Event Photographers - How much do they charge?

New York City has a photography market unlike any other on the planet. Photographers here are plentiful and comprise an extremely large spectrum of service; from the guy shilling his services for $50/hr (unless you hire a talented upstart, you may as well just use your iPhone instead. Also this is usually a moonlighter) to the multi-decade veterans commanding rates of $400/hr and up from clients that represent brands. Usually in the middle is where you can expect to find a healthy balance of cost to quality, and in the following article there are some points you should take note of when searching for someone.

First and foremost, in reference to what I charge, I usually hover between $150-$250hr, depending on the type of event, what the market is like at the time, and what my own level of demand is. You can check out my work at the following link, if you'd like to take a gander at what it is I produce.

My event photography work can be found here

And now that I've gotten that own shameless sense of self-promotion out of the way, I'm going to go ahead and look at three different types of event photographers, how they price themselves out, and what you should expect to get in return.

1. The staffed event photographer: The staffed photographer is essentially a photographer hired via an agency or staffing service that is paid a rate that's typically half of what the market commands, with the other half going to the agency itself (or sometimes it isn't even half. Sometimes it's more like a 75/25 split). These photographers are, in my opinion, the riskiest to hire, since the agency itself usually has a revolving door of photographers and oftentimes the quality-gap is absolutely massive. Keep in mind, no photographer sets out to work for a staffing company. I literally don't know of one person I've ever met that has said 'I feel like giving half of what I earn to someone else because I just don't like responding to emails.'
   
   While it sounds callous, these photographers usually can't make it on their own for one reason or another and rely on staffing companies to find them work. The reasons for doing so vary in that they don't have the experience and or history to provide the sort of product that big companies or individuals want, or they simply aren't good enough to provide a product on their own to begin with.
   
   And so, with this being said, when you hire a photographer through a staffing service, you're hiring a photographer whose rate is going to be half of what that market rate actually is. For example - say you hire a photographer through something like Snappr, Or NYPhotographers. And say you pay that service $175/hr for work. What you're getting in return is a photographer that actually charges less than $100 for their work (and subsequently is probably not that great. You are, at the end of the day, getting a cheap photographer. I don't mean inexpensive. I mean cheap).
   
   In my opinion, if you're paying $175/hr for a photographer, you should be getting a $175/hr photographer - not a $75/hr photographer.
   
   Verdict: If you don't care about quality, hire one of these, but be aware that staffing agencies have a hard time keeping good photographers around (as good photographers typically go out on their own) and are constantly in a state of flux as they look to fill the gaps in their rosters.
   
   ONE THING TO NOTE ABOUT STAFFED PHOTOGRAPHERS:
   
   When looking at a photography staffing portfolio, you may not even get someone that has actually contributed to it. The staffing company could have not had anyone available and provided someone new, or the individuals that added to it could no longer even be with the firm. Beware of this.

2. The Corporate Event Photographer: A corporate photographer is a photographer that specializes in corporate work and bills his or herself as such. Typically, hourly rates exceed $200/hr, as images are used for marketing and licensing purposes, and as well corporations simply have larger budgets than private citizens. Referencing the difference between a corporate photography job and a private photography job; equipment usually plays a large role. While a party, for instance, can usually be shot using one camera and with a basic lens, corporate functions differ greatly. Speakers can oftentimes be far from crowds and the photographer will need to have lenses with long range capability and that can fare well in low light. Experience will as well play a large role as the photographer will need to know when certain things happen that are vital to the function (keynote speeches always have a distinct set of mannerisms, for instance).

3. Private Party Photographer - This is actually where I got my start as an event photographer in NYC and an area
of the craft I enjoy the most. While I do carry two cameras around at all times, usually one will do, and a good
photographer with a 50mm lens can absolutely carry the day and enshrine your event for as long as you care to
look at the images. You can expect to find a good photographer charging anywhere from $100-$250/hr, though
I've asked for (and gotten) $500/hr for seasons where I was extremely booked and there was very little of me to
go around. I honestly think what helps me the most with my private functions stems from the fact that I am my
core skillsets as a photographer lie around portraiture and people imaging and that I am, as well, a huge people
person. Being fairly inconspicuous (while remaining personable) is a key aspect to private event photography.

As well, there are a million subsets to this area of the field and they vary from Birthdays, Anniversaries, Mitzvahs,
proposals, general parties, nightlife, and more.

You can see my private event photography work here:

And with the above said, there's my take on the three most common types of photographers and what you should expect to pay in NYC. I hope this was informational.

Feel free to drop me a line at mailto:info@joejenkinsphoto.com if you have any questions. If you're also wondering what sort of photography guidelines you should be looking at when you are looking around for a photographer, you can go ahead and view my article on Event Photography guidelines from an actual client. This was sent by Coindesk for Consensus 2019.