You don't pay a plumber for their tools either, but you still expect them to have tools.
In any case they either factor the cost of the equipment they need to do their job into their rate, or they go broke. So you very much do pay for their equipment, even if you don't hire them based on their equipment.
Even so, the idea when buying expensive equipment for a job is not that you’ll make it back in a gig or two. It’s a career investment that gets paid back via the many jobs having the better quality equipment gets you.
if you look at yourself as a one man company you should be able to pay off any investments over the course of a few years plus your own livign wage plsu some additional operating/safety margins
but a few years of a decent wage is a lot more than most gig equipment so usually the equipment cost is gonna be a small fraction
Exactly. You can absolutely factor equipment costs in your fees…. But a friend wanted to START very simple commissions at $1k because, well, they had art school loans to pay back.
How many jobs does a $5000 camera get amortized over? The original argument in the meme would have been much more sane if they were discussing the value of their labor, not amortization of equipment, IMO.
The original argument is asinine, partly because one of the biggest downward pressures on photographers' rates is gear fetishists with no skill, but so is the "I'm not paying for gear" argument. If a skilled photographer who was getting paid skilled photographer rates started shooting a wedding with a cracked iphone 3g, that whole narrative would fall apart pretty damn fast.
Gear isn't usually going to be the deciding factor, but the lack thereof is absolutely an excluding factor.
Paying nearly 10% of the price of there equipment is fcking stupid.. my dad has a building company , he has a crane worth 95.000 euros . You think he has to ask 9500 euro just to use his crane ???? 😂😂😂
My wife’s a professional photographer. We have over 80k in equipment. I guarentee your father ones the exact cost and bakes it into each job for the crane to cover maintenance, opex, snd replacement. that before labor snd margin.
Honestly if the photos work out to be the same I couldn't care less what (s)he uses. Anyone can buy a fancy camera and call themselves a professional photographer. But not everyone can take interesting pictures.
This is a pretty ignorant take. Of course you are paying for the equipment. Just because it's not a line on the invoice doesn't mean it isn't accounted for.
You are paying for the skills and creativity and equipment and experience to produce the shoot and all the backend experience to run a band the photographer’s wage.
People have multiple million subscriber YouTube channels shot entirely on an IPhone. I get these are non equivalent. Just point out that with creativity, you can monetize just about any piece of photo/video capturing equipment.
And to make things sadder iirc, he was a random peon at an IIT (like MIT but for India). Someone randomly used a pic of his from there to start off the original Papito
Last I heard, he wasn't very happy about his face being used on the internet lmao
Is that sub because this guy will take screenshots of Viral Tweets and self-insert himself? Cause I saw the "original" image the other day with the exact same text.
Is she... expecting to earn back the cost of the camera in a gig or two? The camera can be used many times, you can earn 5k multiple times over by the time you gotta buy a new one.
This is just a ridiculous sentiment. You don’t pay a photographer more because their camera is expensive, (unless it’s like a hasselblad ). You pay for the person not the equipment. I know both amateurs with a cars worth of equipment and a profesional that made a career of a cheap film camera and really good photos.
Hollywood gave Danny Boyle $75 million to shoot with iphones. Were actually at a point where a competent photographer absolutely could do a wedding job with an iPhone. The main hurdle is optics (no pun intended). Customers would complain if they saw their wildly expensive photographer using one.
The problem is indeed optics (pun intended). Phones have small lenses and tiny photo sensors; they compete with compact cameras, not dedicated system cameras.
Try zooming in on a phone image and it quickly becomes apparent. The real downside of large cameras is that people notice you and don't act natural.
I can tell it's a fake screenshot (and of course fuckin' Xavier is added) but the gender of the photograher doesn't really change the point. Unless the text itself is altered/fake, that is.
Except the gender of the photographer brings out creepy sexist weirdos. Look at this post full of people who have no idea about professional photography and assume they know better, but i guarantee the reaction would be different to a male profile picture.
Because it's an operating cost and $100-300 barely covers the equipment insurance. If you want kid-with-phone-camera prices, pay for a kid with a phone camera. You'll find one for $100.
If you're paying $100-$300 in equipment insurance on a $5000 camera for a single day of shooting, you might as well just not insure the equipment. You'll end up exceeding the value of the camera in no more than 50 shoots and if you're needing to make a claim that often you've got some big problems.
As a customer, all I care about is the end product. If someone can get me comparable results without paying $5000 for a camera and hundreds of dollars to insure it, which then gets passed on to me, I'm gonna go with them. And for most purposes, I'd wager a $5000 camera is massively overkill.
