What’s the most difficult part of being a professional photographer? It’s not mastering off-camera flash or finding the perfect location. For most, it’s answering one terrifyingly simple question: "What are your prices?"

For creatives, pricing our work feels personal. We fall into the trap of trying to assign a monetary value to our art, our eye, our passion. This leads to anxiety, self-doubt, and the two most common pricing mistakes: plucking a number out of thin air, or nervously looking at what competitors charge and picking a number slightly lower.

Both are a direct path to burnout.

Let's reframe this. You are not just an artist; you are a business owner. And effective business owners don't guess. They calculate. Good pricing isn't emotional; it's mathematical. It’s not about what you feel your work is worth—it's about what your business needs to earn to be sustainable and profitable.

Step 1: Forget "Worth." Calculate Your Costs.

Before you can set a price, you must know your Cost of Doing Business (CODB). This is the absolute minimum your business needs to make to keep the lights on and pay you a liveable wage.

Grab a pen and start listing. Be brutally honest.

1. Annual Business Expenses:

   • Gear: Camera bodies, lenses, lighting, computers (and their eventual replacement).

   • Software: Adobe Suite, client galleries, studio management, and of course, Narrative.

   • Business Operations: Insurance, accounting fees, website hosting, marketing costs, bank fees.

   • Education: Workshops, courses, mentoring.

   • Total it all up for one year. Let's say it's $15,000.

2. Your Annual Salary:

   • This is the non-negotiable part that everyone forgets. How much do you need to earn per year to live? This isn't a "nice to have," it's the entire point of running a business.

   • Living in a city like Auckland isn't cheap. Let's say you need a pre-tax salary of $65,000 to cover your rent, food, and life.

Now, do the simple math: Business Expenses ($15,000) + Desired Salary ($65,000) = $80,000

$80,000 is your annual revenue target. This is your magic number. It's the starting point for all your pricing.

Step 2: From Annual Target to Project Price

Now that you have your target, you need to figure out how to hit it. Be realistic about how many jobs you can and want to take on.

Let's say you decide to shoot 20 weddings per year.

Annual Target ($80,000) / Number of Weddings (20) = $4,000

$4,000 is your minimum average price per wedding. It is the mathematical floor. If you charge less than this, you are actively choosing to not pay for your business expenses or not pay yourself a liveable wage. Seeing it in black and white removes the emotion and replaces it with business reality.

Step 3: From Cost to Value

Your CODB is your starting point, not your endpoint. This number is what you need to survive. Now, you can start thinking about what you need to thrive.

This is where your skill, your unique artistic voice, the quality of your client experience, and your market demand come into play. Your cost-based price is your floor; your brand and talent determine the ceiling.

Look at other photographers in your market not to undercut them, but to understand what the market will bear. If the top photographers in your area are charging $8,000 - $10,000, and your work is comparable, your $4,000 minimum gives you a confident foundation from which to build packages that reflect your true value.

Stop pricing from a place of fear. Start from a place of financial clarity. Know your numbers, respect your costs, and build a pricing structure that sustains not just your art, but your life.

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Once your pricing is set and you're booking profitable clients, efficiency becomes the key to protecting your bottom line. Every hour you waste in post-production is an hour that eats into the profit you so carefully calculated.

Narrative Select dramatically cuts down your culling time, turning hours of tedious work into minutes. It’s an investment in your workflow that pays for itself by giving you back your most valuable asset: your time.

Build a profitable business from the ground up. Try Narrative for free at https://narrative.so/

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About the Writer: Taylor Nixon is an award-winning screenwriter and director based in New Zealand, known for creating Feelings Club. Passionate about storytelling that explores vulnerability, identity, and rebellion, Taylor’s work pushes for authenticity and connection. Alongside filmmaking, Taylor is Photographer Relationship Manager at Narrative, helping photographers thrive through innovative storytelling and community support.