The High Cost of Second Shooters
The High Cost of Second Shooters
The High Cost of Second Shooters: Why $100+ Per Hour Is Bad for Business
Before I get into this topic I feel like I should mention a few things. One, I come from a working background in a non-creative field and I started working in the late 90’s. I have a different view on wages than I think most of the current wedding industry and I have a very strong opinion on the high costs of second shooters and high costs in the wedding industry as a whole. I think these over-inflated costs are ruining the industry and making it harder to succeed for all of us. I fucking hate this trend of insane wages and I think it’s out of control… So with that said, let’s get into the subject and let me explain why and how this trend is ruining everything for everyone.
When it comes to wedding photography, the role of a second shooter is somewhat crucial but often misunderstood. A second shooter is there to capture additional angles, cover more ground, and ensure that no moment is missed. They’re also there as a comfort to the couple to ease their mind that they have two photographers covering the entire day and nothing will be missed. But lately, the costs associated with hiring a second shooter have skyrocketed to insane levels, with many demanding rates of $75 to $100 or more per hour—just for showing up and shooting without any real client interaction or editing. As a wedding photographer and business owner, these rates are not only unreasonable, but they also pose a significant threat to the sustainability and growth of the photography industry.
Be forewarned that there will be some vulgar language in this piece as I truly hate this aspect of the wedding business and I am vehemently against anyone trying to push these stupid high rates on other businesses.
Let’s get into it…
Breaking Down the Numbers: Comparing Second Shooter Rates to Common Jobs
Let’s put these rates of $75 to $100+ per hour into perspective. A second shooter asking for $100 per hour means they would earn $800 for an eight-hour wedding day. Now, let’s compare that to a few other well-known jobs:
- Registered Nurse: $38/hour
- Electrician: $30/hour
- Accountant: $32/hour
- Police Officer: $29/hour
- Elementary School Teacher: $28/hour
These are all professions that require years of education, training, and in many cases, a high level of responsibility. Yet, second shooters, who have far fewer responsibilities, are demanding rates that exceed these professions by a significant margin. Yes, photography is a skill that requires training, gear, and experience… But it does not fucking justify $100 per hour.
Lead wedding photographers can make a lot of money with weddings, so they can easily pay these rates normally… But they shouldn’t have to at all. The main photographer built a business that fills their calendar and keeps them in business, then this fucking second shooter with limited gigs and an open calendar demands a ridiculous wages so they can supplement their income.
The Real Cost of Running a Photography Business
What many second shooters fail to realize is that the $100 per hour they’re asking for is often higher than what the business owner—who is shouldering all the responsibilities—actually makes by the end of each client’s lifespan. As a professional wedding photographer, your earnings are not just the hourly rate you charge. You have to account for:
- Gear Costs: Thousands of dollars invested in cameras, lenses, lighting, and backups.
- Editing Time: Hours upon hours spent perfecting images after the wedding day.
- Client Acquisition: The time and money spent on marketing, networking, and consultations.
- Business Overheads: Insurance, taxes, software subscriptions, studio rentals, and more.
After all these expenses and time, the average hourly earnings for a wedding photographer often fall well below the rates these pompous fucking second shooters are asking for. The bottom line? A second shooter demanding $100 per hour is often making more money than the person who owns the business, bears all the risks, and does all the heavy lifting. I hear the arguments now, “then raise your prices to compensate for these rates and make more money,” and yes you are correct with that thought, but who suffers in that situation… The client. Maybe I run my business differently than the norm, but I am trying to maximize the value and maintain prices I am comfortable with without raking the wallets of my clients.
What $100 Per Hour Means at 40 Hours a Week
To further illustrate how unreasonable these rates are, let’s imagine a second shooter working 40 hours a week at $100 per hour. This is a simple formula that makes it fair to calculate wages and what you would pay annually if you were able to work a full schedule. This is what you would use to calculate a main photographer’s hourly wages when including all of the other tasks of running a business that the second shooters do not have to do.
So, at 40 hours a week and at a rate of $100 per hour…This equates to an annual salary of $208,000!!—nearly double the median household income in the United States. And remember, this is for someone who doesn’t have to worry about client acquisition and managing, editing, insurance, taxes, or any of the other responsibilities that come with running a business.
On the other hand, the main wedding photographer (business owner), after all their expenses, might be lucky to bring home half of that if they operate a really successful business. When second shooters demand such high rates, they are not only inflating their own value but also creating an unsustainable model that damages the wedding photography industry as a whole.
