Why I Don't Compete on Price (And You Shouldn't Either)
- austenhunter
- Apr 29
- 8 min read
Most photographers diagnose pricing as a math problem. They look at competitors, find an average, and shave 10–20 percent off to "get bookings." The math feels solvable. The bookings should follow.
They don't. And the photographers who keep cutting find themselves working harder, attracting worse clients, and questioning whether the business will ever feel like a real business.
Pricing isn't a math problem. It's a positioning problem dressed up in a calculator. This article walks through the frameworks I use to set my own rates — what undercharging actually costs you, how to calculate what you should charge, the three pricing mindsets working photographers operate from, and how to build a pricing structure around the clients you actually want.
My name is Austen Hunter. I'm a portrait photographer working out of Pensacola, a Navy Public Affairs Specialist, and the 2024 Navy Civilian Photographer of the Year. At Austen Hunter Photography, I've made every pricing mistake there is to make. Most of them early. A few I'm still unwinding.
Key Takeaways
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Why Competing on Price Is the Worst Strategy in Photography
When you're new, the math of undercutting feels obvious. Lower rates open the door. Once clients see your work, they'll pay more next time. So you post on Facebook: "$25, two-hour session, 100 edited images." Cheaper than Olive Garden's breadsticks order, and twice as much work.
The trap is that pricing isn't a private negotiation between you and one client. It's a signal you're broadcasting to every photographer's prospect in your market. When you charge $25 for a portrait session, you're not giving a discount. You're telling potential clients: I'm worth $25.
That message lands. The clients who book at the bottom of the market are the ones who only buy at the bottom of the market. They expect more, push for faster turnarounds, and treat your work as a cheap commodity because that's how you've positioned it.
I had a headshot client early on who taught me this the hard way — desperate, demanding, hounding me for revisions, slow to pay. By the end I was drained, and I realized the obvious thing:
"That job wasn't worth any price." — Austen Hunter
That was the moment I stopped playing the pricing game. Not because the math finally worked — because I understood the math was never the real issue.
The Hidden Costs of Undercharging
A $25 / 2-hour / 100-images session looks like $25 of work. It isn't. Every shoot has costs that don't show up on the invoice — and undercharging compounds them.
Real time investment for that "2-hour" session:
Phase | Realistic time |
Pre-session communication, scheduling, contract | 1 hour |
Shoot itself | 2 hours |
Travel and setup/teardown | 1 hour |
Editing 100 images | 4 hours |
Delivery, gallery, follow-up | 0.5 hour |
Total | 8.5 hours |
$25 ÷ 8.5 hours = $2.94 per hour. Below federal minimum wage. Below babysitting rates. Below most volunteer reimbursement rates.
Time is just the first hidden cost. The full breakdown:
Time cost — your real hourly rate is closer to minimum wage than you think
Opportunity cost — every cheap booking blocks a slot you could fill with a higher-paying client
Brand cost — cheap shoots become your portfolio, your reviews, your word-of-mouth reference points; clients see them and form expectations of who you serve
Referral pipeline cost — discount clients refer other discount clients; your funnel compounds in the wrong direction
The referral cost is the one most photographers miss. Better-paying clients get pointed to other photographers, because the people in your network associate you with cheap work. The funnel doesn't fix itself when you finally raise rates — it has momentum, and it takes deliberate work to redirect.
How to Calculate Your Actual Hourly Rate
The fix for undercharging isn't picking a bigger number out of the air. It's calculating what you actually need to earn to run a sustainable business, and reverse-engineering session prices from there.
The formula:
(Target annual income + annual business expenses + estimated taxes) ÷ realistic billable hours = your real hourly rate
Worked example for a hypothetical photographer:
Target take-home: $50,000
Business expenses (gear, software, insurance, mileage, marketing): $10,000
Self-employment tax (federal + state, roughly 25–30 percent of gross)
Gross target = ($50,000 + $10,000) ÷ 0.75 ≈ $80,000 gross
Now billable hours. This is where most photographers get the math wrong. "Billable" isn't 40 hours a week × 52 weeks. It's only the hours you can directly attach to client work — shooting, editing, client comms, contracts, delivery. Realistic estimate: 25 directly-billable hours per week × 48 weeks = 1,200 billable hours per year.
$80,000 ÷ 1,200 = $67 per billable hour.
Translate that to session pricing. A standard 2-hour portrait session has roughly 7.5 billable hours attached to it (see the breakdown above). At $67 per hour:
7.5 × $67 = $502 per session
That's a session price grounded in actual cost. Not pulled from a Facebook group survey. Not 10 percent under the photographer down the street. Calculated.
The point of the exercise isn't that every photographer should charge exactly $502. The point is that once you've done the math, $25 becomes obviously absurd, $200 starts feeling reasonable, and $500 feels like a serious conversation about value.
