Cost of Professional Photographs

noname said:
I think a few photographers have said that the problem with scary fences or more difficult fences is that they may not be jumped very well so the picture would look rubbish and so is not bought!

Re photographers costs, a good camera will cost £1,000 ( I know people using more expensive ones but your'll get decent images from around the £1,000 mark. Then you will need computers and software probably another £1,000 and then your trade stand. £££? However these are one off sunk costs and every business has set up cost. The day to day running costs are simply fuel, ink and photographic paper, mounts, CDs, USBs etc So actually the running cost of a business is very low. At a BE event or the average small to mid sized show, fun ride etc you get 200 competitors and the bigger shows a lot more so at £10 an image your on £2,000 a day. So your running costs are covered and your into profit or recouping your set up costs a lot quicker than most businesses!!! I appreciate not everyone buys a photo but some will buy two or three.

At the big events like badminton I saw more spectators buying images than riders aswell. Also don't forget the photos can be sold to magazines at a much higher rate and riders sponsors also pay really well for them! More like £50 an image.

Also if you have the gear their is no reason just to specialise in horses! Can do weddings etc when you don't have events to go to. It's clearly a viable business as there are so many photographers.

Last time I purchased images I got 2 standard size in mounts for £18 which I was really pleased with. If it's too expensive I don't bother!
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A few points you've made I'd like to address;

Yes startup costs are expensive (£1000 on all software and equipment no chance, the printer alone is £1k), but running costs are also expensive. A box of media (ink and paper) for my printer costs £92 + vat for 9x6 size, which gives you 360 prints. Sounds a lot, but it's not really. Fuel as we all know is costly for both my car and generator. Mounts, cds etc are not cheap when you're buying several hundred at a time with no guarantee that they will all sell. You've forgotten the fees we have to pay just to be at the event, staff wages, insurance, wear and tear on kit. Plus the time you spend at home uploading images to the website, website fees, time spent sourcing events, planning for events. We don't just rock up on the day and take pictures, there's so much more time and effort spent planning before we get there. So all of that needs to be accounted for before I even take a wage for the day, and I cost my time at £20/hr.

You say if we get 200 competitors and each buys a print for a tenner we make £2000. No chance, the percentage of competitors we sell to especially at local events is more like 10-15% maybe 20% on a good day.

I have all the right gear for equestrian sports... I should go into weddings right? Wrong, my gear is totally focused towards shooting high action, all weather sporting events, not portriats or weddings. Plus weddings are traditionally held on Saturdays and peak season for weddings is April-September... oh... that's when the equestrian event season is too.

You might get good images from a camera costing £1000, but you need a lens too, and that's another £1000. Plus all the memory cards at a tenner a pop, batteries etc, plus bearing in mind these things do go wrong- my lens broke last year, the autofocus motor died- £240 later it was fixed. You've got to allow for wear and tear to gear due to the heavy use it gets.

You might ask why we do it! Sometimes I wonder myself but I love it and cannot wait for the season to start just like you guys who can't wait to get competing, but it's not an easy thing to do and very few people actually appreciate how much work goes into running an event photography business- I certainly didn't when I started up under my own name 3 seasons ago.
 
Twizzel said:
A few points you've made I'd like to address;

Yes startup costs are expensive (£1000 on all software and equipment no chance, the printer alone is £1k), but running costs are also expensive. A box of media (ink and paper) for my printer costs £92 + vat for 9x6 size, which gives you 360 prints. Sounds a lot, but it's not really. Fuel as we all know is costly for both my car and generator. Mounts, cds etc are not cheap when you're buying several hundred at a time with no guarantee that they will all sell. You've forgotten the fees we have to pay just to be at the event, staff wages, insurance, wear and tear on kit. Plus the time you spend at home uploading images to the website, website fees, time spent sourcing events, planning for events. We don't just rock up on the day and take pictures, there's so much more time and effort spent planning before we get there. So all of that needs to be accounted for before I even take a wage for the day, and I cost my time at £20/hr.

