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What to Budget for On Location Headshots for Corporate Clients
Posted on February 5, 2016
by Yucel 
6 
Corporate Executive Headshot
How much should you plan for budget costs for corporate headshots at small business offices when shot on location at your site or a conference center?
While quality and service are of course prime considerations for your corporate headshots and your branding, you budget matters, right?
Well fstoppers 10 Headshots on Location Budget Survey gives ideas of what you might expect to budget for in office headshots, in this case a real estate office with 10 headshots. If you read the details, you can see that each of the respondees quoted a bit differently.
Each also gives a bit of explanation for why they quoted as they did.
For example, this is for a small real estate office. In real estate, we are dealing with sales professionals. Sales professionals, by and large, are more outgoing. People who are more outgoing tend to be easier to photography well more quickly as they tend to groom better and are usually more able to quickly give that confident and approachable look a well executed professional headshot generally needs to exude.
In photographing headshots on location, it is always a trade off between getting an acceptable shot and time crunch to meet the budget and time constraints of the client.
Thus allow more time and a higher budget if you wish to achieve higher quality in your finished headshot product. Generally allow more time and budget based on the degree of introversion or extroversion of your staff for a given quality consideration.
Other considerations included licencing, editing, number of delivered headshots and so on.
The bottom line?
- Lowest investment quoted was $1,000 plus tax or $100 per headshot
- Most were $1250-$2500 or $125-$250 per headshot
- A couple were $2500-$5000 or $250-$500 per headshot
Most had possible up charges.
6 Comments for What to Budget for On Location Headshots for Corporate Clients
Macintosh Smith
Here in NYC I see many sideline Photographers posting $99 on social networking sites. I charge that much as a ‘limited time promotion’ for a 1 on 1 session with no support staff. Otherwise I charge $150 with one complementary retouching on the first image. The selected retouched image is sized 4×6 inches at 300dpi with the remainder of images sized at 72dpi on disc. I don’t spend more than an hour on session time; preferably 30 minutes. I will work towards one look really, three looks at most. And all images are licensed for news editorial use. I would recommend pitching a day rate of $1200 to $1500 for corporate portraits of dept. staff. Plus any additional expenses.
michael e. stern
I am surprised at how little folks charge. I get between $600.00 and $750.00 per person. Includes pre-shoot consult, the session itself, retouching and licensing. If I go on location, I add an add’l $475.00 for transport, set-up and teardown.
No wonder photographers are struggling.
Macintosh Smith
Michael Stern…
You must be servicing Blue Chip Corporations with those rates? If not, sign me up for your marketing workshop!
michael e. stern
Hey Macintosh,
I service regular corporations but I’m a pretty good closer. Marketing is the door opener but the sales pitch and close is what I do best. Practice, practice, practice…37 years I’ve been practicing…
Good luck!
Macintosh Smith
That’s good advice, thanks!
We are from ANDERSON, SC. Your quotes look great to us. We have been in business over 35 years and photograph most of the more serious professionals our town. . However, 5 % of business people here will barely invest in this.
We normally can get $85 for a 30 minute studio session and $35 each for a lightly retouched 4×6 JPEG. We would like to charge least $125 each for a location shoot (10 people.) Some will buy more of the shots because they look so good – others try to only purchase one.
A group shoot of 10 around here would not want spend over $350-$500. although $850 would be our quote. They would of course look around and hire a sideline photographer for a lot less. So, in conclusion, we honestly only get those smart enough to make the right choice and hire us for the most professional photo.