By Andrew Souders, Wonderful Machine
In addition to helping photographers build price quotes from scratch, Wonderful Machine offers an Estimate Review service on existing quotes that photographers have created themselves. It’s often helpful to have an extra set of eyes and credible insight to polish up your price quote before sending it off to a client.
Just as with our other Pricing & Negotiating case studies, we redact the names of the photographer and client, which allows us to share valuable and educational information that would otherwise be confidential.
Concept: Two-day employee portraiture and lifestyle library shoot for social, internal, and recruitment materials
Licensing: Perpetual worldwide Web Advertising, Publicity, and Collateral use of up to 100 images
Photographer: West Coast-based lifestyle and portrait photographer
Client: International beauty and personal care brand
A West Coast-based photographer was recently approached by a global beauty brand to capture candid and environmental portraits and lifestyle images of employees over two shoot days. The 100 final images would be used across a broad range of platforms — including career websites, social media, digital ads, internal presentations, publicity, and print collateral like career fair flyers.
While the scope of the project resembled other projects this photographer had worked on in the past with other clients, this project was for a more high-profile client with greater licensing needs and a bigger budget. The photographer asked us to help refine their estimate and determine appropriate creative and licensing fees commensurate with the project’s scale and client expectations.
Scope & Usage
The project called for two shoot days. The first would take place at a local retail location before business hours as a shortened half-day, while the second was planned as a full day at the brand’s nearby corporate offices. The client would handle casting, scheduling, styling, and shot list development.
While the requested usage rights were broad, they were primarily planned for web collateral, internal communications, and printed materials for recruitment efforts such as career fair flyers, with the exception of some digital advertising, which we expected to remain relatively limited and would not include any POS, OOH, or Broadcast use. Given the compressed timeline for shoot days and the volume of final deliverables, there was a clear need to structure the shoot efficiently. At the same time, it was important to balance the project’s production needs with an appropriate creative and licensing fee that reflected both the scope and intended use.
To help add context to what we reviewed and advised on, I’ll include the photographer’s original estimate format and agreement language below:
Photographer’s Draft Estimate
The expense total came to $12,040 and was modeled after past projects for similar clients with similar deliverables, but those projects had more limited usage and smaller client budgets. Recognizing that the licensing in this case was broader and likely held more long-term library value for the client, the photographer also consulted with me for guidance on how to properly structure the creative and licensing fee portion of the estimate alongside the rest of the production costs.
After reviewing the intended usage and factoring in the compressed timeline for capturing such a high volume of deliverables, we recommended introducing a creative and licensing fee in the range of $20,000 to $30,000. This range felt like a fair balance that accounted for the breadth and duration of usage for a library of images, while still reflecting the relatively straightforward nature of the shoot from a creative standpoint.
Revisions and Recommendations
After a detailed review of the scope of the project and the licensing terms, I worked with the photographer to revise the estimate. We incorporated a $22,000 creative and licensing fee that reflected the value of the deliverables and requested usage. We also recommended increasing the retouching budget to $5,000 to account for additional retouching and polishing work that might be required for final selects, such as potential logo removal from employee outfits. The fee for preparing a gallery for client review was adjusted to $1,000 to better represent the time and labor involved for this number of images. We also added scouting fees for both shoot locations – $750 for the photographer and $650 for their assistant.
The rest of the production expenses, including crew and equipment rentals, remained consistent with the photographer’s original approach, although we reorganized how it was presented to provide more clarity. While we discussed the possibility of bringing on a second assistant to help maintain an efficient pace on set, the photographer chose to keep the crew lean to remain flexible in potentially tight environments.
We see this a lot, where a photographer has experience working on smaller projects for smaller clients. When a big client comes along with a big project, they’re often not sure what to charge. Once we took the expanded licensing and long-term library use into account, there was a clear opportunity to revise the fee structure to better match the value being delivered. These revisions brought the total estimate to $38,440.
Below is a revised version of the estimate that reflects my recommendations.
Treatment
We also encouraged the photographer to submit a treatment to accompany their estimate. Though not specifically requested by the client, it helped communicate the photographer’s interest, approach, aesthetic, and overall sophistication. The document featured example images, described lighting and post processing, and showed that the photographer understood the brand.
Outcome
The photographer submitted the estimate and treatment, and shortly afterward, was awarded the project. Reflecting on the process, the photographer shared that our collaboration helped them feel more confident in how they framed the value of their work, especially for high-profile clients
While the core production approach remained largely unchanged, the creative/licensing fee, retouching budget, and presentation were strategically refined to better reflect the project’s scope and value.
This project is a strong example of how a modest investment in estimate refinement can help land a significantly higher fee for the photographer and set a new benchmark for pricing future projects.
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