The idea of pricing images based on usage has nothing to do with the transition to digital photography, but rather is a function of a completely different business model where we charge based on the many thousands, tens of thousands, or millions of times the image will be reproduced. It also takes into account the benefit accrued to person who licenses the imagery.

Professionally, this gets complicated enough that every time somebody on my commercial board asks for specific guidelines everybody gets kind of quiet. However, it is easy to get suggestions based on specific projects.

Commercial photographers price based on:

The way in which the images will be used (and they are only licensed for that specific use)

The time involved in creating the imagery
The difficulty of the project (which also accounts for the number of images)

The experience and talent of the photographer

Oh, and how soon their rent is due, but I prefer to leave that one out since those shooters don’t last long.

Halper is a Los Angeles and Orange County based commercial photographer.

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