How to Price Your Fine Art Photography
One of the questions I get most often is, how do I price my art photography. In this article, I will share some advice and tips on things you should keep in mind when determining what you will charge for your fine art photography prints.
Count the Cost
First off, there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to pricing your work. Except, save one – you need to cover your costs. Sounds simple but there are not just the costs of paper, ink, matting, framing, chemistry (that is if you’re a darkroom person), and photo paper. If this is a business for you and not just a hobby then there are a few other costs you have to consider.
Even if you’re not renting studio space, you have the monthly costs of operating out of your home or apartment. You do have to travel to locations to create your work, pick up supplies, and bring your work to the courier or post office for shipping, so there are those expenses like gas, repairs, and oil changes. I’m sure you have insurance on your equipment as well as your home and car and you’ll need to cover those. Don’t forget all those software upgrades so you can keep doing what you do. Those are just a few of the costs you need to think about.
There are a lot more costs to making your art than just those physical things that go into making that print. One of the most important costs that many artists forget is their time. How much time did it take you to drive to get that great shot of the dusk sky and then sit there until the light was just right? How much time did you spend in the darkroom getting the print just right? How long did it take you to cut the mat and frame the image? How long did you spend on the computer tweaking the image until it looked perfect?
After reading that you might be thinking that you’ll have to come up with an hourly charge for your time. I’m not a fan of breaking down our time into hours and putting a price on it because depending on the market you are in, you may not be able to command that wage. But it is a great place to start.
A better way is to break down all those expenses into per-unit costs. You should know how much each print, framed or unframed costs you to produce. How much to mark up that print is the next step. If you’re just starting and you do not have a history of consistent sales then how much you can secure will be very different from a photographer who has a stable of collectors asking for their work and sells steadily. So when it comes to pricing the physical print itself (not matted or framed), I took a lesson from painters to determine a starting point for pricing. $1 per square inch. So, an 11”x14” would retail for $154. A 24”x30” print would sell for $720 and so on. Next, you have to add on the price of matting and framing the print. That’s the easy part.
Another good starting point for this is to double the cost of the framing. Hypothetically, if the cost of the frame and matting is $150 (not an actual price) and you double that for mark up; then you add it to the print price. Using my estimated numbers the 11×14 image matted and framed to 16”x20” would be priced at $670.
Now that you know your cost per unit, I like to use the following method to aid in pricing. Since I know what all my costs are, every month I know what my sales figures need to be to make my monthly “nut” as I’ve heard it referred to. You’ll have to be realistic with yourself to determine if you can effectively sell enough art to cover those expenses. If you calculate that you can’t sell that many, you might have to increase your pricing slightly.
I know many photographers and artists who do the majority of their selling at art shows and fairs. To help cover their expenses for those events, they will have artwork at various price points making something available for anyone. Consider having greeting cards, postcards, and framed or matted 5x7s available. Read More...