You say if we get 200 competitors and each buys a print for a tenner we make £2000. No chance, the percentage of competitors we sell to especially at local events is more like 10-15% maybe 20% on a good day.

I have all the right gear for equestrian sports... I should go into weddings right? Wrong, my gear is totally focused towards shooting high action, all weather sporting events, not portriats or weddings. Plus weddings are traditionally held on Saturdays and peak season for weddings is April-September... oh... that's when the equestrian event season is too.

You might get good images from a camera costing £1000, but you need a lens too, and that's another £1000. Plus all the memory cards at a tenner a pop, batteries etc, plus bearing in mind these things do go wrong- my lens broke last year, the autofocus motor died- £240 later it was fixed. You've got to allow for wear and tear to gear due to the heavy use it gets.

You might ask why we do it! Sometimes I wonder myself but I love it and cannot wait for the season to start just like you guys who can't wait to get competing, but it's not an easy thing to do and very few people actually appreciate how much work goes into running an event photography business- I certainly didn't when I started up under my own name 3 seasons ago.
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Very well said!
 
Event photography is a lot of pressure!

I'm a pro photographer, but couldn't do what Twizzel does!! It's quite a high stress environment :p

I agree, the equipment is massively expensive, and not only do you often need to pay for maintenance, but spares of everything - this is particularly important for event photography. Photoshop alone is £700, and fairly essential. I don't want to admit how much my computer cost, but it was well over a grand :p You need something fairly high powered when dealing with that volume of images, the average desktop doesn't really cut it. Batteries and memory cards average out at about £30 a pop, and you can never have too many. Even things like a camera bag, are in the region of £100.

I outsource printing because running a professional standard printer is HUGELY expensive.

I think you COULD do event photography after an initial outlay of £2k, but it would be very difficult and stressful, and if your technology failed (which trust me, happens all the time and is quite inexplicable) you'd be really screwed, because you wouldn't be able to afford spares on that budget.

Sorry, got a bit off topic here, but I do agree that you can't charge pittance for prints. :p
 
Can't really add much to what Twizzel has said.

I am also an event photographer although I don't cover many events as the official photographer I'm more often found at events as press/media or personally I do do weddings/portraits.

Because only a small percentage of my work is events I don't offer on site printing but that doesn't reduce my costs much and infact raises them as I use a third party print supplier which charges more per print than if I did them myself but sorts out all the printing/sales side of it for me.

I know I lose sales by not offering on site printing but I have to accept that. Most of the events I cover are indoors so my current print/digital file rates are actually lower than what they would be for outdoor events as no matter how good the light is inside the particular venue the photo is always going to contain a boring indoor school wall which doesn't make for an exciting photo. They are still not as cheap as some because I have to cover costs but I would call them very reasonable.

I also fed up of being asked whether I will be covering an event, and when I do and am told by competitors that the photos are great but they then don't buy any. Currently other competitors who do make it viable to cover the event but if that changes I can't cover an event for what can easily turn out at far less than minimum wage!

Also £1000 of camera equipment is fine for an outdoor event on a sunny day. Indoors on a not so day think closer £3k if not more. I easily have in region of £10k of kit in just camera bodies/lenses etc although have several for wedding/portrait work that I wouldn't normally use at an equestrian show but I don't have the top top end kit but a step below.

Another frustration and this time as both a competitor and a photographer is photographers whom cover events they are not set up to do so. I realise my limitations sales wise and therefore only cover small one arena local events, I would happily cover a ODE as part of a team but it is pointless on my own. I competed at a HT last year where there was one photographer who sited himself at a horribly boring fence he shot head on and had a second camera on a remote at a very strange angle at the same fence. End result not one single photo I would even consider buying. It wasn't even as it it was an early fence where as Twizzel said could be for strategic reasons but was about 4 from the end of a BE novice track with several great photo fences (I've covered the venue for press several times so know!) my question was WHY WHY WHY

Sorry rant over :p
 
For me it often depends on the photos. Sometimes I've seen an absolutely wonderful shot of my horse that I've had to buy, and it wouldn't matter if it was £10 or £30. Other times there have been loads of me, but as someone has previously said, the photographer had no idea about horses or jumping, so they were nothing special. I've often been at major horse trials and seen photographer's stands offering portraits at home of your animals for a few hundred and considered it because the photos were just so special, yet equally I won a portrait session from an animal photographer in a raffle last year and still haven't got round to it because, to be honest, nothing on their website seemed any better than things we've taken ourselves.
 
