Pricing is where most photographers either undersell themselves into burnout or overbid themselves out of work entirely. I know this firsthand. When I shot my first paid wedding, I charged $400, lost a Saturday, spent three days editing, and walked away feeling like I’d done something wrong even though the client was thrilled. The problem wasn’t my camera or my skill. It was that I had no framework for what my time and gear were actually worth.

In this Joel Grimes tutorial, Watch the full tutorial on YouTube, Grimes pulls from 40 years of professional photography to lay out a practical, math-based approach to pricing that cuts through the usual vague advice. No “charge what you’re worth” platitudes. Just real cost accounting that any photographer at any level can apply immediately. This one is worth sitting down with a notepad.

The framework works whether you’re shooting weddings on weekends or trying to build a full-time commercial business. What I like about Grimes’s approach is that it starts with your current reality, not some aspirational rate card you found online.

Step 1: Calculate Your Opportunity Cost First

Joel Grimes explaining the opportunity cost of taking a photography job Joel Grimes explaining the opportunity cost of taking a photography job Before you write down a single number, you need to know what you already make per day at your current job. If you wait tables and clear $100 on a Saturday, then every photography job you take on a Saturday costs you $100 before you even pick up a camera. That’s your opportunity cost. If you charge $50 for a shoot that day, you haven’t made $50. You’ve lost $50.

This sounds obvious when you say it out loud, but most beginners skip this step entirely. They think in terms of “how much could I make” rather than “how much do I need to make just to break even.” Lock in that daily baseline number. It’s the floor under every quote you give.

Step 2: Add Up Your Real Equipment Exposure

Joel Grimes discussing $10,000 in camera equipment and shoot costs Joel Grimes discussing $10,000 in camera equipment and shoot costs Grimes uses a simple example here that hits hard. Say you have $10,000 in gear, which honestly isn’t much these days. You take a $500 wedding booking feeling good about it. Then a light stand tips over and kills a lens. Your insurance deductible is $500. You made zero dollars on that job.

The point isn’t to scare you away from taking jobs. It’s to make you account for equipment risk in your pricing. List your gear, know your deductible, and build that risk into your rate. If you’re uninsured, this math gets even scarier. Gear insurance for photographers is inexpensive relative to replacement costs, but even with it, you need to price as if something could always go wrong, because eventually it will.

Step 3: Figure Out Your Monthly Cost to Stay in Business

Joel Grimes asking what it costs per month to stay in business Joel Grimes asking what it costs per month to stay in business This is the step most early-career photographers completely ignore. Add up everything you spend monthly to operate as a photographer. Phone bill, software subscriptions, cloud storage, website hosting, lens purchases you’re paying off, fuel to jobs, memory cards, the works. If you’re running drones or helicopters like Grimes’s sons, you might have $20,000 to $30,000 in equipment that could be lost in a single bad day on a $5,000 job.

Even at my level, running a gear review site out of Denver, I’ve got subscriptions, test gear, shipping costs, and storage. None of it is dramatic on its own, but it adds up fast. Divide your monthly total by the number of shooting days you realistically have and you get your minimum day rate just to stay solvent. That number might surprise you.

Step 4: Understand Where You Fit in the Market

Joel Grimes explaining market pricing tiers for wedding photography Joel Grimes explaining market pricing tiers for wedding photography Grimes makes a point here that I think is genuinely freeing. There is no single “market rate” for photography. There are clients who will pay $100 for a wedding and clients who will pay $100,000. Every price point has a buyer somewhere. The question is which market segment you can credibly serve right now.

If you’re starting out, trying to compete at $5,000 per wedding before you have the portfolio, the equipment, and the workflow to deliver at that level is a mistake in both directions. You might not book anything, or worse, you book a client with expectations you can’t meet. Starting at $500 with low overhead and actually making a small profit is a legitimate business strategy, not a failure.

Step 5: Compare Net Profit, Not Gross Revenue

Joel Grimes comparing photographer overhead to profit margins Joel Grimes comparing photographer overhead to profit margins Here’s the trap Grimes flags that I’ve seen trip up a lot of photographers. A studio photographer charging $5,000 per wedding might have two assistants, monthly studio rent, and equipment loans. After expenses, they might barely break even on that booking. Meanwhile someone operating lean out of their car with low overhead might net more from a $1,200 wedding than the studio photographer does from a $5,000 one.

Gross revenue is vanity. Profit is reality. When you’re setting your prices, always work backward from what you need to actually keep, not what sounds impressive to say at a meetup.

Step 6: Build the Quote From the Ground Up

Joel Grimes addressing the question of what to charge for a photo shoot Joel Grimes addressing the question of what to charge for a photo shoot Now you have all the pieces. Opportunity cost plus daily equipment risk plus monthly operating cost divided by shooting days gives you a real baseline. From there, add a margin for profit, not just break-even. You’re building a business, not a hobby that happens to occasionally reimburse you.

Write this out as a simple formula before you quote your next job. It takes maybe 15 minutes the first time and gets faster from there. The number you land on might be higher than you expected, and that’s usually a good sign that you’ve been undercharging.

My Take: This Framework Scales Sideways Too

I review budget gear for a living. My whole thing is proving that cheaper equipment can deliver professional results. But even I had to learn that “budget” applies to your gear, not to how you value your time. You can shoot great photos with a $500 camera kit and still charge professional rates if your output is professional quality.

The math Grimes lays out here doesn’t care what camera you’re using. It cares whether you’re accounting for every real cost in your business before you open your mouth to quote a client. I’ve talked to photographers running $3,000 bodies who were losing money on every job, and photographers with entry-level kits who were turning consistent profit. The gear is almost never the variable. The pricing math is.

Start with your opportunity cost. Know your gear exposure. Total your monthly operating costs. Understand your market tier. Compare net, not gross. Build the quote from the ground up. That’s the whole framework, and it works.

Watch the full tutorial on YouTube to hear Grimes walk through the reasoning in his own words. He’s got 40 years of context behind every point he makes, and it shows.