Wedding photography, part II

Two days ago, I wrote a post about how wedding photography is easy money. The post picked up a surprisingly large number of comments from angry wedding photographers. Many comments accused me of writing the post only to get “hits” for my blog. Believe me, I had no idea that so many people would find the post—I figured that ten or twenty people would read it and one person or so would leave a comment, like most of my other posts.

What I did learn about wedding photographers is that they are a very defensive bunch, and they have a very inflated sense of their self-worth. I suppose that the defensiveness is the result of the cognitive dissonance caused by the difference between their self-view and the reality.

Brady, the wedding photographer from Rochester New York, was kind enough to fill in the numbers in a comment he left to the previous post.

• His normal large wedding package requires 30-40 hours per work.
• The price for a normal package is $6,000 to $8,0000.
• Brady didn’t say what his profit was per wedding, so here is some guesswork. The normal package includes a medium or large album, two parent albums, and a second photographer. I’ll guess that the blank albums cost $800 (fancy-shmancy wedding stuff is ridiculously overpriced) and that the second photographer gets paid $250 (photographers who don’t own their own wedding photography business get paid crap). It also costs him some money to printout all the photos. $250? This probably leaves Brady with a $5,500 marginal profit for a normal wedding.
• Brady shoots only 20 weddings per year, but he makes so much profit per wedding that he still has an estimated gross income (that’s revenue minus cost of goods sold) of $110,000 per year.
• Brady has some other expenses such as equipment, liability insurance (the PPA charges $1000 to $1500 per year for this), and advertising/marketing. Perhaps Brady only makes $100,000 per year after these expenses?

Is Brady making easy money? For Rochester, NY (far away from New York City), $100,000 is a damn good income for a part-time job. He seems to work less than half as many hours per year as a regular full-time white collar worker. If Brady can increase the number of weddings he does to 30 per year, he can get his income up to around $150,000, meaning he’d be earning more money than most medical doctors in the Rochester area.

Now, let me address some of the weird comments the previous post received.

One day of work huh?

My first post never said the wedding photographer only works one day per week, the post said that the wedding photographer “only has one high stress day.” The photographer has to do additional work during the rest of the week, but it’s low-stress work, done without a boss breathing down his back or artificially imposed deadlines. The wedding photographer has complete flexibility to take a day off whenever he wants, as long as it’s not one of the few days during the year in which he has to shoot a wedding. Based on Brady’s explanation of his work habits, he has a lot more days off than the regular white collar worker.

Brady himself asks the following question:

A question for you, Michael, how many people, who just so happen to have a suit in their closet, are trying to take your 9-5 job each day, despite having no or limited qualifications, and of those very few people trying to take your job just by showing up in a suit, how many of those people are actually being hired by your boss to replace you?

Actually, for the typical white collar worker, there are two billion people in China and India willing to do your job for a fraction of your salary. Pick up the Wall Street Journal sometime. People are being outsourced left and right. One of the big advantages of wedding photography is that your job can’t be outsourced.

Sam wrote:

The waitress who toils to earn tips, the miners who work 15 hour shifts in dangerous conditions...all good examples of jobs that are harder than wedding photography, but guess what...they CHOSE those jobs

Sam must have been smoking the Ayn Rand weed. No one would ever “choose” a crappy job like coal mining if he had a better option available.

Brady, again, said:

The barriers to entry in this field are surprisingly low…

Another commenter echoed that notion. Whenever someone can make $100,000 per year in a part-time job, there are obviously barriers to entry that allow him to do this, otherwise everyone would crowd in and the cushy job would disappear.

The guy who charges $500 for a wedding is obviously not making the six figure salary. What prevents him from increasing the price to $7,000 like Brady charges and doing 20 weddings per year? Those are the barriers to entry.

In order to get to Brady’s income level, you need (1) above average intelligence (this disqualifies 50% of the population); (2) a few years of experience photographing weddings so you can get to Brady’s skill level; (3) a marketing network.

