What corporate photography actually costs

Corporate photography with us breaks into three parts: a $350 creative fee per session, retouched images at $110 each, and packages that start from $2,000 ex GST for businesses that need volume. Knowing how those three pieces fit together makes it much easier to work out what a shoot will actually cost before you book it.

Photography quotes confuse people more than video quotes do, oddly, because a photo feels like a simple, single thing. It isn't priced as a single thing, because the two costs behind it, the time on location and the number of finished images you actually want, are genuinely separate and don't scale together.

The creative fee: what you're paying for the session itself

The $350 creative fee covers the shoot: the photographer's time, direction, lighting and the session running properly on the day. This is the part that doesn't change much whether you need five headshots or fifty, because setting up a proper lighting rig and directing subjects to look natural on camera takes roughly the same skill and time regardless of headcount, within reason. It's the fixed cost of a session being run well rather than rushed.

Retouched images: the part that scales with volume

Every retouched, finished image is $110. This is where the total moves depending on how many photos you actually need edited and delivered, not just how many were taken on the day. A shoot might produce hundreds of raw frames, but you're only paying for the ones worth finishing properly, colour graded, retouched and sized for how you'll use them. That distinction matters when you're briefing a shoot: deciding roughly how many final images you need before the session, rather than after, keeps the retouching cost predictable.

Packages: for businesses that need photography as a system, not an event

For businesses that need photography regularly, team headshots as people join, refreshed website imagery, ongoing content for social, packages start from $2,000 and bundle the session and a set number of retouched images into one scope. This is usually the better economics for anyone who isn't booking a single one-off shoot, because it avoids re-negotiating the creative fee every time a small photography need comes up. It's the photography equivalent of the retainer question we cover in retainer or project: how to buy video, and the same logic applies: buy the system if the need repeats, buy the single session if it doesn't.

Why photography and video pricing sit apart

Corporate photography sits inside its own pricing structure rather than as a smaller line item bolted onto a video quote, because it has its own separate cost drivers. A photography session doesn't need the crew, the audio kit or the edit time a video does, so pricing it against the same day rate as production would either overcharge for photography or undercharge for the specialist retouching work that makes corporate images actually usable. If you're planning a shoot day that needs both, stills and motion together are genuinely possible and often more efficient than two separate visits. We've written about how that works in stills and video on the same shoot day.

A worked example

Say a professional services firm needs headshots for twelve staff, plus six broader images of the office and team for the website. That's one session, so the $350 creative fee applies once, and eighteen retouched images at $110 each adds $1,980, for a total around $2,330 ex GST. Move the same brief to a package because the firm expects to add three or four new staff a year needing headshots, and the ongoing cost per image usually comes down, because the session and administration overhead is spread across a longer relationship rather than repriced from scratch each time.

What to decide before you book

The two questions worth answering before you get a quote are how many people need to be photographed, and roughly how many final images you'll actually use. A business refreshing five team headshots and a business that needs forty images across a website, LinkedIn profiles and a recruitment page are different jobs with different totals, even if the session itself looks similar on the day. Bring those numbers to the first conversation and the quote will be accurate rather than a placeholder you have to revise later. The full structure is on our photography page.

If you want a number for your specific team or business, get in touch and tell us roughly how many people and images you're working with.