01Why the number comes out higher than you expected
Three things, and all of them are invisible until you write them down.
The unpaid hours. On most shoots the time spent off camera exceeds the time spent on it. A six-hour wedding is followed by two hours of culling before the edit even starts, then the edit, then the album layout, then the emails. Clients pay for the six hours in their heads. You work twenty. The tool above makes you enter both, which is usually the moment the real hourly rate stops looking like a career.
The costs you carry so the client does not have to. A salaried job hands you a computer, insurance, software, a pension and a building. Freelance, you buy all of it out of the same fee that is supposed to pay your rent, and a camera body is a depreciating asset with a shutter count, not a one-time purchase. If you are not setting aside for replacement every year, you are borrowing from a future you.
Tax and unpaid holiday. Employed people see a net salary and a paid holiday allowance. Self-employed, the gross figure is not yours, and every week you do not work is a week you do not earn. Your rate has to cover the weeks you are ill, on holiday, or simply have no bookings.
02What to do when the honest number scares you
The instinct is to reject it and go back to matching the competition. Some better options.
- Cut the unpaid hours before you cut the price. This is the biggest single lever in the model and the only one entirely within your control. Drop editing time per shoot from twelve hours to six and watch the required fee fall. Culling is usually the worst offender and the easiest to fix.
- Raise the shoot count rather than the fee, if your market is genuinely price-capped. The tool lets you test this directly. Be realistic about how many shoots you can service at your current turnaround, though: more jobs multiply the unpaid hours too.
- Sell more per booking. Prints, albums, second shooters, extra hours, licence extensions. Raising the average order value on the bookings you already have is far easier than winning more of them.
- Charge properly and lose the wrong clients. Uncomfortable, and usually correct. A diary full of jobs that lose money is a slower way to go out of business than an empty one, not a different outcome.
03Per hour or per package?
Per package, nearly always. Hourly pricing punishes you for getting better: the faster you work, the less you earn, which is exactly backwards. It also invites the client to negotiate your speed rather than the value of what they receive. Use the hourly figure above as your internal floor, the line you do not go below, then build packages that clear it with room. The client sees a price for an outcome; you know what it has to beat.
04Frequently asked questions
Because most pricing is copied from other photographers rather than calculated, and because unpaid hours are invisible until counted. Editing, admin, marketing and travel usually exceed the billed time. With tax, holiday and overheads on top, the honest number is often two to three times what a newer photographer charges.
Gear depreciation, public liability and equipment insurance, an accountant, pension contributions, and software subscriptions that quietly total several hundred a year. Backup storage is another one: three copies of every shoot is not optional and it is not free.
Yes. Set your own currency and your own combined tax and social contribution rate. It is a cost-of-doing-business model, not tax advice, and it does not know your local deductions or thresholds. Check with an accountant before setting prices you plan to live on.
No. Every figure stays in your browser, nothing is sent anywhere, and there is no account. Reload the page and it is gone.