Finally, let me address the supposedly expensive “equipment costs” that several comments mentioned. In reality, wedding photography is a very cheap field to enter from a capital perspective. That’s the ironic contradiction of the comments—one commenter says photographers face high equipment costs, and then another commenter bemoans the fact that anyone with a camera can compete against him.

It costs a lot more money to become a doctor or lawyer. Just a single semester of graduate school tuition ($20,000+) is more than enough money to completely equip the photographer with expensive camera equipment for many years. White collar professionals often find themselves paying monthly student loan payments exceeding $1,000 per month, and unlike the equipment and insurance costs of the self-employed wedding photographer, student loan payments (except to a very limited extent) are not tax deductible at all.

The following comment was written elsewhere on the web, but in response to my post:

Anyone with a bit of common sense can tell you that real estate, banking and currency trading is where the BIG money is.

It's true that there's much bigger money in investment banking, trading, and money management, but in order to get a job like that you need an MBA from Harvard, Wharton, or Columbia. If you can get into a top business school, then it would be dumb to pursue a wedding photography career. But on the other hand, for people who can't get admitted to the Wharton MBA program, wedding photography looks like a pretty lucrative field.

Comments

[Troy]

If wedding photography is a great profession... I encourage you to try it.

Go get your gear, copy Brady's price list -- but use your own name and phone number. Rent a booth at a bridal fair and give it a try.

[shane Snider]

You're right. Wedding photography is easy. In fact, why don't you come and shoot one of my weddings with me. We'll offer the bride the choice of my pictures or yours. If she chooses yours, I'll let you keep the profit.

[Anonymous]

Brady is incredibly talented. While some skill level and business sense can be acquired, you either have "it" or you don't. If you don't, your maximum earning power per wedding will be capped at a certain level. If you do, the possibilities are endless. Brady (and many other photographers--though not the ones charging $500/wedding) have both a natural talent and good business sense. Without both, you will never turn a healthy profit.

To once again correct some of your numbers: our startup costs for equipment were $12K. We spend another $4-6K annually to keep up with the growing demands of the industry (equipment, computers, software, etc.). Our health care/life insurance/disability/etc. alone is $12K/year. We did the math, and in order for us to take home a $60,000 salary (that's the total salary for two people, so 30K each), we'd have to gross $120,000. That's a lot of weddings, and our market can't bear the same numbers as Brady's. Please, please, please, do some real research if you're going to continue this diatribe.

[Dave]

The fact is that wedding photography is a completely free market - there are no major barriers to entry (big capital outlay), nor are there any artificial barriers to entry (government or trade regulations).

So how do you explain that wedding photographers are underworked and overpaid? If that were truly the case, the market would balance out and you'd have more wedding photographers and their pay would lessen.

The well-paid wedding photographers get their fees for a reason: A bride wants to hire a seasoned, capable photographer with an extensive portfolio, who produces consistent, high quality, artful images. The high prices commanded by top-tier photographers is a reflection of their hard-earned status in the wedding industry.

I am a photographer who earns a 6-figure income, but there is no way I would ever do weddings. Besides being beyond my skill set, it just seems way too hard work for the pay! I have a good deal of admiration for a skilled, accomplished wedding photographer and I think most of them - even the highly paid ones - do it more for the love of it than for the money.

[Brady]

The more popular your blog gets, the more popular my blog gets, thanks!

[Rob]

Well said Dave! You have a very good understanding of economic I see. Take notes Big Mike.

Mike here is your Microecon 101 lesson:

Determinats of demand

* Income
* Taste or Preference
* Prices of substitutes or complements
* Expectations of the future
* Population

Determinants of Supply

* Technology
* Factor prices
* The number of Suppliers
* Expectations of the future
* Environmental conditions

What does all this mean? It means that not everyone has the same taste, income or expectations in regards to photography. If there is a wedding photographer that is the best in his/her geographical area...then they can charge top dollar and people will pay! This photographer has a very limited amount of days available to photograph weddings. This means they are in high demand and have low supply. Their perceived value is very high! If I charged $500 a wedding I'd be shooting over 60+ weddings a year. I'd never have any time for my couples or myself.

