Knowing how to value your time and work is one of the hardest things to do when starting a photography business. If you’re looking for a more technical guide on making money with photography, read this article I wrote on the topic, if you’re looking for philosophy and inspiration of valuing and pricing yourself, carry on! In fact, read both.
I had a very talented friend shooting weddings for sometimes $10,000 a pop, but I wouldn’t have paid myself $1,000 at the beginning. I couldn’t imagine someone thinking I was worth paying as much as he was getting paid. I asked him about it one time with that hopeless kind of tone, “How do you tell someone that’s your rate?!” and his answer was pretty straightforward, he said, “If they think I am worth that, why would I tell them I’m not?” And that was the beginning of the redesign of my thinking about how to price/value my time and my work. I still don’t demand the rates he does, but I’m ok with that, not many photographers do.
What my home boy was getting at was, different people have different amounts of money to spend, and what they value is what they’re willing to spend on. This was a HUGE game changer once I got a better grip on it.
The essence of it was summed up for me in an article another friend passed along about the same time. I don’t remember where it was from, but it was a published article a photographer wrote about being fed up with disrespectful clients and working really hard for people who didn’t appreciate him or his work. The short version is that the guy got so disgusted, he decided something to the effect of “Screw this, it’s not worth it for this much money, I’m doubling my prices. And if I lost half my clients, I’d break even.” So the guy went for it and in his article he wrote about how what happened was far from what he expected. He cited how instead of drunken groomsmen who wouldn’t listen to him and late brides who treated him as an afterthought, he got clients who were prioritizing him first in everything, asking if he had what he needed, being on time, basically putting him in a better working scenario for him to be successful, and paying him more to do it. Now doesn’t that sound like a win win?!
I realized it’s the same thing my friend was talking about in his simple response. My first impression of his response was that he only wanted to work for rich people, which sounds nice if you’re just in it for the money, but most people don’t stay in a profession for long if they are only money-motivated. And I would venture to guess that most folks who go into the arts for a profession aren’t expecting to strike it rich, most do it because they love to do it. But upon further reflection on my friend’s answer, and in the context of this other article, I began to understand that the end game is not about the money, it’s about finding people to work with who care about what you care about. If you book clients who are more concerned with their beer budget than their photography budget, they’re going to be looking at their watches during your portrait session wondering when it will be time to hit the bar. If you book clients who are more concerned with their photos than anything else, they’ll be saying “someone hang on to my beer, I’ve got to go take photos.”
So the money isn’t the end, it’s the means to finding where people’s true priorities lie. And as I write this right now, I recall a bible verse that reemphasizes the same dang thing. A quick google pointed me to Matthew 6:21, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Clear as day, right there. If you can align yourself with a client who values you (by the way, that value is quantified with money in this case since it’s a business), you’ll be working with people who work with you and damn near FOR you than against you, and not only will you be getting paid more, but your work will improve, and that will make you worth the extra money. It’s more of a self-fulfilling prophesy than I ever realized early on.
There were a handful of things I had to get over, but I think the strongest of them was fear of someone being dissatisfied with my work, because usually, the more I pay for something, the higher expectations I have of it. I still think that’s true and I never want a client to walk away unhappy, but there are other things to move that needle if you lack the confidence in your own work.
I remember the first wedding I booked for over $5,000. I felt a little like I had robbed a bank when the contract came in, but then I felt an immense responsibility to deliver because I wanted them to think I was worth it when it was all over. After all, $5,000 now and a bad review later is not as worth as much as $3,000 now and a rave review later. Word of mouth is as good as money in the long term, probably a lot of money. So I brought a second shooter, I upgraded their album, and I sent them a thank you gift after the wedding. These were all very small expenses in the grand scheme of my highest paying wedding at the time, but they were personal touches that added value and the understanding that I cared about their experience, I was putting my best work forward, and I appreciated their business.
Think about how other businesses show you appreciation. I think if you googled “how to show customers appreciation” you’d probably find an article in 5 seconds with a list a mile long of things you could do. The thing is, the true value of your photography is in the eye of the beholder. I know of a photographer (who I don’t feel like advertising for) who sold a print for a couple million dollars. A COUPLE MILLION. FOR A PRINT. But that’s what his client wanted and that’s what it was worth to them. It’s unreal, but it’s true.
So don’t tell people what you’re not worth, tell them what you are worth. Some people will walk away. GOOD. You won’t have to work with people who don’t value you, your time, your work. You’ll be happier because of it and your work will become better because you’ll have put yourself in a situation where other people want you to succeed as much as you do, and they’ll be helping you accomplish it. It’s a win win.
So shoot for the moon. If a month goes by and you don’t get any bookings, maybe you’ve got to hustle more. Maybe you need to advertise a bit in a targeted fashion. Maybe you’ve got to grow your portfolio. Maybe your skills just aren’t lining up with that end of the market quite yet, but at least you’ll know that you’re not selling yourself short. Either lower your prices a little bit until someone thinks your worth it, or grow your network by offering deals in the mean time. It’s much better to say “My rate is $200/hr, but I’d love to offer you a rate of half that” than to say “I don’t know what I’m worth, so I guess $100/hr sounds good.” Your confidence, even if it’s all you can do to pretend you have confidence, will be an indicator to others.
If you went to a car dealership and asked a salesperson how much a car was and his response was “I’m pretty sure it’s worth about $25,000.” You’d be out of there faster than a speeding bullet. So don’t give your potential clients the same vibe. Know what your worth by aiming high, and letting people tell you no. In a little time, the market will talk back to you clearly, and you might be off to a great start. Either the right people will find you, or they won’t, but either way you’ll know the answer is looking harder at your skills, or working harder at finding the people who value the skills you have in the way you want them to.