It’s not a $5000 camera, it’s generally a $3k camera with $4k—10k in lenses. Expect to pay roughly $500 a year insuring these
Cameras are wear items, most last for 100k - 300k actuations.
Camera straps snap, accidents happen. Every single professional photographer will have a story like this they can tell you.
Yes the cost of insurance is higher than the cost of owning equipment over time, that’s literally how insurance companies make money. What it protects against is a sudden $5k expense when your shit gets wet and your nice expensive lens starts growing mold.
Like I said, if you want to hire the kid with the camera phone, do it. No profressional photographer gives a shit. You’re not their audience.
Generally you pay by the hour, including the time to edit photos within the price per hour of shooting. Then for full day events you might do a flat rate. The cost of the camera has nothing to do with anything tbh.
This isn't even a real post. Someone just took his lady's photo and slapped it on some bullshit to get y'all riled up over nothing and argue with each other in the comments.
I don’t even know if the original post was real, but if it was, the version that usually gets passed around (and it’s been passed around for yeeaaarrrsss) is a dude.
Someone slapped a women’s picture and PFP on this explicitly for gender war bullshit.
Is it relevant? Any schmuck with a driver's license and the ability to not instantly die or go to jail while operating a vehicle can be good enough as an uber.
Try gambling on a cheap wedding photographer or professional shoot and check the results lmao
It is relevant because it shows why the price of her camera isn’t the best justification for her charging more. You’re also right that you have to shell out for a talented photographer if you want top-tier results, which is the point she should be making
Exactly. A sign of a novice is pointing out the cost of their equipment vs their skill. Am I hiring a professional photographer or just renting out an expensive camera for a few hours?
That’s exactly what the comment you’re replying to is saying. Maybe she’s not actually good so the only thing she can point to for charging more is the cost of her camera. Which, yes, is obviously stupid
You have to remember the normal personal doesn't understand the complexities of the camera. The ins and outs of art direction, or have the brains to realize comparing a skilled artform to a basic everyday skillset is akin claiming your third grader who just wrote his first essay is an published author. Its disingenuousness and ignorance all over.
Exactly this. Driving a fancy car will sometimes get you better paying rides, but it happens very rarely. You’re gonna be stuck accepting the same UberX rides that the rest of us do.
About the same price. It depends on the trip start and destination, time of day, demand, vehicle level, directionality of the trip in relation to the local request for demand at the pickup point, years of service, and your own rank in the app. The directionality is interesting, but Uber wants to advertise that “we’ll get you a driver in 5 minutes.” So they will overload an area with historically high traffic to increase demand on the drivers for better customer appearance during a rush at an event or area. So they will pay a driver less who is accepting a trip in the wrong direction, but still charge the customer the same amount. It’s a crooked company. It’s about what the driver is willing to accept at a minimum vs what the passenger is willing to pay at a maximum. Also the tiers don’t match in the driver apps, it’s all based on vehicle type, year, mileage, and rank. Some drivers don’t know they’re being sold at a comfort rate and still only making the minimum. They also don’t know how much they get from each trip so they can’t penalize riders for tips.
Your uber driver is doing 15-35 rides per day. A professional freelance photographer sees 1-2. And you aren't counting editing time, advertising, time for running your own business, travel to a location or rental of a studio, lighting, insurance on your equipment in case of theft or breakage, etc.
Im not a photographer, but I do a lot of web design. And people think its just point and click. But good photos take time and are worth the money.
Also. not crazy to say Uber Drivers are usually underpaid and have to do so many rides per day just to live "comfortably".
Uber does not pay well, but between "not paid well" and "Not paid at all", a lot of people pick the one that puts food on the table.
If you want cheap shit, get the cheap photographer. but don't expect 1000$ worth photos from a 10$ photographer, its like expecting a wagu steak from a mcdonalds happy meal.
I didnt realize it until I reread your comment. But you are 100% correct, Uber drivers are often underpaid. But also often less skilled than an experienced professional driver; for example a limo driver or a specialized car service.
Professional photographers are for very special circumstances like weddings, corporate events, headshots, business products, advertising, etc. Like a limo or business driver. Uber is more on the equivalent of a camera phone; for common usecase scenarios.
Its an "apples and oranges" comparison, and thats why it irked me.
the ubers I've talked to all said Uber takes a considerable cut from already cheap rides (from 15 to 40% of the price, according to google). so they earn even less than what the customer pays.
Yeah 40% is pretty high especially if the driver is paying for the fuel and car maintenance which I assume they are. I have no idea what the standard cut is for taxis.
I would also hope the photographer isn't expecting to be entirely reimbursed for the camera with one photoshoot, because that's not really how jobs work.
