Commercial Photography Pricing and Day Rate.

The term ‘Day Rate’ is a misnomer, because it implies that that single day is the only day a photographer does work for the shoot. The reality is that there is always so much more work that goes into preparing for a shoot (wrapping it up afterward), and post production that might takes days to weeks depending on a shoot. That isn’t included in that one day of work.

A Creative Fee rolls the photography fee (e.g. day rate), and licensing fee (usage fee) into one fee.

Essentially a Creative Fee communicates to the client: this is how much it will cost for me to create the images you require. 

These rates don’t include any licensing 

Example of 1-day shoot (approximately 8 hours) 

• Photography fee

• Pre-pro fee (and travel)

• Licensing Fee

• Assistant fee

• Retouching fee

Licensing Fee or Usage fees are what the client pays to use your images. The client purchases a ‘license’ to ‘use’ the images. There is another term used ‘usage license’ when referring to the actual license client had  purchased.

Ask 99% of established commercial photographers about half day rates, and they will all say “there is no such thing as a half day of photography”. This is for the reasons I mentioned above about preparing for the shoot and wrapping it up afterward. A three hour shoot can easily turn into eight hours when you factor in travel time, time to pick up equipment, props or other supplies, post-shoot processing, etc.

Most commercial photography work days are 10 hours long, meaning you will be expected to shoot for 10 hours before charging overtime. If you divide the rates above by ten, then you start to see what you’d be charging per hour. $100 per hour is a fantastic rate for an employee (e.g. the $1000 per day rate mentioned above), but as a business owner who has to pay self-employment taxes, studio rental fees, gear expenses and maintenance fees, education fees, etc, etc etc, it’s not that great when you figure at least half of that revenue goes out the door, and your monthly billable hours are limited.