Low Expectations

From the past two weeks:

• A Toronto professional photographer does family portraits for $500 according to his web site. The price includes a 45-minute session and 50 “fully retouched” pictures.

Fifty images in 45 minutes? Fully retouched? Ten dollars per photo?

At that price, who should have low expectations, the customer or the photographer?

• A Toronto business centre had a million dollars worth of renovations done while it was closed during the pandemic. It now wants photos of the updated facilities for its marketing. Their shot list included 44 pictures and it might go higher. My quote of $8,800 was turned down ($200 x 44 images = $8,800). The contact person said they were expecting about $1,000.

This customer will be expecting top-notch professional photography despite their $23 per image expectation.

• A hot tub manufacturer turned down my quote for a handful of pictures for its marketing. The company has sales offices in seven countries and manufacturing facilities in four. I quoted about $5,600 to produce six photos ($2,300 photo fee + $500 per image + $300 assistant). The company said it was expecting to pay around $500 for the entire job.

• Received a request to shoot a small business event later this year. They wanted a photographer onsite for 10 hours to shoot photos and maybe some video. They promised $300 in cash paid at the end of the day. I offered to do only still images for $2,000 and, as I expected, never heard back.

Low price means low expectation

Low price and low expectation go hand-in-hand for every business. Why would it be different for photography?

A photography customer who has an expectation of a low price should also have a low expectation of experience, value and quality. A photographer who charges low prices should have a low expectation of profit and business sustainability.

Competing to be the lowest bidder is always a mistake. It’s not your job to be as cheap as the customer but instead your goal is to make a reasonable profit.

Your ideal customer is one who understands what professional photography does and thereby knows what professional photography is worth. These customers do exist but you’re expected to separate the wheat from the chaff.