Second Shooting: A Learning Opportunity, Not a Six-Figure Career
The role of a second shooter should be seen as a stepping stone in building a wedding photography business, not a primary source of income. It’s an opportunity to learn, to gain experience, and to build a portfolio so that you can someday develop a business strong enough to support itself and earn a great living. Second shooting is a way to supplement your income while you grow your own business and fill your calendar with your own clients. Demanding $75 to $100 per hour as a second shooter is not only fucking unreasonable, but it’s also missing the point entirely and making it even harder to build and maintain a successful wedding photography business.
At a rate of $50 per hour, a second shooter still makes a respectable income—$400 for an eight-hour day and paid at an annual rate of $104,000. That’s still incredibly high and more than enough for a role that requires no client meetings, no editing, no planning, and no business management. It’s a rate that’s fair, considering the responsibilities involved, and it’s more in line with real-world job comparisons.
Even a $50 rate should be solely reserved for vetted and qualified second shooters who you have built a rapport with and have worked together multiple times. Some of these motherfuckers are showing up with one camera, a kit lens, and a couple batteries with one flash attached to the top of the camera talking about the 3 weddings they’ve shot like they have any fucking clue as to what they’re doing. And they shouldn’t have a clue yet, they’ve shot three weddings, they have no idea what they’re doing… Which is why $50 per hour is still far too high… Now I am paying you to learn what I know and give you experience. No. Just no.
The Broader Impact on the Wedding Industry
When second shooters demand these high rates, it forces wedding photographers to ultimately eat the costs or raise their prices to cover these costs. This increase is ultimately passed on to the client, which can price many couples out of the market for a well qualified photographer. The wedding industry is already facing challenges with wild rising costs across the board, and exorbitant second shooter rates only exacerbate the problem.
Moreover, these inflated rates create an imbalance in the industry. They skew the perception of value and make it difficult for business owners to offer competitive pricing while still making a profit. This, in turn, can lead to a decline in bookings, financial stress, and even the closure of businesses that can’t keep up with these unrealistic demands.
Going back to the explanation of rates… If the second shooter wants $100 per hour and the main photographer should make at least double the second shooter to be fair. They are the one who did all the work to this point and built the business to get the booking and hold all of the responsibility of the day… So they should be at $200 per hour to balance it all out.
So at $200 per hour a normal 10 hour wedding would mean they earn $2000 and the second shooter earns $1000 making the wedding package cost $3000… Right? Well, wait, what about all of the hours and effort put into getting the client in the first place. If that takes an average of 50 hours not including the wedding day itself… At $200 per hour, that’s $10,000 more. Now the wedding package should cost $13,000 to pay everyone involved at the crazy rates that second shooters are demanding. Oh but then there’s all of the costs associated with building and running a photography business… Logically you should integrate some of these costs into your wedding package, but for simplicity we’ll stay at a $13,000 wedding package.
That’s just fucking dumb.
I value myself and my industry, but $13,000 – even though I know some clients would happily pay that – is beyond the value of our services. Maybe I come from a poor childhood and didn’t have access to a lot of money, my highest hourly rate ever was about $18 per hour… So when I see these numbers and see these high hourly rate demands from second shooters it breaks my brain. Ultimately, run your business your way, but also try to consider the ramifications throughout the entire wedding industry and the impact to the entrepreneurs trying to create a successful company.
Conclusion: Fair Rates for Fair Work
Second shooters are undoubtedly important, but they are not vital enough to justify rates that outstrip the earnings of the business owners they work for. A fair rate, such as $35 to $50 per hour, reflects the true value of the role without placing undue strain on the photographer’s business. It allows second shooters to earn a decent wage while they build their own careers and business, without damaging the industry as a whole or any of the established photographers who are helping them by hiring them as second shooters.
By keeping rates reasonable, we ensure that wedding photography remains financially accessible to couples, sustainable for established photographers, and keeps it as a valuable learning experience for second shooters. Let’s keep the focus where it should be—on delivering beautiful, lasting memories for our clients, without unnecessary financial pressures and creating an industry where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.
A No-Bullshit Response to “Just Raise Your Rates”
Alright, let’s cut through the bullshit. For all the second shooters and anyone out there telling photographers to “just raise your rates” to cover these sky-high second shooter fees—fuck you.
