[Ed Shapiro]

What I am going to write is not gonna be liked by a lot of people around here but I’m gonna write it anyway. If it helps one or two folks who are aspiring to a career in professional photography I will be pleased.
I have made my living as a professional photographer for the past 50 years- we (my lovely wife and I) have fed, sheltered, raised and educated our children, provide ourselves and our kids with a decent lifestyle, drove safe and decent cars, helped and participated in our community and had a lot of fun along with a lot of long days and hard work. I feel very strongly that it behooves us to leave something behind for the new people coming in to this industry. I enjoy teaching and inspiring them and most importantly, telling them the truth about the business and the art of photography. So here goes:

First of you each one of you has to make a decision because essentially there are only two choices to select from. You need to decide if you are gonna be a “picture bum” floundering around without direction, charging outrageously low prices that keep you poor and will eventually drive you out of the business or you can prepare yourself for a viable, productive and meaningful business by using logic, business savvy and great craftsmanship. If you have not considered this and don’t have any experience as yet, you will have to plan for some photographic education where you will learn the basics and the rules as well as the fine points and creative aspect of professional photography. So many photographers begin to run before the can walk and that is the fast track to unmitigated disaster in the business and professional world. Well that’s a subject for another article so let look more into pricing.

If I were a really mean old geezer, I would tell most of the people who are endlessly dabbling in photography and waiting to wake up one morning and discover that they have magically become a professional photographer, to get their heads out of the butts or out of the clouds and smell the fresh air and go in for a reality check! Since I am a nice guy I will tell y’all to get you head out of the low priced photography subculture and examine the ways that all successful businesses operate- not only photographers.

The first thing you need is a superior product- many cuts above the low priced department store and supermarket hack and all the cheap “photofinishing” prices that are prevail there. Your work can not look, resemble or smell like that stuff otherwise you are damned to a life of competing with loss leader mass production prices, They are paying young students minimum wage for shooting that stuff and charging mini-lab (OK digital lab) prices to the customers. Profits are marginal but it is made up in high quantity and it brings people into the store.
YOU CAN’T OPERATE THAT WAY- You don’t make YOUR real money on made in China underwear, electronics and house wear products.

Just like any other business or product provider, you have to produce a better mouse trap to charge the extra bucks and hopefully the big bucks. People buy benefits not features. They don’t really care what kind of camera you use as long as the final product is of benefit to them. If the look better in your portraits, if you work is commensurate with the life styles, appeal to their propensities for prestige products (snob appeal) and your service is of a higher quality than the rest of the lot- they WILL pay the extra bucks. If you sell prints that are the same size, shape and quality as department store photofinishing, why should anyone pay you more? The remedy: Don’t sell that crap! You have to change your packaging and engage in more creative shooting and marketing. Most importantly you need to PACKAGE YOURSELF AS AN ARTIST- folks pay good money for art but they wanna spend pennies for photofinishing- you can’t blame customers for that- it is a matter of reality and customer perception.

If you are in a marketplace consists of people don’t appreciate your good work or can’t afford to pay for it, you have to seek out markets that WILL pay.

Let’s say that for all intents and purposes you work is at a good level of professionalism, you have a great product and are ready to rock ‘n’ roll. How do you create a price list?

Pricing?? I see here that people are just arbitrarily bandying about numbers with no real basis. OK- someone mentioned overhead expenses and that is a good start. Determining prices and creating a logical price list is a science. It is good to know what your competition is doing but you really can’t govern you pricing practices based on anyone else’s. That is because you have to consider all YOUR business and personal expenses as a starting point. Although you can’t draw large salaries from a brand new business, you ARE eventually, more sooner than later, going to be depending on your business income to support the business’s and your personal financial requirements so you have to plan for that in your prices.

Let’s say the studio owner down the road has a fairly big operation, has employees to pay and a family to support and leads a fairly higher end lifestyle. He has the right product to sell to his clientele and his prices are clearly high end.
Now- the other photographer down the road is content to live in a closet in back of his studio, only needs enough money to feed his cat and himself and is a one man band kinda operation. Obviously he can and probably does charge less. OK if the latter case seems silly to you just change the scenario slightly. He could be the guy or gal who earns a good living at his day job or other profession and works in photography for personal edification, fun and pocket change. In all three of theses examples you cannot, in any way, base your prices on what anything they are doing or charging. Keep theses thoughts in abeyance for a while and let’s look and something else that is related- costing systems.

One important principle is to separate overhead costs and expenses and costs of sales. The overhead expenses are fixed expenses including the costs of doing business. Theses expenses such as rent, mortgage payments, advertising and promotional expenses, utilities, office expenses, telephone and communications (Internet etc.), insurance premiums, equipment maintenance, automotive expenses, payroll and YES- you own salary, even if it is modest. Theses expenses need to be paid, month after month, regardless of the volume of business you are doing and the revenues you are bringing in.

Costs of sales are the moneys you spend to purchase supplies, merchandise and the outsourced services you require to satisfy your contracts and customer orders. Theses expenses will fluctuate depending on you volume of business.

Now comes the math: Let’s suppose you buy an item for $100.00 and sell it for $200.00. Surprisingly enough, so many photographers, especially when they are starting out, are under the misapprehension that they have made 100% or in this case $100.00 profit. This is because they have not factored in their overhead or operational expenses. Just for the sake of this exercise let’s say that your annual overhead expense is $80,000. Suppose again you did 300 assignments, so you divide 80,000 by 300 and you will find that you have to assign $266.66. to each of those assignments plus the $100. cost of sale item in order to determine your real expenses and mark up for your profit from that point. If things are not working as to profitability you need to either lower your costs and expenses, increase your volume or raise your prices. As long as you have a handle on all theses factors, you can more easily make pricing and promotional decisions. By just arbratrelly stabbing at prices willy-nilly you will quickly loose control and fail.

As you can now see that a logical business plan is needed along with goals, projections and cost analysis. At the same time you need to consider your promotional expenses and plans to advertise your business and inform your potential clients as to your offerings benefits and logical price ranges.

There are hundreds of other concepts of marketing and pricing and they all can’t be encompassed in a post or article such as this one. I, however, can’t over emphasize the concept of separating yourself as far as you can from mediocre work. It starts with little things such as calling 4x5s, 5x5s “portrait miniatures” and selling them in folders and frames that are not available on the photofinishing counters of supermarkets and department stores. Market antique style cameo frames and modern squares for your small prints- use paper with textured surfaces and coat them with a crystal clear lacquer so the look like painted miniatures. Market more large canvas mounted portraits and sell the small ones only in conjunction with big ones. Consider fashionable decorative trends such as Art Deco, Victorian, modern and Euro. Offer mini galleries of small prints and collages if you are going to offer the smaller sizes.

I have NEVER sold a high res. CD or a negative in my life except for commercial images that are required for offset printing. My customer buy large and well crafted prints which are beautifully retouched, mounted and framed.

I sincerely hope this helps. Being a consummate professional photographer, running a business and designing concepts and price structures is tough stuff and hard work. Having the right POSITIVE attitude is just as important as well. You can’t go around blaming the clients or the low ball competition for your business problems. You have to own them, trouble shoot them and solve them because you are your own boss and you are the final arbiter of how your business will operate.

Like all successful businesses you have to consider uniqueness, inventiveness, public relations and advertising efforts, presentation, marketing strategies and continual change and improvement. All of this must be reflected in your prices.

Ed