Are You Charging Enough For Your Photo Styling Services

Are you charging for your pre-work and post work? As Photo Stylists, we concentrate so much on the actual styling assignment, but sometimes we spend MORE time on preparing for the job than actually doing the job! Remember that the time you take to pre-organize / post wrap-up your styling assignment is necessary (& valuable!) and you should charge for it.

Are you letting some time slip through the cracks? Are you charging for:

▪ Researching/Sourcing you do online.
▪ Packing/Organize all (props/wardrobe/food) to go to job.
▪ Travel Expense (Hotel, Mileage, Gas Per Diems).
▪ Packing Up after the official “wrap time”.
▪ Travel Time.
▪ If Shopping at stores, time getting returns READY.
▪ ALL time taken to do all the returns.
▪ Overtime.

What I find Photo Stylists having the most difficult time charging for us (OVERTIME). Think about how many hours you want your “day” to be. For me, I charge a Day Rate for Photo Shoot Day and THEN for time after 8 hours, I CHARGE a per-hour fee for overtime. I have had many clients think that “day rate” means all day into the night! 🥴 What?!? No ~ That’s not what it means. 

There is so much pre and post work as a Photo and Prop Stylist to keep track of (& to charge for!) Your rate will dwindle if you do not charge for your time and expenses. All this being said, you can still charge for all this and go “above and beyond” for your clients to let them know you appreciate them and you go that “extra mile.” AND you can bend for clients ~ I call it “bending with boundaries”.


Bonnie ~

Image Credit ｜ CoffeeandMilk via Canva