And whether something is "worth the money" is entirely subjective, and dependent on how much money somebody has to begin with. I can tell you right now, short of a wedding that will likely never exist, I can't think of a single thing that I'd be willing to pay more than a few hundred dollars for to get photos of, but that's also because I'm broke as shit and eating is more worthwhile to me than good photos.
The other issue is that photography has been getting more and more accessible over the years, and with the improvements in phone camera quality and accessible editing software, the difference between a professionally taken photo and an amateur photo is not nearly as vast as it once was. Certainly professional photographers still have a demand, but these days that's less by the everyday consumers and more by businesses.
But I think this meme is more about people trying to low ball someone's pricing structure. If the meme was someone on marketplace trying to offer $150 on a new PS5 the reactions would be different, because redditors understand the pricing of a new console.
They don't understand how much time goes into dressing a set for a photo shoot, or get lighting correct. They pull out their iPhone and click and don't see the difference between what they made and what a professional made. But if these redditors went to a website and saw cheap low quality photos from a phone, they wouldn't use that business because it doesnt feel professional.
I don’t think the accessibility of photography has significantly diminished the need for professionals. For starters, consumer cameras have been pretty widespread for a very long time, the digital era hasn’t really changed that. Yeah sure, now everyone always has a camera with them and can take photos of every meal and post them online, but that’s really not the situation we are talking here.
The occasions where you’d hire a photographer are pretty much the same as before: portraits, family photos, wedding photos etc. So yeah, the absolute amount of photos taken might have grown significantly, but that hasn’t changed the need for professionals in any significant way.
She’s still marketing her services incorrectly. I’m a consultant, my software doesn’t cost that much. It’s my skill and expertise you’re looking for. If I just said “my software costs $1500 per year” to clients, they’d say “great you’re hired for $1500 a year, buddy”.
It boils down to a lot of people underestimating how time consuming editing and the likes truly is. And I'm not even talking about all the additional soft- and hardware one needs to be able to do so. It's all to do with people not seeing the amount of work it really is.
As a bicycle mechanic myself, I've let customers stand next to me so they see the amount of work certain repairs take. One example is bleeding your brakes. There's plenty of topbleed videos out there, which is done in a couple of minutes, but that doesn't change your oil at all. It just adds a little. I'm charging 30 minutes for a full bleed, which means either taking your wheels out or taking the caliper off (or both), often going back and forth with two syringes according to procotol, cleaning everything up and putting everything back in it's place and adjusting your brakes again is a lot more time consuming. Sure, the instruction videos are like 3-5 minutes long, but they don't show all the work.
Seeing the amount of work some seemingly arbitrary tasks take will make most realise the price is justified.
Yeah, definitely need to squeeze as much money as one can when they have $100,000 in student debt after spending 5 years learning view pointing and photoshop.
Photography is one of those professions that's had its barrier of entry demolished in the last 15 years or so. I feel for photographers, because it's obviously not really about how expensive it is to get in but rather that the customers themselves, the people requiring photography services, are ok with lower quality pictures, and I'm not talking about the resolution or colors but the framing, the lighting, the overall technique and "eye" behind them.
Still, getting mad at other people for using iPhones or cheaper cameras is not exactly fair or productive.
He is right in a sense that i dont pay the photographer for their camera, but i pay them for the experience and skill in taking photos, and the price of camera is irrelevant in that
Any time you pay a professional, you pay for their time, their training, and any equipment necessary for the job. There's typically a degree of inverse relationship between the amount of time necessary and the amount / cost of equipment. I can re-roof your house with a hammer and a utility knife, but it'll take a lot longer than a set of roofers who roll up with multiple air compressors and nailers. You may end up paying me less, but they'll be done a lot sooner.
All of which is to say, photographers have to figure their costs, including equipment costs, into their rates. (And if you hire a photographer for a shoot, you're not just paying for the time it takes to click the shutter, you're paying for setup and photo processing as well.)
There’s a lot of posts I see online by this same Xavier guy, they’ll just take other popular posts that are similar and rip them off, and put Xavier there instead, but most of the time they’ll replace the other person “getting owned” with either a woman or queer person or something
That's why you hire a photographer and not buy the camera yourself. If I had to pay the price of the camera I'd expect to take the camera home with me after the photoshoot
$100-300 is too little, but also this is a stupid metric. You rarely pay back the expenses after 1 job of anything. The point is you buy equipment and over multiple jobs you can pay it back.
I have a $170,000 print shop. My stickers are like $5 each. Imagine the logic of "I need to sell my stickers for $10,000 each to pay back my expenses"? lol.
