How Much Should You Pay for Boudoir Photography?
Prices for boudoir photography in Utah (and anywhere in the world, really) vary widely. In this post, I’m going to walk you through what you should expect to pay and what you should expect to get in return at different price points.
The Session Fee: Most high-end boudoir photographers charge a session fee. This can range from $100 for a mini session to $750 for a full luxury experience and varies from studio to studio. In our studio, a $500 session fee covers prep guides, a pre-shoot planning session, professional hair and makeup, wine and hors d’oeuvres, a personalized music playlist, access to our client closet, a one and a half hour photo shoot with three wardrobe changes, pose coaching, the client gift, magazine-quality editing, and an image reveal and ordering session. Ask your photographer about the experience they’ll be providing for you. If you’re paying a premium session fee make sure that you’re getting a premium experience.
Digital Only Photographers: Some photographers will bundle the session fee with digitals and they don’t offer any products. These are called shoot and burn photographers because they used to burn the digitals onto a disk and give them to their clients. Today it might be a jump drive or downloadable digital gallery. There’s nothing wrong with using a shoot and burn photographer, as long as you are not paying as much as you would for a full-service photographer and you trust them and their work. For a shoot and burn photographer you should expect to pay hundreds, not thousands, for the experience and the images.
The Products: Generally, more experienced photographers offer an image reveal and ordering session after your photoshoot. This is where you get to see a slideshow of your edited images and choose the ones you’d like to order. It’s also an opportunity to see samples of all the products they offer, like albums, wall art, presentation boxes, and folios. Product pricing ranges wildly depending on quality, but you can expect to pay a minimum of $1200 for an 8x8 album with 20-25 images in a professional studio. Wall art generally starts around $300 for a simple print. If you want your art ready to hang in media like metals and acrylics, you’ll be looking at more like $800 to start.
Collections: Also called packages, collections are usually how to get the best bang for your buck in a boudoir studio. Something like an album, wall art, and digitals are bundled together at a better price point than you can buy them off the a la carte menu. Our collections start at $1100 for a presentation box and wall art. Our most popular collection is $3300.
Payment Plans: Our studio offers no-interest, in-house payment plans that can be scheduled up to eighteen months. Payment plans make collections a lot more affordable, but you will have to wait for your products until your account is paid in full. If you’re wanting to surprise a partner with an album and you want to set up a payment plan, we suggest bringing them to the image reveal and ordering session and letting them pick out the images for the album with you. That way they don’t have to wait for the physical product to arrive to get their surprise.
A little more advice: If you care more about finding the best photographer for you than the cheapest, look for a photographer who specializes in boudoir photography, rather than one who just offers it as one of their many services. The experience might be similar, but the quality of the images they create will not be as good as a photographer who does nothing but boudoir. Also, make sure their portfolio includes examples of people who have a similar body-type to yours, as well as age. If they are not showing it in their work, you can assume they have no experience with it.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about this or anything else having to do with boudoir photography! We are specialists in this field and are always happy to help you find the right fit, even if that’s not us. You can also sign up for our newsletter and get our full payment guide with all of our pricing at the end of this post! Happy hunting and good luck!
