The Business of Wedding Photography - part 1

Following on from my earlier article, this one is intended to stimulate some thought in those people who are thinking of entering the business of wedding photography. It may also be useful for clients who think photographers are charging too much- as you will see, many factors need to be considered in the equation.

As a photographer who also has the benefit of being a management accounting student at college, there is much more to it than first meets the eye.  Please bear in mind I am not an accountant, so this is a very simplified view with unrealistic figures! I have also made assumptions which are relevant to me personally but may not be for others. I have not mentioned actual figures as these will differ for everyone.

Firstly, take a package price, maybe one you have seen on a competitor's site, or Craigslist. This might be the first thing a new photographer thinks of excitedly. "Wow, I'm going to make 1000 dollars/pounds per wedding- If i shoot 30 wedding that's 30000 per year!" Ok this would be a very naive person. Also, in my view this is completely the wrong way to go about it. Start by considering what you want to offer- say a nice album by Splendid Wedding Albums (100); and the area of the market you want to serve.  Once you have worked out the cost to yourself of any materials such as prints and albums (the direct material costs), you need to consider all the work involved- preparation before the wedding, shooting the wedding and the time you will spend in post-production (PP), sorting, editing and optimizing the images. Then there is the time spent designing/creating the album, if you do this part yourself. This part can be much longer than the time spent actually shooting, at least until you get enough experience to cut down the workflow. Let's assume a total of  20 hours (although it can be much more), at 20 per hour that's 400.

With the total of the shooting and PP times, you can work out the direct labour costs. Take your hourly rate and multiply by number of hours worked, then add this to the material cost. If you can't think of an hourly rate, consider what you could be doing instead of shooting the wedding (eg the amount you are foregoing, perhaps you could be making £Y per hour by shooting portraits-this is called an opportunity cost in Economics. Make sure this rate is realistic and relevant of course). You now have a total figure for direct costs. In this example, we have 500 already!

On to indirect costs.. These can be quite difficult to calculate, so I simplified them for my own purposes. These will include everything that you cannot directly attribute to the cost of shooting the wedding. I started with a yearly total of equipment insurance (300), website costs (100), car tax (100), fuel, car MOT costs (100), vehicle insurance (500), studio/home rent (5000), electricity, heating, food etc. As you can appreciate, you can really break this down as you will also use some of the above costs for non-wedding purposes as well. There may be the additional costs of an accountant or staff if you have these. You should also remember that those 30 weddings you want won't just materialize- you will need to market yourself and this can mean advertisements, flyers, social networking, online ad campaigns...It all adds up. 

When you have the yearly indirect cost figure, estimate the number of weddings you want to shoot per year (in this example 30), and divide the total by this number. This will give an indirect unit cost per wedding, (Here, let's assume 6000/30 = 200 for this example) which you add to the direct costs to give the total product cost. Now you have a basis for your package price. Anything less than 700 per wedding and you will make a loss. You should also consider that you will need to pay tax on your profits. Therefore with a price of 1000 per wedding and tax at  (say) just 20%, you will only make 240 per wedding. Multiply this by your 30 weddings and you have just 14400 to live on! Of course, if you are self-employed, you may have insurance, healthcare and a pension to pay out of this, plus credit card bills, loans....

Hopefully the above will give some idea of the actual work and costs involved in running a business, and also help you ensure you aren't underselling yourself with your package prices. As I previously mentioned, this is still a very simplified view and a qualified accountant would probably add much more- this is just down to my limited experience in this area. If you want to learn more there are myriad books and Web articles on the subject, alternatively drop me an email and I will try to answer as best I can!

 

Mark

Comments

[Mike Harmon]

Hi there,

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Let me know if you're interested.

Thanks..