A good home shoot should be good sadly again you get a huge variety of standards. I know local photographers who charge £30 for all your photos from an hour shoot. I couldn't afford to charge £30 even if I did no editing which they don't do either! For portrait shoots you are looking for artistic flair to come in not just taking a pretty picture!

I won't post any examples of mine as will be deemed advertising but for a home shoot look at examples of their portfolio, you need to love what they produce. Sounds like the one you have a voucher for is probably one of the entry level photographers who may well be a technically a good photographer but who can't produce that special image that you want if paying ££s :)
 
I'm a pro photographer and as a whole images sell themselves if they are good enough.
I will adjust my prices accordingly to accommodate certain events and the demand.
Over £10 for anything under 8x10 is too much and I always give a discount for multiple prints. The digital file is always more expensive than a print as we all have to make a living. But coming from a horse background (none rider) I know that horse riders are very careful with there money. But the low down is that image quality and knowing the subject will always come first. However I know of certain photographers that charge over £30/£40 for prints.
 
I've only bought photos from the yard I compete on at uni, mainly because its the only place i've competed at which has had a photographer. I think they charge £8/9 for a 6x4 but you get the digital image for free, I usually buy 2/3 photos at a dressage event and 2 at a showjumping so that's 4/5 pictures a month, I've never grumbled about their prices, they are lovely friendly people who run the photography business and I understand how expensive kit they use, I have my own camera which was near on £500 just for taking photos of my friends riding and holidays etc.

I have however been to one show while away from uni and the photographer was wanting £20 for a printed photo which was blurry! I think as long as you have a good photographer taking the pictures, no one should moan about the price, at the end of the day they're a luxury item, they're going to have a luxury price tag too.
 
I went to an event in September and a digital image was £18! It wasn't a big event, it was an unaffiliated 80....

I think around 10-12 is fair, I actually prefer to buy a digital image which of course cuts down their costs too so I would expect that to be a little less.
 
I've just paid £25 for two digital images on USB thinking I could get some nice canvases. When I got them home found out that they were very low resolution - only 1mp and not much use for anything other than the smallest print or facebook. There was nothing to suggest that they would be anything other than a normal photo. Feeling cheated.
 
At the end of the day who will buy them other than the owner of the horse. Personally if I were an event photographer, I would want over all profit to be up ie high sales over high price per image.

There is a company that does events near me and their show day multi buys are fair enough but after the fact it is extortionate and I won't often see one I like enough to buy. If they were cheaper for digital images, I would buy a photo I was less keen on.

Often my OH will have got as good or better images than the pro tog anyway and he had no training whatsoever (other than my disappointed face in the early days when he missed the fence, cut her legs off etc etc lol) and a fairly low end bridge camera.

Unless it's an absolutely outstanding pic, and let's face it rarely does everything come together for me where I am completely happy with the whole thing and don't have a stupid expression on my face (!) all I want to do with it is post it on FB and I want a decent image for that not a low res rubbish one.
 
FfionWinnie said:
At the end of the day who will buy them other than the owner of the horse. Personally if I were an event photographer, I would want over all profit to be up ie high sales over high price per image.

There is a company that does events near me and their show day multi buys are fair enough but after the fact it is extortionate and I won't often see one I like enough to buy. If they were cheaper for digital images, I would buy a photo I was less keen on.

Often my OH will have got as good or better images than the pro tog anyway and he had no training whatsoever (other than my disappointed face in the early days when he missed the fence, cut her legs off etc etc lol) and a fairly low end bridge camera.

