What’s in a wedding photographer? (Part 2)

In the previous part I of this discussion we touched on the cost of some basic photography equipment that many photographers start with or use for wedding photography. Keep in mind that most photographers with this kind of equipment start at around $2000-$2500. However, there are those photographers charging $5000 or more for wedding, and most of those photographers use top of the line cameras from Canon or Nikon whose prices are over $5000 for the camera only with no lenses.

But this 2nd part of this discussion will focus on the time the photographer puts in as well as the associated costs with that time. Keep in mind that a great many people think that the photographer only works the 8+ hours of the shooting day, but couldn’t be farther from the truth. Lets begin.

Here is in list form the many things that a wedding photographer spends time on.

1. Initial consultation with the client (this normally takes about 1- 2 hrs of time and it includes expenses like gas for the car and a drink or a meal)
2. Reading/Sending emails about wedding date details and times
3. Even if the photographer is a beginner, he/she will arrive 30-45 minutes early so he/she can scope out the place where he’ll be photographing. So even if a package includes say 8 hours, between the time the photographer leaves their house to the time he returns, he would have spent a good 10 hours total if the driving distance is within 30 minutes of his house
4. Editing time of roughly 25-35 hours depending on his speed on the computer and/or his computer equipment, and/or the efficiency of the workflow he/she uses. Some photographers outsource their editing to editing companies and pay anywhere between $400-$800 just for the editing which normally includes sorting, color correcting, exposure correction, image enhancement, black and white, and sepia tone conversions, and uploading the images to the proofing site. If the photographer is doing paper proofs or a book then that adds to his time to create the proofs and/or book and it also adds matieral costs on the average of around $150.
5. For albums, the photographer will be spending another 15-20 hrs. minimum in design, communication with the couple, making changes as requested, and sending the album to the printing and binding company(ies). Again, some photographers outsource this to graphic designers to design the albums, and those services cost anywhere from $350 for a 20 page album to over $750 for a 50-60 page album, and that is just the design cost, that price doesn’t include the cost of printing and binding the book and it doesn’t include the photographer’s profit. If the photographer is doing his own design then he will need a design software, graphic design training, and time investment for the design of the book.

So if we add the times from items 1-4 above the photographer, just to work one event and provide a quality product, the photographer would have had to work approximately 43 hrs. Now in part 1 of this discussion we said that $1000 for photographing a wedding was fair. If we divide the $1000/43hrs. we get $23.26/hr. Some might say that that is pretty good. Well not really, because we haven’t accounted the cost yet. If we count the cost from items 1-4 above, and making some general assumptions we get the following: 1) gas and drink to meet with client (this may vary depending on location) - $20, 2) Internet cost, say a prorated cost of $10 for the usage of the internet for email communication with the couple, 4) Assuming a $400 fee for editing and no proof book or prints. That gives us a total cost of $430. So now we take $1000-$430 and we have $570 left. Dividing that by the 43 hours we get $13.26/hr. So are we done yet? Nope, not yet.

In the first part we mentioned that this information is based on a photographer doing wedding photography as a business, and as a business the photographer will also need to manage his business, which means that he’ll have to work on bookkeeping, budgeting, accounting, insurance, marketing, sales, branding, education, etc. In this section I am going to be unrealistic and say that the photographer works only 10hrs/week in this because he outsources everything to accounts, graphic designers and such, but we’ll consider the cost. And it will look something like this:

1. Bookkeeping and accounting per month – approx. $100 -> $1200/year
2. Insurance for photographic equipment – approx. $500/year
3. Commercial Insurance for his personal car – approx. $1000/year (this in case he/she gets into an accident while driving to-from the event: regular insurance doesn’t cover accidents while driving a personal car for business purposes.
4. Car maintenance – best guess -> $500/year
5. Commercial Liability Insurance for his home – approx. $300/year (this is necessary if he/she will be seeing clients in his/her house either for the initial consultation or to pick up products.
6. Website hosting -approx. $100/year
7. Taking a business class and a graphic design class and attending 1 major photography trade show – approx. $1000/year
8. Marketing materials like business cards, post cards, envelopes, posters, etc. – approx. $500/year
9. Printing album samples – $1000/year
10. Printing sample enlargements, 8×10, 11×14, portfolio prints, and canvases, etc. – $500/year (used for marketing and sales)

There is more but this should be enough to make the point. Now onto the math. Let’s assume that the photographer does a healthy 25 weddings for the year and he gets paid the “fair” $1000 for the wedding. So in 1 year he will have collected $25000 from wedding clients. But using the math above we see that his cost per wedding is $430, which means that he spent $10750 in costs of doing the wedding alone. Now we’ll add all the different costs from the section above, numbers 1-10, and we get a total of $6600.

So working the numbers to arrive at a grand total for the year, here is what we get:

1. Income (25 weddings x $1000) – $25000
2. Wedding expenses – $10750
3. Business expenses – $6600
4. Total of wedding and business expenses – $17, 350
5. Total profit for the year – $7650

So are we done yet. No we are not, but I am not going to extend this message anymore, otherwise people may not read the entire thing. But we are not done because next week I will discuss the cost of the materials like prints, albums, slideshows, etc. Thanx for reading everyone, as as always, your comments are welcome and appreciated.