Price the Whole Engagement, Not the Hours

Imagine a wedding photographer named Imogen Sallis who charges $700 an hour, with a six-hour minimum. The album is $2,000 on top. It is how most photographers she knows price a wedding.

In February, Mrs. Ashcombe calls about her daughter Clara’s wedding in September. It is at the family’s house by the sea, with the ceremony at four and dancing until midnight. Imogen has an edit due that afternoon, so she gives her rate and her minimum.

Mrs. Ashcombe does the sum aloud. “So if you came at three and left after the cake at nine, that’s six hours, $4,200?” Imogen says that it is. Mrs. Ashcombe books six hours and says she will think about the album.

At one o’clock on the day, Clara’s grandmother fastens Clara’s veil upstairs, and nobody takes a photo. At nine, Imogen packs up as booked. At eleven, Clara’s grandfather, who is 91, dances with her. The photos Imogen delivers are beautiful, and Mrs. Ashcombe orders no album. She tells her friends that the photographer left before the best part.

Suppose instead that Imogen prices the wedding as one engagement. “For Clara’s wedding, I’m with you from our first planning call to the album on your table,” she says. “On the day, I’m there from when Clara starts getting ready until she and James leave. The fee is $9,000.”

Mrs. Ashcombe asks how many hours that is. “As many as the day takes,” Imogen says. “We’ll set the times together on a call in August.” Mrs. Ashcombe books her that week.

On the call in August, Mrs. Ashcombe mentions the veil and her father’s dance. Imogen takes photos of both. Mrs. Ashcombe orders a second copy of the album for her parents.

Imogen is the same photographer with the same camera both times. In the first version, the hourly rate put hours in front of Mrs. Ashcombe, so she bought as few as she could. The hours she cut held the two moments her family cared about most. The rate also left out the work outside those six hours, such as the editing and the album. In the second version, Mrs. Ashcombe was buying Clara’s wedding, from the veil to the car.

So price the whole engagement as one fee, from the first call to what the client keeps. Here is why an hourly or day rate undercuts a photographer, and what four photographers found.

An hourly rate shows the client the smallest part of the work

A client weighs whatever unit your price is in, so a price by the hour gets weighed hour by hour. For a photographer, that unit leaves out most of the job. Before a wedding come the calls, the timeline, and often an engagement session. After it come the editing, the album, and the prints. An hourly or day rate puts only the hours with a camera in front of the client.

Here is the course’s view of what that does. A client who can buy hours can buy fewer of them. A couple who trims hours trims the ends of the day, because the ceremony and the dinner are fixed. The ends hold the getting ready and the last dance, and those can be the moments a family wanted most.

A price the client can divide into hours also stops being a report on how good your work is. It becomes a sum to check against other photographers’ hours. One fee for the whole engagement keeps the client weighing the wedding, and the record they will keep from it.

A wedding photographer went from 60 eight-hour weddings a year to about 15 that last for days

Jose Villa is a wedding photographer who shoots on film. He shot the wedding of Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas in India, which ran for several days. In 2020, Fortune wrote about what couples spend on wedding photographers at the top of the market.

“I used to shoot 60 weddings a year, be there for eight hours and you’re done,” Villa said. “Now these weddings are so over the top. We’re talking five, seven days, sometimes multiple cities.” He now takes on about 15 weddings a year.

The days on site are the part a couple sees. Villa explained to the reporter that the real work starts after the last guest leaves. He spends 60 hours on average editing the photos from a two- or three-day event. Sometimes he spends 20 or 30 more on retouching. The article calls that “a part of the job that clients don’t think about when they hear the price.”

Villa’s weddings run for days, and most weddings do not. What carries over is where the work sits. Much of it comes after the last guest leaves, where an hourly rate does not show it. A fee for the engagement has the editing in it from the start.

A Tampa photographer sells a baby’s first year as one membership, and one family is on its fourth

Brittany is a portrait photographer in Tampa, Florida, and her studio is Brittany Elise Photography. A post on the studio’s blog describes a family that is “currently in their fourth Collective Membership with us.” The studio has taken photos of each of the family’s four children through the first year.

The membership “includes 3-4 sessions, typically maternity, newborn, six months, and one year.” The studio handles everything “from wardrobe styling to hair and makeup and even gallery wall installation.” Each year ends with an album, and the four children now have “a matching set of heirloom albums.”

The post gives no price. What carries over is what the family buys, which is a year and not four sessions. The membership prices the relationship, a year with the same photographer, and the outcome, an album that matches the others. A family paying by the session decides four times. This family decided once for each child, at the start of the year.