"When you act like your time is valuable, clients treat it that way." — Austen Hunter
The Three Pricing Mindsets
The numbers are only half the work. The other half is what your pricing communicates about what you're selling.
Mindset | What you tell clients | What you attract |
Compete on price | "I'll match the cheapest quote" | Demanding, low-loyalty clients |
Cost-based | "Here's what it costs me to serve you well" | Clients who respect your time |
Value-based | "Here's the full experience I deliver" | Clients who pay for that experience |
The shift from cost-based to value-based is where the real upside lives. Cost-based pricing tells clients "I cost X to operate." Value-based pricing tells them "the experience I deliver is worth X to you." Same number, very different conversations.
A concrete example. At the end of every session I run, the client walks away with a small gift bag. Costs me a few dollars. Clients remember it for years. The session price isn't paying for the gift bag — it's paying for the experience that includes the gift bag. Add structured pre-session prep, professional gallery delivery, branded packaging, a follow-up note, and you've built a service offering that justifies a price tier well above the cost-based floor.
Worth reading next: How to Keep Your Portrait Photography Clients Happy and Coming Back — the deeper dive on building the kind of client relationships that do compound in your favor.
Building Your Pricing Around an Ideal Client
Most photographers price first, then go looking for clients to buy at that price. That order is backward. Define who you actually want to photograph for the next year, then build the offer (and the price) around what serves them well.
The framework — answer these honestly before setting rates:
Who are they? Not just demographics — psychographics, life stage, decision drivers
What problem are they trying to solve with photography? Career, milestone, brand, family memory, vanity, professional credibility
Where do they spend time online and offline? Influences how you market and what they expect
How do they want to feel before, during, and after the shoot? Drives the experience design
What's the experience they're actually buying? The photos are the deliverable; the experience is the product
When I started, I assumed weddings would be my path. Spoiler — I didn't enjoy them. Too much chaos, not enough creative control. Eventually I found my rhythm in headshots and military portraits, and pricing/positioning/marketing all fell into place because the work was genuinely repeatable and I knew exactly who I was selling to.
If you don't have a clear ideal client yet, work backwards. Pull up the session you genuinely enjoyed most. Build the persona from that one client. Refine over time.
For the contracts and legal positioning that should accompany this kind of pricing maturity, see Protect Your Photography Business: Legal Tips for Portrait Photographers.
When to Raise Your Rates
The signals that say it's time:
Your booking calendar is consistently full. Capacity at current pricing means there's room to test higher.
Price objections are loud and frequent. Not "this is more than I expected" but "wait, you charge how much?" — meaning your funnel is bringing in the wrong audience for your price point.
Referral quality is stagnant. Same client type repeating, same complaints, same revenue ceiling.
You're saying yes to clients you don't actually want. Time and energy is your real cost; misallocated time is your real loss.
Method matters too. Don't price-shock. Raise rates 10–20 percent every 6–12 months. New rates apply to new bookings only. Existing clients stay on their current rate through any pre-booked work. Communicate clearly: "I'm raising rates effective [date]; here's my new pricing structure."
You'll lose some clients. The ones you lose are the ones who only ever booked you on price. The ones who stay — and the new ones who arrive at the higher rate — are the ones who refer people who book the same way. The "no" you hear isn't "you're charging too much." It's "I'm not the right fit for this work." That's a win disguised as a loss.
Once you start charging properly, you also need contracts that match. A clear contract handles payment terms, cancellation, and usage rights — and signals to the client that this is a real business. The wedding contract template I use is on the Learn store if you want a starting point.
For the broader business framing, see Why Most Photographers Will Fail in 2026 (And How to Thrive).
Final Thoughts
You don't need to be the cheapest. You need to be unforgettable.
Charge what your work and your time are actually worth — calculated, not guessed. Build offers around the clients you want, not the ones currently flooding your local Facebook group with $25 requests. Protect everything with contracts that match. The first few months at higher rates feel weird. Then you stop getting treated like a beginner — because you stopped charging like one.
Frequently Asked Questions
What if I'm really just starting out — should I shoot for free?
Free can work for portfolio building when you're trading deliberately — model releases, specific shots you need for your book, a chance to test new gear or lighting setups in low-stakes conditions. The line is intent. Free without a plan trains you to undervalue your time before you start.
How do I know when I'm ready to raise my rates?
When you're saying yes to clients you don't want, you're underpriced. When you start declining work that doesn't fit, you're closer. When the client who books at the new rate matches the work you actually want to do, you're there.
Won't I lose clients if I charge more?
Some, yes. The ones you lose are the ones who only ever booked you on price. The ones who stay — and the new ones who arrive at the higher rate — are the ones who'll refer people who book the same way.
Should I have different pricing tiers?
Tiers work when each one is a genuinely different offer — different deliverables, different time investment, different experience. Tiers don't work when they're the same shoot with photos held back. Clients see through fake tiers, and the trust hit isn't worth the upsell.
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