Cost
Why is professional photography so expensive?
It used to be that photographers worked from a list of pictures and only took pictures of the things in which they knew would sell. With digital photography becoming increasingly popular, much of that has changed. Photographers are creating unique work that tells a story about the people in the images, which means taking more pictures, editing more, and finding ways to be unique.
For a 2 hour session (this is minimum time spent):
- 30 min to get all gear ready (batteries charged, making sure have proper gear)
- 30 min of travel to and from the session (can be more)
- 2 hours of shooting
- 30 minutes to load them onto a computer and backup to hard drive
- 4 hours minimum of editing
- 1 hour to make slide show, add to website, add to media, mailing product
- 30 minutes for correspondence with client (phone, e-mail, in person)
TOTAL of 9 hours!!!! That is the minimum as well. Not to mention all of the time spent on other things such as marketing, advertising, consultations, and so forth just to book the client in the first place.
Experience/Training
For most photographers it takes years to build up the business to make a profit. In addition to learning how to use the camera itself, there is a range of other equipment involved such as studio lighting. There is also numerous software programs used to edit and print photographs, run a website etc…. Photography is an art, but it also takes technical knowledge and this is acquired through training. To stay up with technology this can become expensive and time consuming.
Equipment/Expenses
Equipment can be more than $20,000 just to take, edit and process photos. With technology changing, equipment must change and it is important to update equipment frequently so that the equipment does not become obsolete. Plus do not forget about studio rental, taxes, insurance, advertising and so forth.
Limited Availability
A majority of weddings happen at limited times during the week and year. This means it is harder for photographers to have a streamline work flow. Rarely do you find a photographer that has enough shooting work to where they take photographs 40 hours a week and go home. If this was the case then they could turn their images over to the editing department, while letting the advertising department do advertising to get the clients and so on. Instead photographers are an all in one. They work every department of the business because of the limited times they can photograph.