Unless it's an absolutely outstanding pic, and let's face it rarely does everything come together for me where I am completely happy with the whole thing and don't have a stupid expression on my face (!) all I want to do with it is post it on FB and I want a decent image for that not a low res rubbish one.
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Agree with this. I'm more likely to buy 5 £5 pics that are abit "meh" looking to stick on FB as a memory of the day than I am to buy 1 £10 pic that is also abit "meh".
 
I actually very rarely buy pro photos. Most events I've been to seem to hire photographers who take all of their pics at just the wrong second - that awful moment when a horse is just about to take off over a fence and it looks like an elephant, or the wrong part of a trot or canter stride. My OH takes better pics that that so I only buy the photos if they're really special.
 
I recently bought 2 £5 photos for a multi picture frame I have to fill with pictures of my horse. Love the photos, I look like crap (but doesnt everyone think they look awful in photos?), but the horse looks amazing. Well timed photos and the rest on the site were too really, wasnt often the guy got one wrong.

Think it just depends on the photographer. We have a couple of great photographers up here, not seen a bad one yet.
 
I have a lot of pro photos of my horse, so I am not interested in buying more at high prices.
What I will always be interested in buying us low resolution jpegs for no more than £5. For Facebook, However these are rarely available, and if they are well overpriced ( £10 each at Warwick hall event last weekend and this for low resolution) if reasonably priced I would buy several at every event. Instead I buy nothing as they never are!
 
I remember years back one of my first dressage competitions on my old horse, Julia Shearwood was doing the photography and done a deal for the lot on disc. I wish more photographers would do that as like others have said - the pictures are usless to anyone else bar the horses owner and i generally like more than one pic (if the photographer is good at their job! I more often than not buy more than one picture anyway as my husband will usually be videoing rather than photographing so its nice to have memories of the day. I think people would be swayed to buy more for deals like that rather than extortionate prices for one picture. But then even if i think they're overpriced i will buy anyway!!
 
I'm now feeling super lucky with the togs round by me, generally I can get 10-15 low res jpegs for facebook for the £20-£30 mark :eek:! I'll buy a printed out picture if it's a champs or a particularly fab result (baby horses first win, show pony winning at an agri show, etc), but much prefer to buy a bunch of low res ones for social media, as I'm generally on my own so it's a nice way of getting some memento's or an insight to what we actually looked like ;).
 
Round here, there is a fairly well established pro photographer and another one just setting up, going full time this season.

They charge £2.50/£3 for a fb friendly low res image, with a 4 for £10 offer. You pay on their website and the images are immediately emailed to you. They do a lot of fun rides and local showjumping.

You can also order prints, both onsite and from the website, but I would imagine that the majority of their sales from those events are from the digital images - they're cheap and fun, and to be honest, those sort of events are rarely likely to produce images that need printable pics!
 
I usually go to shows on my own so unless a friend happens to be there i do not get many opportunities to have pictures of me riding. Thanks to our local pro I have some lovely shots of my horses and even me, although I am shocked that he can't make me look size 12!!! I usually have digital versions but have bought photos when the shots have been stunning. The range of options open it to all pockets and I feel that all in all they are value for money, esp when you have a superb photographer on site.
<<<<<< That is a shot taken and BOUGHT from a pro. Alec Murrell
 
I love photos of Fig. But I'm a one horse owner, not doing this for an owner or yard etc. It's all for me. I sometimes wince at another £20/30 but hey screw it I'll get the pic anyway!

In fact the only ones I've been disappointed with recently were some digital images that were rubbish quality! And they still cost me a tenner each! Would rather fork out more for the real thing and then scan and edit it myself!
 
