How to Price Wedding Photography
Wedding photography is a service that is needed all year long and not exclusive to the spring and summer months. Photographers who specialize in weddings are invited to observe a special moment in a newlywed couple's life, and capturing those moments as they unfold can be rewarding but time consuming. Creating an effective pricing structuring can help a photographer's business flourish and compensate the photographer appropriately for the amount of time spent during the photography session.
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Instructions
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Compile a list of wedding photographers in your area, and view their portfolio of work. Choose photographers who specialize in weddings and understand the demands and pressures of capturing a wedding. Ask the photographers how many weddings they have worked in the past 12 months, how many assistant photographers work with the main photographer on the day of the wedding, how many hours they spend photographing a wedding, what prices they charge for a wedding package and what their packages include. Understanding what the competition is offering in the area is helpful in determining what services to offer that might be as competitive or a better value.
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Determine what to include in the wedding photography package, and determine what items will be an additional charge. Most packages include the access to proofs online or printed proofs. Make yourself available to your clients for the entire wedding process from before the ceremony through the reception. Generally, formal photographs selected from the proofs are an additional charge per photograph.
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Calculate an average price that photographers charge in your area and an average of how many hours are spent working during a wedding. Appropriate pricing for a new photographer in the profession would be 10 to 15 percent lower than the average pricing due to the lack of experience. For a more experienced photographer, pricing at the average price or 10 to 15 percent higher is appropriate as a starting base price. Additional fees may be added to account for mileage, additional staffing, length of time greater than 10 hours of service and special photographic location requests. Pricing should be similar to pricing currently in the area unless it can be demonstrated that your services are uniquely specialized and require a higher price.
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