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If you’re paying venues out of your own pocket, so your clients can have their photos taken at “premium locations” in your area, you need to stop what you’re doing and watch this video. Today we’re addressing one of the most common photography pricing questions we get: “Should I pay the venue fee for my photography clients?”

 

 

Should I Pay the Venue Fee for My Clients?

Now, if you’ve never thought about this question before, here’s what we mean: let’s say there’s a park or a local farm or a really cool building that your clients really want to have their family photos or engagement session at. So you call the venue to see if you can photograph there, and they let you know that you’re welcome to book a session at the location, but there’s a $50 or $100 or $200 fee in order to use the space.

 

We recently found out (to our horror) that many of our apprentices and students have been paying that fee out of their own pockets rather than passing it on to their clients! And many of these photographers were already only charging one or two-hundred dollars for their sessions, then spending half of that out of their own pocket in order to access these more premium locations. So at the end of the day they were basically Doing the shoot for half off just because the clients happened to ask for an expensive location instead of a free one.

 

If this sounds like you, stop what you’re doing right now. In all likelihood there are plenty of locations in your area that are both beautiful and also free to shoot out. Usually these are public parks or maybe the grounds of a local university or other institution that’s open to the public. If shooting at these locations mean you earn your full rate for portrait photography, but shooting at other locations means you’re going to make as much as $200 less, it’s not fair for your clients to choose one location over the other without having to make up the difference.

 

 

Hopefully, you’ve set your prices intentionally, and know that in order for your business to make sense you need to make a certain amount of money each time you go out and shoot. But if you’re just randomly allowing some clients to pay the full price and other clients to essentially only pay you half price because you have spent the other half of their fee on a venue, it’s a recipe for disaster in the long run. Especially because the premium locations are often nicer, and therefore will attract more clients if they cost the same as the local park.

 

But honestly, this should make intuitive sense to your clients. Often times the locations that have a venue fee are some of the nicer or more exclusive or more well manicured spaces, which is why we’ve been calling them the “premium spaces” in this video. In the same way that they might pay more for backstage passes at a concert instead of standing on the floor or they might pay extra each month to get a streaming service free of commercials, getting a premium photoshoot location should cost him a little bit of extra money.

 

 

An Important Message

So, there are a few rare exceptions to this rule. But before we address them, we want to pause this post really quickly to make sure you know that if you’ve found any of this pricing advice helpful, you might be interested in a workshop that we are hosting later this month! On November 29th, 2022 we’re hosting a live workshop called “Pricing for Wedding and Portrait Photographers: How to Know What to Charge to Get BOOKED!” Tickets are for sale right now (at THIS link!). And if you’re reading this post after November 29th, 2022, then a replay of the workshop is also available for purchase at that same link.

 

As you probably know, charging the right price for your photography is absolutely essential if you want to run a photography business that’s both profitable AND sustainable. But figuring out what to charge for your wedding and portrait photography services can feel overwhelming. We get questions from students all the time like, “How much should I charge? Should I include travel? What if they want extra hours? What if they ask for a discount?!”

 

So in this two hour workshop, we’re going to break everything down so that you know exactly how much to charge for your products and services, no matter where you live or how much experience you have. And we’re also going to answer common pricing questions, just like this question about venue fees! Again, the link for the workshop is here.

 

 

Exceptions to the Rule

Speaking of venue fees, we mentioned a minute ago that there are a few exceptions to our rule. These are the situations where you might consider paying for part or even all of the venue fee for your clients. One situation is if there’s a location that’s really beautiful or really different that you’re just dying to work at, but you can’t seem to get your clients to pay the venue fee. In a situation like this, we may offer to split the venue fee with our clients, if they’re willing to be the first people we photograph at that location.

 

We know that once we do a session at that location and are able to share those images with our future clients, more people will be willing to shoot at that premium location and pay the full price for it. Sometimes it just takes someone being first, so we make that barrier to entry a little bit lower by splitting the cost with them. That’s exactly what we did an old abandoned mansion outside of Charlottesville called Swannanoa palace. The feed for shoot here is almost $175, but after splitting that fee 50-50 with our first engagement session there, we’ve now shot here like half a dozen times!

 

Another situation where you might want to swallow the venue fee is if this is a client who you’re really trying to impress, or if you’re trying to give them an over-the-top experience for whatever reason. This might be the case if this client has booked an engagement session with you, but you think there’s a strong chance that they might book their wedding with you if you give them a great experience. If you think that swallowing a $50 venue fee might put the experience over the top, and could lead to you booking a wedding for thousands of dollars, it might be worth it to just cover the venue fee, and pay for it yourself. In a sense, you’re basically giving them a discount on a “premium” engagement session, in the hopes that you get to also book their wedding day. But you shouldn’t be doing this for every single client who wants to shoot at a premium location.

 

 

Won’t My Clients Be Upset?

So, if you’re reading this blog and are thinking that your clients will be upset that they have to pay extra for a location after they’ve already pay for the session itself, let us put your mind at ease. We’ve been charging venue fees at our premium locations for years now and our clients have never complained about it. And this is probably because when they ask us for location suggestions — which many of our clients do — we offer them a list of our Top 10 Photoshoot Locations. Seven of them are premium locations that either have an associated venue fee or a small travel fee because it regularly brings us 45 minutes or an hour away from home.

 

But the list also has three locations that work great from a photographic perspective, and are also near our house and don’t cost us any money to shoot at. So there’s no additional fee if they book their engagement session at those locations. So if our clients, for whatever reason have a problem with the venue or travel fees, they’re welcome to choose from the free locations… and many of them do. That way, whether they’re looking for a premium experience, or have already broken their budget just to hire us, they have something for them to choose from.

 

And by the way, as we’ve just alluded to, a lot of these same principles apply to travel fees if clients want you to shoot more than like 20 or 30 minutes from where you live. But we’re going to talk more fully about travel fees for both portrait sessions and wedding photography in our Pricing for Photographers Workshop that we mentioned earlier in this post!

 

 

Want More?

 

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