Sorry but the cheapness is why so many event photographers dont last long. Its extremely expensive to be a professional photographer (if done properly), we have huge outlays on things like equipment, insurance, software etc. We personally do most types of photography including events but only those we are paid to attend in the first place, we'd never consider doing horse events just turning up and hoping to make a profit in sales because it just doesn't happen. As there are photographers at most shows these days, they have to work extremely hard to get that lucky shot that gets someone to buy it - otherwise, they're all pretty samey. I know when I compete, I dont always buy the photograph - it has to be quite special. I don't really know why some photographers bother with horse events, they can't possibly make much considering the time they've spent at the event and then editing and sending out images after... its great they're there in that I like to see what they get but I can only imagine they do it for fun as opposed to actually making a decent living off it.

nikkimariet - you realise thats actually illegal to make a copy of the print and edit it yourself... copyright rules mean you're not allowed to do that to someone else's work! I'd be livid if someone did that to me! (and no you do not buy the copyright when you purchase a jpeg or print, the copyright legally remains with the photographer).
 
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I don't mind paying for good quality photos that come in a nice mount or something, some photographers round here to deals or put 2 photos together and caption it for you, which I really like. However I was disappointed at Aske the other week when 2 photos, not in a mount or anything cost me £28! I thought that was pretty overpriced
 
What folks also don't realise the time it takes to edit, sort and upload all those event photos so event the jpeg ones that are emailed out have had attention to them

I will always try to purchase off an event photographer if the photo is decent even if just a small jpeg for social media use as I love photos and appreciate having them there.

I just recently did walk the walk and there was an event photographer there taking pictures - they were £30 each and they were not great even though we posed for the photos so not even an action shot so made me appreciate our horsey togs!
 
It does seem to have quite a lot of variation. I always prefer to buy digital images as the main thing I do with them is stick them on social media. It has to be a VERY nice pic for me to decide to buy a print by choice. (although if it's somewhere doing print on the day then I'm more inclined to do that) Going rate seems to be anything up to about £5 for a digital image of facebook quality (I have paid a little more for high-res versions) and maybe about £10 for a 7x5. I'm another that may buy several pics that are just "ok" if on a deal where I would maybe only have bought one or none otherwise.
 
I'm quite aware of what it costs to run a business but it makes sense to make more money over all surely.

I can't see the benefit of selling a couple of highly priced prints, over selling at least one image to everyone there and making more money.

The photos are completely worthless except to the owner of the horse.

There has to be a bottom line as to what it costs them to be there for the day then profit worked on top of that.

It's not really relevant to say oh but they could earn 5k at a wedding, if they were able to earn 5k at a wedding I'm sure they would be there earning it!
 
FfionWinnie said:
I'm quite aware of what it costs to run a business but it makes sense to make more money over all surely.

I can't see the benefit of selling a couple of highly priced prints, over selling at least one image to everyone there and making more money.

The photos are completely worthless except to the owner of the horse.

There has to be a bottom line as to what it costs them to be there for the day then profit worked on top of that.

It's not really relevant to say oh but they could earn 5k at a wedding, if they were able to earn 5k at a wedding I'm sure they would be there earning it!
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This entirely, it must make more sense to try and earn that x amount of pounds per dressage test/competitor, than get a few highly priced prints per day? Cutting your nose off by not offering a budget option only hurts your own business, as there are lots of people happy to have lower quality pictures taken by friends and family for social media...

I love that there are a couple of brill photographer's at some of the venues I frequent, without them I would never have pictures of my day. However I will only buy low res jpegs for a few pounds each as a) I cannot afford more than that and b) I much prefer to have a few pictures showing the test than only one of one moment in time.

My ideal is when the video people are there, as I can look back on my test, review and assess!
 
I have a favourite photographer who does amazing pictures - they are art, not just a snapshot. He doesn't sell on the day, but with about a day's delay via his webpage, and you can order digital or prints. I tend to go for the good quality digital ones, as I like putting them on social media, but will also have a print made of the occasional one (sometimes as a picture/wallart, or on a mug, calendar...). I pay £10 per picture, and think that is very a reasonable price for what I get. Got two new ones just the other weekend :-)
I've also had some rather mediocre pictures taken at other events. If the picture is only just a snapshot of the day and doesn't stand out particularly, I am less tempted to get it.
 
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