A potential customer asked why a business portrait would cost $500 when it’s only going to appear small on their website.
Up until the late 1990s, companies had no hesitation paying hundreds of dollars (or more) for a business portrait. Back then, the costs of publishing brochures, annual reports, and other print marketing materials were high, so a business portrait was just a small fraction of the overall expense.
Today, with every company having a website, the cost to publish has essentially become free. This zero-cost publishing has led some people to assume that photography should be equally inexpensive. The common question is: “Why should we pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for photos that cost nothing to publish?”
Value Matters
The price of a photograph is determined by two factors: the production costs and the intended use (i.e., its value).
Photography production costs will never decrease. Expenses such as cameras, lenses, computers, software, insurance, and other overhead, are continually rising. Despite the advances in digital technology, running a photography business has become more expensive. Over the past dozen years, costs have more than doubled (or even tripled).
The value of a photograph comes not from its size but from how and where it’s used—specifically, the audience size and duration of exposure. Photos on a company website can offer significant marketing benefits. In fact, a company website often attracts more qualified viewers and maintains a longer exposure than most print publications. This means there’s no reason to discount corporate photography for web use.
Basing the value of a photograph on its size is like judging the value of a book by its page count. What matters most is what a reader gains from that book. Similarly, with corporate photography, the value lies not in the photo’s size or the price paid for it, but in what a company gains from using it.
