Why Do Wedding Photographers Charge So Much
Upon entering the world of wedding planning, you may have noticed that prices seem to be grossly inflated. And you may be asking, "What services are truly worth my money?" In this article I will discuss the pricing of a wedding photographer, and why they charge the prices that they do.
First and foremostly, most wedding photographers are considered small business owners, meaning that they pay their own taxes, which rings in somewhere around thirty percent. Let's assume your wedding photographer covers 24 weddings per year at an average of $2500 per wedding. That's a total of $60,000. Minus about $18,000 for taxes. So we are now looking at $42,000 per year. Now let's consider overhead costs.There is studio space, transportation, business insurance, website costs, advertising, health insurance, second shooter, uniform, high speed internet and telephone expenses, just to name a few big ones. That is easily over $25,000 worth of overhead expense, and I am rounding down. This leaves a personal income of $17,000, some of which will be spent for training seminars (so that they can get better at what they do), and for equipment upgrades (so they can continue taking fabulous pictures).
After spending over 8 hours at your wedding, the photographer comes home to spend 40 to 50 hours editing your images, designing your wedding album, posting pictures to facebook, and blogging about your wedding.
A wedding photographer should be an expert at what they do, and whenever someone is an expert, they are in high demand. The more "in-demand" a particular photographer is, the more "valuable" their time becomes because it becomes very competitive to book them to cover your wedding, as many popular photographers book weddings in as much as one to two years in advance, some even more than that. Wedding photography is an artistic field, and your wedding photographer has a unique vision that is worth paying them for whenever you appreciate that vision. It's not terribly difficult to capture a few great photographs from a wedding, however, it is incredibly difficult to create an album full of beautiful images from a wedding. There is an extensive amount of work that goes into telling the story of a wedding day in photographs, and so much of it goes on behind the scenes that it's so easy to say that it's not worth it. But that wedding photographer is the only one who can make your special day last forever, so whenever you are tempted to skimp on the photographer, remember that how your wedding day is documented is how it will always remembered.
First and foremostly, most wedding photographers are considered small business owners, meaning that they pay their own taxes, which rings in somewhere around thirty percent. Let's assume your wedding photographer covers 24 weddings per year at an average of $2500 per wedding. That's a total of $60,000. Minus about $18,000 for taxes. So we are now looking at $42,000 per year. Now let's consider overhead costs.There is studio space, transportation, business insurance, website costs, advertising, health insurance, second shooter, uniform, high speed internet and telephone expenses, just to name a few big ones. That is easily over $25,000 worth of overhead expense, and I am rounding down. This leaves a personal income of $17,000, some of which will be spent for training seminars (so that they can get better at what they do), and for equipment upgrades (so they can continue taking fabulous pictures).
After spending over 8 hours at your wedding, the photographer comes home to spend 40 to 50 hours editing your images, designing your wedding album, posting pictures to facebook, and blogging about your wedding.
A wedding photographer should be an expert at what they do, and whenever someone is an expert, they are in high demand. The more "in-demand" a particular photographer is, the more "valuable" their time becomes because it becomes very competitive to book them to cover your wedding, as many popular photographers book weddings in as much as one to two years in advance, some even more than that. Wedding photography is an artistic field, and your wedding photographer has a unique vision that is worth paying them for whenever you appreciate that vision. It's not terribly difficult to capture a few great photographs from a wedding, however, it is incredibly difficult to create an album full of beautiful images from a wedding. There is an extensive amount of work that goes into telling the story of a wedding day in photographs, and so much of it goes on behind the scenes that it's so easy to say that it's not worth it. But that wedding photographer is the only one who can make your special day last forever, so whenever you are tempted to skimp on the photographer, remember that how your wedding day is documented is how it will always remembered.
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