Look...some people like spending a lot of money and see high price tags as high quality. That is called perceived value my friend. Smart wedding photographers are not the only ones who understand this and capitalize on this concept. There are some celebrity photographers that charge well over 7k for a photoshoot! So there is your next post!!!

Go stay at a Motel 6 and then a Rizt-Carlton....you will understand the difference. Hopefully.

Why are wedding photographer the bad ones here? We are just smart.

[Photographer]

Your silliness is really annoying. I am amazed by your lack of knowledge but yet be able to sound like you know what you're talking about.

Next you should write a post on how to make it as an actor or other famous celebrity. Talk about easy money! Pretty face? Check. Nice body? Check. Some theater/singing/modeling classes at local college? Check. I'm all set! Now I can go to Hollywood and make it huge! Yeah me!

[Nick Everitt]

Big Mike's Digital Photography Blog
Technical stuff about digital cameras, lenses, and photo editing software. And my photos.

I think you should change the text under your blog title

Big Mike's Digital Photography Blog
Clueless and ill informed rants about industries and people I know nothing about.

[Lloyd Yoon]

You're funny.

[JM]

I always find it's best to only criticise things that I know the first thing about. It stops you looking utterly stupid. You can quote a few people who are right at the top of the game who earn big money and then represent that as typical, but that's no different from any other profession. The majority don't earn big money, but they do put a lot into their work. Have you tried doing 53 weddings a year? Do you have a clue what that entails?

Oh and actually, yes you did say that it's one day's work.

[Amanda]

I posted this in your last post, so I'm echoing it here:

Whether or not wedding photography takes a lot of work or time is immaterial. Its value doesn't come from the labour added, but from the talent involved.

Baking cookies doesn't take a lot of work either, but I still pay the 3000% markup on them from my favourite bakery, cause I can't make 'em like that!

[Daniel]

I agree that for the most talented people in the field, wedding photography is easy money. If you can charge 8k for a wedding and still shoot 20-30 weddings a year, that's pretty easy money.

The fact of the matter is, only the top 5% or so of wedding photographers actually are able to do that. If you look at statistics compiled by the PPA, you'll see that the average wedding photographer only makes about 30K per year.

The average wedding photographer is a part timer, that you are right on. They only shoot about 10 weddings a year and bring in about 2000 per wedding. That is a gross of 20k per year. The average full time wedding photographer (most are not full time) brings in 3000 per wedding at 20 weddings per year. That's a gross of 60k.

The expenses to run a wedding photography business is about 15-20k per year depending. That includes marketing which is the biggest portion. Some spend 10-15k on marketing alone. We spend about 5k per year. If you don't spend that, you won't get anywhere near 20 weddings a year, let alone 10 weddings per year. Gear depreciation or gear replacement is about 5k per year. Insurance, materials, cost of goods, gas, accountant, lawyer to review contracts, memberships, etc comprise the rest.

So the average photographer who is doing their business correctly and ethically makes very little... and many lose money.

The very talented photographer can make 100k per year pretty easily.

It's like being a professional baseball player or football player. If you suck, you'll make nothing. If you're okay, you'll eke out a living in the minors. Only the best of the best make it to the majors and actually make real money.

[erich]

Big Mike the Communist in the hizzy!!

[manohar]

I agree..

[Dror Eyal]

I'm convinced - so how do I separate myself from the $500 wedding photographer?

[Edward Olive - wedding photographer in Europe]

i would disagree with this to some extent. i spend all week replying to emails and calls from haggling couples trying to get what i do for the standard local wedding & baptism photo price and only get some peace on saturdays when shooting photos for the very few couples who actually hire me.

being a wedding photographer is a lot of stress and struggle