How things have changed.
Most of us probably don’t remember, but 20 years ago, and before, most people didn’t get formal family portraits done. It was expensive. You had to go to a studio. They charged you a sitting fee, then they upsold you prints and it was….
..expensive.
Even the relatively few families that did it, only did it rarely. Maybe only ONCE. It was expensive.
Things changed, but changing wasn’t easy. In 1998 I started doing two things that were pretty much unheard of:
One. I shot on location….without studio overhead, I could charge a lot less.
Two. I eliminated sitting fees, and started giving customers digital files with full releases.
I looked at the traditional business model for portrait photography and decided that while it was BRILLIANT at making the photographer money, it was also (just my opinion) a little
too much “bait and switch” for me.
Get them in the door for $75, end up charging them $600.
The old model, while potentially lucrative, meant that most people could NEVER afford to get good family pictures. Let alone do it regularly.
Skip ahead 7 or so years, and I started doing something else no one had seen before…
…I dropped all forms of traditional advertising, AND the costs for advertising, in favor of using social media. Myspace. I built a massive following before that was a thing, and I used that following to build my business……and I started LOWERING my prices.
Then I did ONE MORE REALLY BIG THING. I started figuring out how to speed up my workflow. Good photography does NOT have to be expensive. But key to bringing down the cost, is working EFFICIENTLY.
Believe it or not, there was a period of time where I had to work on two computers at once, because computers hadn’t yet gotten fast enough to keep up with my flow, lol.
At each step along the way, I experienced tremendous pushback from other photographers. Even now, almost 25 years later, some photographers push back…they don’t want me telling everyone WHY photography doesn’t have to be expensive and WHY the process does NOT have to be slow.
One of the main reasons some photographers are expensive, is they maintain a high overhead. And for some people, the props and studio look is EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT….so I’m not criticizing it. I’m only saying that excellent photography doesn’t REQUIRE that, so it’s possible to offer something wonderful, for a lot less.
Another reason is some photographers still charge you to take your pictures, then HOLD ONTO those original files so they can keep profiting off of you after the shoot. I AM here to criticize that, I think that model is just plain wrong. If you paid a photographer to create your images, they’re YOUR IMAGES.
Another reason some photographers are still expensive, is they’ve never learned to work fast enough to make photography truly profitable…..which means they can’t service the general public, they have to rely on the smaller subset of the public who BELIEVE photography IS expensive. Most working professional photographers that I sit down with, have workflows that could be dramatically faster. That’s just not something anyone (else) teaches, and it’s something most photographers never endeavor to learn.
I’m not saying all of this to be mean to other photographers….I’m explaining the VERY REAL reasons we were able to drop good, family photography from costing HUNDREDS to, on average, costing about $75. We’re even cheaper than that in winter and spring, (and we are a little more than that in Fall Colors.)
Our Senior Portrait Shoots are longer with more editing and more product, so those prices are higher, but we still provide far MORE product vs cost than the average excellent photographer.
People ask us all the time, “why aren’t your prices higher?”
It’s simple. We eliminated overhead by INVENTING the on-location style of photography.
We pioneered removing the backdoor profiteering of charging people ONCE to shoot, then again and again for prints. We revolutionized marketing, and completely eliminated advertising costs. And we streamlined the workflow until it’s hot-butter fast.
We’ve also changed portrait photography in other ways….we’ve taken it from a few, traditional poses to TWENTY+ images with variety. Edited and YOURS, you own ’em. We’ve brought in candid and at-play shots…..we’ve caught far more personality and individuality than old school portraiture ever did. And we’ve pushed Senior Portraiture to be more about the student, emphasizing activities and interests, and shooting at multiple locations and during events.
Photography does NOT have to be expensive.
And it does NOT have to take 4 weeks to get your pictures back. We don’t have to just accept the old school business model. There really are better ways.