A hotel photographer moved to an hourly rate so his clients would think twice before asking for more

Shawn Talbot is a commercial photographer in Canada who shoots luxury hotels, resorts, and architecture. In 2022, he wrote on Architectural Photography Almanac about why he gave up his day rate to bill by the hour. On a day rate, a client’s request at the end of a long day for “one more quick shot” left him feeling “defeat, exhaustion, and frustration.”

Now he answers that request with “Absolutely, I would love to!” He lists five gains from the change, among them “happier clients” and “increased revenue.” Part of his reason is the meter. “If a client knows that asking for one more shot equals 30 minutes of billable time, they will think twice about how much they really want that image captured,” he wrote. In his experience, that last shot is “almost always a throwaway image.”

Measured against this lesson, Talbot’s method suits his clients and not a family. A hotel buying a set of photos can do without a throwaway shot. So a meter that makes it think twice costs it nothing. A family’s late request is the grandfather’s dance. A meter that makes Mrs. Ashcombe think twice costs her the photo she wanted most. So for a private client, keep the meter off and put the late requests inside the fee.

Why one fee with an hourly charge on top goes wrong

Imagine a family photographer named Celia Warrender who has moved to one fee. Mrs. Okonjo books her for her parents’ 50th anniversary party, a dinner for 60 at their house. The fee is $4,000 for the party from six to ten, the editing, and a printed book. Celia’s contract adds $400 for each hour after ten, as her old price list did.

At ten to ten, the grandchildren gather to sing to their grandparents. Mrs. Okonjo asks Celia whether she can stay. Celia has been on her feet since five. “Of course,” she says. “That’s another hour at $400, so I’ll add it to the invoice.”

Mrs. Okonjo hesitates. “Let’s not, then,” she says. “We’ll get it on our phones.” The book has no photo of the song.

Celia’s mistake was keeping a meter on a fee meant to cover the party. Her charge was fair, and it was small. Still, a charge for a small request told Mrs. Okonjo that every minute past ten had a price. So she weighed the song against $400 and let it go.

The version that works ends the fee when the party ends, not at ten. Celia counts a late hour into the fee and sets it at $4,400. Her contract says that she stays “until the last toast.” At ten to ten, she is already beside the grandchildren when they begin to sing.

Quoting no hours will not cost you the couples who ask about them

Many couples compare photographers by the hours of coverage, and many photographers quote hours. So a fee with no hours in it can feel risky. A photographer might worry that couples will suspect something is hidden in the fee, or that the fee will sound too high.

Callie Beale is a photographer who sells her clients printed artwork at a design consultation after the session. In 2024, SLR Lounge asked 17 photographers about the hardest part of selling their work in person. Beale described her fear “that my clients would feel disappointed that I do things differently than practically every other photographer in my area.” She found herself discounting, she said, and “giving things away.”

Then, at one design consultation, a client took Beale’s hands. “I will be hiring you again in a few months, and I want you to charge me more at that time, because you are worth every cent and I want you to see that for yourself,” the client told her.

Beale’s difference was in how she sold, not in how she priced. What carries over is the fear of being different from every other photographer nearby, and what it cost her. She discounted when she did not need to. So when a couple asks how many hours, do not reach for an hourly figure. Answer with the times of their day, as Imogen did, and give the fee.

How to price your work by the engagement

1. List everything one engagement takes from you, from the first call to what the client keeps. Count the editing and the album, which happen after the client has gone home. For example, a wedding photographer might list two planning calls, an engagement session, and the day itself. Then come about 50 hours of editing and the album.
2. Name the engagement by when it starts and ends for the client, not by hours. Then write what it includes and what it leaves out. For example, a senior portrait photographer might sell the senior year. It runs from a first session in the fall to a portrait at graduation.
3. Set one fee for the whole engagement, as a round figure you meant. Do not show a price for any part of it, or a saving for taking all of it. For example, a family photographer who sells a family’s week at the lake might set $6,500, with the book included.
4. Take the hourly rate, the day rate, and any charge for extra hours off your website, your price list, and your contract. End the engagement at a point in the event, and count the late requests into the fee. For example, a bar mitzvah photographer might write in the contract, “From the family photos before the service until the last dance.”
5. Quote anything outside the engagement before you do it, with a fee of its own. For example, a wedding photographer can say, “The welcome dinner on Friday is a separate evening. It’s $2,500, and I’d need to know by June.”
6. When a client asks how many hours you will be there, answer with the times of their day. For example, a newborn photographer who is asked how long a session takes can say, “As long as the baby needs. Most mornings, we’re done by lunch.”
7. Say the fee once, in one sentence that names what it covers. For example, a fine-art portrait photographer can say, “For your mother’s portrait, I come to the house to plan it, take it, and hang the finished piece. The fee is $8,000.”
8. Start the new way with new inquiries from a date you choose. Couples already booked keep the terms they agreed to, as when you raise your price in stages.

Next: You will see how to show a client your work and let them decide, without selling it.