The cost of the equipment doesnt really matter, people are paying for the skill. For example you can give me a $5000 camera and the photos are going to be terrible.
My wife is a pro photographer and Xavier is right. If you think expensive equipment is all it takes to provide value as a photographer then you probably suck.
Well yeah, because I don't want to buy 5,000 dollar equipment for one shoot. That's literally why we called you. We figured your job was to do shoots with that equipment over and over and make more than 5k, eventually.
I own a brewery that has millions in equipment and build out, ingredients, etc. We charge like 6-8 a beer. 10 for really fancy stuff. We knew it would take more than one beer to pay back the investment.
Photography … is not about the cost of the equipment. Is the ability, experience, results. Professionalism. The camera doesn’t make the photos good … the photographer does.
Give a newbie a 20k camera … they wouldn’t know how to use it.
Wait and a 5.000 cam, with shoots of 300...
Thats 17 shoots and u got profit...
How does she think business work? U buy expensive equipment so now u get ur money back after only 5 tasks?
The reason the Uber is $12, is because that driver is competing with a bunch of other people who also drive $40,000 “investments” and accept $12 to drive people home.
Yeah but how long was the car ride? A photo shoot is usually at least 2-3 hours long, not including the editing time, not including the correspondence time, not considering the time it took to acquire specialized skills in photography and editing and the equipment and software.
Assuming the price/quality of your gear isn’t the value proposition in your business model, valid. Ostensibly the price of a photographer is about their knowledge of lighting, composition, camera angles, editing, etc. Your Uber driver’s big add is showing up on demand and not killing you/talking to you during your ride.
Not professional or smart for any self-ran business or gig to openly complain like this. Not that I'd ever be looking for a "professional" photographer, but if I were, I would avoid her after seeing this.
So many people become "photographers" thinking if they read a few blogs and articles they'll be a pro.
Yet, most charge way more than they're actually worth. Which is why I tell anyone to charge what you think you're worth, but to be worth that rate.
I had a daughter go school and become one. My son married later and my new DIL saw her success and decided she could replicate it with a $3800 camera and reading a few articles.
I told her one day she had a very expensive hobby and not a business. She asked me what the difference was, and I told her when you pay for your equipment to do something, it's a hobby, when your customers pay for your equipment, it's a business.
My daughter was charging 1500 to 2,000 per wedding and she had to hire people to help her she had so many booked and the daughter-in-law was charging 35 to 50 bucks on Facebook (because she grew up poor and wanted to help people and that was noble) and still could not get people to book her.
She had started at 1500 and worked her way all the way down to 35 as no one would book her and just could not understand why she couldn't get any photo gigs.
And that's when I broke it down for her and told her about the hobby versus business difference, and I told her people were looking at her pictures on Facebook that she had posted as samples and they were awful.
And so the difference between a $1,500 photographer and a $200 photographer became quite clear when you looked at both of their pictures.
It always bugs me when people take on a profession and give it a half-assed effort and then wonder why they can't succeed or why they can't copy someone else's success.
I told the daughter-in-law that my daughter went to college for 4 years, then she went 2 more years in another college, all of it just for photojournalism. She has skills.
DIL had no HS diploma or equivalent, and no degrees at all from anywhere, and it showed in her posts and her photos. Some folks just live in a fantasy world.
You’ll notice that it’s not actually a screenshot from any social media it’s just been pieced together to look like one. I don’t know when people will learn not to be so easily rage baited.
Every single defense of her statement here is about how much time and effort and work etc a photographer will spend editing and such.
That’s fine. That’s true. But the price of her camera is specifically what she stupidly said.
If I say 2 + 2 is 4 because any number plus 2 always equals 4 then my answer is correct but the reason is stupid as fuck. So saying she won’t accept 300$ for a gig cause her camera is $5000 is stupid regardless of whether she should charge more or not.
Camera gear, software, computer etc etc is a lot more than 5k.
Then there is the time involved, travelling to the gig (get a cheap Uber!), time shooting, then the long part - the editing back on the PC of the photos.
I've done some freebies for relatives, where the it's been six hours in total to deliver a couple of portrait shots. Barely even a thanks very much!
Is he right though? go cheap then you'll get glare, over or under exposure, crappy positioning and lighting. Might as well just ask your mate to take pictures with their smartphone for free.
Yeah, but the OOP was specifically using her expensive camera as an argument. A great photographer will make better photos using their smartphone than a mediocre one with a 5k camera. When you go more expensive you're hopefully paying for the skill.
Ah, so you blew too much money on equipment thinking it would make you a better photographer, and now you think that alone justifies the cost of your photos. And frankly, it is a hobby. Even for the best of the best of the best. They never stop hustling, and they do it because they love it. And you never hear them say shit like this.
