government if they do not comply.
Personally, i know of a case in which a NORTH PARK event photographer did a lot of her events for a set fee and thought she didn't need to pay sales tax. When she was audited, she had to pay sales taxes for a considerable amount of her previous events, which nearly place her out of business. Consider that when you are considering a photographers price, as much as 40% in some cases could be being paid in taxes! So if you are paying someone $1000 fee, as much as $400 of maybe it's going to the federal government.
Equipment - Professional quality, DSLR camera bodies price as much as $5,000. Lenses are typically more of a price for a photographer because they need many of them to obtain the right shot. There are particular lenses for portrait photography, event photography and all sorts of specialty lenses that photographers carry within their bag to make sure they have many potential shots covered. Professional photographers' lenses can EASILY cost $1,000 or even more. Some lenses can cost just as much as $5000 or more depending on the type of photography they are designed for. Professional sports photographers' lenses are a little fortune.
This equipment wears down exactly like any other little bit of electronics (that's what they are these days, electronics). High volume photographers can degrade cameras in a year or two. The average life of a surveillance camera is 100,000 to 150,000 shots. At a big studio, just in youth sports photography and school picture taking business, studios may photograph as many as 50,000 kids each year. At 2-3 shots per child, you can see how fast that may breakdown equipment. With professional wedding photographers it is not quite that bad, but a marriage might have as much as 3000 pictures taken, that may still add up quickly. Add to all that thousands of dollars in lights, flashes, tripods, camera bags, memory cards, batteries and the a huge selection of other miscellanies items that professional photographers need and you begin to get a concept of how expensive being a professional photographer could be.
Insurance - For sports activities and school photographers, liability insurance is a must. It is suggested that these types of photographers bring at least 2 million dollars in liability insurance. Equipment insurance is even more expensive. A big photography organization could have $100,000 worth of equipment or more, which is a few thousand dollars per year to insure.
Other costs that effect photographers pricing
Sales and Prospecting - For school photographers and school photographers, almost all their period is spent is prospecting, marketing and sales. This involves considerable time. Just finding prospects that they can market to takes hours out of every time. Once a prospect is found, time is then spent trying to create get in touch with and set a meeting to present their products and services. Driving to the meeting and ending up in customers can take a whole day. For wedding photographers, time is normally spent with the client before the wedding then again after the wedding ceremony showing the finished items. In the event that you add to that a custom wedding ceremony album, you can see that most professional photographers' period is spent carrying out everything but taking pictures.
After a shoot, many photographers hours color correcting, editing and touching up images. For http://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=photo youth sports and school photographers, you will see HOURS of data access of the customers' orders. Unlike photographers who only shoot weddings or senior portraits who typically cope with 1 customer at a time, youth sports activities and school photographers deal with thousands of clients a month oftentimes. Additionally, youth sports and school photographers possess multiple "layers" of customer interaction. For youth sports photographers, their main customer may be the league or organization, who makes your choice on which photographer to select, but the clients who make the purchases are the parents in the little league. A good studio will also assign a devoted consumer manager to each little league or school to make sure they possess everything they need to make sure their picture time is a success.
Talent- True professional photographers are performers. Anyone can find out the ins-and-outs of a camcorder and memorize all of its functions. Professional photographers have a "photographer's eye", which enables them to see the correct shot and consider it. Really good images aren't just properly exposed, they are something to keep in mind.