A few days ago, a potential customer asked why a business portrait would cost $500 when the photo is just going to be used small on their web site.
In the 1990s and earlier, many companies had no issue paying hundreds of dollars, or more, for a business portrait. Back then, the cost to publish a brochure, annual report or other form of print marketing was relatively high. The cost for business portrait photography was only a small fraction of the total publishing cost.
Today, every company has a web site where the cost to publish is essentially free. This zero cost has made some folks think that corporate photography should also be very cheap. Their thinking is, “why should we pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for pictures that cost us nothing to publish?”
Pricing a photograph is based on two things: the cost to produce the photo and how that picture is going to be used (i.e. its value).
Unfortunately, production costs will never get lower because the cost of cameras, lenses, computers, software, insurances and other business expenses are always going up. Despite the miracle of digital technology, the cost of running a photo business has more than doubled (tripled?) over the past dozen years.
The value of using a photograph comes not so much from its reproduction size but from its exposure (audience size and period of use). Photographs used on a company web site can have a huge marketing and public relations benefit. One might argue that a company’s web site gets more qualified viewers, and for a longer period of time, than a print publication. As such, there’s no reason why corporate photography should be discounted for web use.
Basing the value of a photograph on its size is like basing the value of a book on the number of its pages. For most people, what they gain from reading a book is the only thing that matters. Similarly, with corporate photography, it’s not the picture size nor what a company pays for the photography that’s important. It’s what the company gains by using that photography.