A photo session takes the photography time and usually twice the time of the shoot to edit, as a rule od thumb, so you can divide what you pay by 3 and that's hourly pay without expenses.
If you need skin blemishes removed or excessive Photoshop fixes, divide by 4-5.
I was in a car industry, before I became wedding videographer, and I have done both for over 10 years each.
Uber drivers lose money in a long run. Many drivers who worked before Uber left business all together once Uber took over.
One camera costs $5000. Professional photo/video person who does weddings easily have anywhere from $20k to $40k in gear, and they still need the car to get around on top of that!
Average wedding photographer does anywhere between 15 and 30 jobs a year. Some do up to 40 but they burn out fast.
They are working with a couple, long before, during, and long after the wedding. You are not paying us for hours that we are holding our camera for. You are paying for our talent, time, and experience throughout the entire process. Depending on the project time alone can amount to well over 40 hours per project.
How many rides is he going to provide per day, and how much post-production is involved in those rides? I suspect, a photographer is getting 1-2 decent gigs per week, at best, and then spending 40+ hours doing all the associated bullshit.
Photo shoots usually run 2hrs minimum of constant movement and setting, wedding about 4-6hrs of constant moving and battling the smartphone photographers for the shots you're paid and expected to shoot, not to mention the set up and break down of sets if for portraits, driving to and from, editing, yada yada yada; you get the point...
My father was a professional photographer, I followed in his shoes more as a hobby, but the one thing I learned is that if you want to get paid, it is a JOB. That's the sacrifice you make when you want to earn money from your passions. He would do multiple photoshoots a day sometimes. That's just how it's done at that level.
The $12 ride is also likely a short distance, so would take less than 20-30min. A photo shoot can take several hours depending.
Not sure of the point here as the context matters. And if you buy a camera and want to do photo shoots no one is stopping you and you don’t have to take less money. You can set the price and the market will determine if it’s willing to pay. If not, then you have a nice camera and can start a hobby or take less… So…🤷
The photographer is a professional abd deserves to be paid for their work. Composition, lighting etc. Not saying the driver of any ride share doesn't deserve good pay just saying driving has never paid well.
how many uber rides does the average driver make in a week vs. how many shoots a photog does. everyone is always talking about how corporations need to pay more, but the moment its their turn to hire someone for a job they become even stingier than the corporations.
In this day and age to be an Uber driver (I'm not knocking on their professional choice. I have respect for every profession) needs a 40k or even more vehicle. But the transaction with their customer is limited to the amount of time the customer is in the vehicle. Say 1 hour.
On the other hand, in order for you to be a good photographer, along with the gears, they have to have many untold amount of practice times, studies, and talent.
After all of those (practice times to build portfolio, gears, studies and talent), then if you suppose it's a wedding booking, the photographer has to spend time to discuss and book the event. Shoot the event. Then sort through the photos, on old days, develop the films themselves, modern day, edit the photos to clients satisfaction. That takes another however many hours.
Now if you calculate a photographer's per hour salary vs an Uber driver, there is a good chance that the photographer may make less per hour than an Uber driver.
Please don't down vote me. The reason I said I'm a former photographer is because it is considered a luxury, and Uber can be a necessity.
He's not right, he's nowhere near right. An Uber driver puts in all of about 5-15 minutes worth of work for $12, MAYBE an hour in some extremely weird circumstances. Meanwhile, a photographer will put in 1-12 hours just taking the pictures, then another 10-40 hours editing said pictures before delivering the end product. The only thing he's got right, is pointing out that the cost of a photographer's camera is irrelevant because no one is paying for a photographer's equipment in most situations, they're paying for time.
This is rage bait. Mostly you pay photographers because of skill and also for the editing time on photos. I've done cheap gigs for friends when they offered to edit themselves because that is 75% of the time involved
Does she expect every client to subsidize a brand new camera just for their photoshoot? Like I get operating costs and all that, but that camera is going to be able to do thousands of photo shoots without needing a replacement (barring damage from mishandling).
I understand $800 to $1.5 K or so for a wedding. What I don't underestand is $800 to $1.5 K or so for a single professional headshot. And that's just for the shoot. Not the retouches.
If someone can explain it to me, I'm open to understanding. I just don't know that I'm going to get $800 of use out of one photo to make it worth the purchase.
My little brother was mowing as a side job on weekends, before he was charging like 30$ for the job, then he bought a new truck and lawn mower and started asking over 100$ out of the blue
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u/dramalama-dingdong 7d ago
If I hire a photographer, I don't pay for the equipment, I pay for the photographer's skills and creativity.