Seriously. There’s a financial limit to the value of what we do and offer as wedding photographers and there for damn sure is a limit to what a second shooter offers. Sure, you can price yourself out of the stratosphere, and yeah, some clients will still book you. Hell, some people want to pay $8,000+ for a photographer because they think the higher the price, the better the experience, the skill, the quality. And yes, generally speaking, some of those photographers do have more experience and knowledge. But let’s talk about the cap—the cap to what we should charge for wedding photography services, the cap to what’s fair, and the cap to what’s fucking reasonable.
The truly sad thing about photographers who charge above 8k for just photo, they are, in my experience, the photographers who operate a transactional business and don’t really give a fuck about clients at all. They pretend they do, and they have enough experience to make clients feel special, but they deliver only a few hundred images, hoard the RAW files, and do not utilize their knowledge and experience to better the clients wedding day unless it affects them directly.
I have no issue with charging 8k if it is justified in the deliverable value of the package. If you have less than a decade in business and are under 400 to 500 weddings worth of experience… You should not be charging that much at all. What happens is photographers arbitrarily raise prices annually to reach their financial goals… So they book about 25 weddings per year and after about 5 years of raising their prices they reach 6 to 8k per wedding and have really only shot about 125 weddings or so. Which is a lot… But at 8k, you’re priced far above your experience level.
So these prices lead to fewer weddings but making the same amount of money, which is a good thing, but it also leads to these same shooters having open dates and then becoming these high priced asshole second shooters demanding insanely high rates. They have experience and they think their time is worth $100 per hour because they have shot more than 100 weddings and they have a Canon whateverthefuck… You know most of these types of photographers don’t even have or know how to use off camera flash. But I digress…
The Income Cap: Know Your Worth, But Don’t Overinflate It
Here’s the deal: A lot of photographers (and other wedding industry folks) have this weird twisted view on how to set their prices. They whip out a spreadsheet, decide they want to make $80K a year, then think about the workload and determine that they would really only like to shoot about 10 weddings in a year, and boom—suddenly they’re charging $8,000 per wedding because that’s what the math says. But did they increase their value? Did they add anything new or better to their offering? Nope. They just adjusted the numbers to hit their personal income goals. This has nothing to do with the value they’re actually providing nor in a alot of cases their experience level and everything to do with how much money they want to pocket. It’s a numbers game, not a value game. These are the ‘transactional’ businesses we spoke about earlier.
So then, when these high-price photographers aren’t booking 30+ weddings a year or making their planned $80k (because, shocker, most clients don’t want to drop $8K on a photographer), what do they do? They start second shooting. And because they’ve convinced themselves that their time is worth more than a normal fucking person, they demand $75 to $100+ per hour as a second shooter, without doing any of the heavy lifting that comes with running a photography business. And you know what that does? It fucks with the whole industry and now everyone is asking for $100 an hour as they think it’s the new fucking standard wages for second shooting… News flash fuck face, your starter kit mid tier gear and 3 full half days working as a second shooter at a wedding doesn’t justify those rates.
These types of people would rather harm the wedding industry instead of finding different ways to earn a living or raise their overall product value to a point that brings in enough revenue to support themselves. The reason these photographers are not earning what they would like to earn is not because they are charging too much, it’s because they are offering too little of value to justify their asking price… They have a product problem. And they’re assholes, but that’s just my opinion.
The Real Problem with “Just Raise Your Rates”
When these second shooters start throwing around these ridiculous new “industry standard” rates, they force the rest of us into a corner. Either we pay these overinflated rates and eat the cost, or we have to jack up our own prices to cover the expense. But here’s the kicker—there’s a limit to how much clients are willing to pay. You can’t just keep raising prices indefinitely. There’s a cap to the market, and we’re all bumping up against it constantly. Not everyone has $10K to drop on a wedding photographer, and not everyone should have to. There needs to be a balance in prices and a reasonable standard… $10,000 for just photography is definitely not it.
You think it’s easy to just raise our rates? It’s not. Pricing is a delicate balance between what we’re worth, what the market can bear, and what clients are willing to pay so that we book enough work to cover our operating expenses. And when you have these assholes artificially inflating their worth because they decided on a whim they should make six figures with minimal effort, it screws with the whole ecosystem. We’re not talking about premium luxury brands here—we’re talking about real people with real budgets who deserve real value.
The Fallout: Inflated Prices, Fewer Bookings, and a Broken Industry
What happens when everyone raises their rates to cover these absurd second shooter fees? Couples get priced out. They start looking elsewhere—maybe even skipping on a professional photographer altogether. And then what? We all lose out. The market shrinks, fewer people book, and the whole industry suffers. All because a few people decided they’re worth more than they really are and pushed the costs onto everyone else.
So yeah, fuck you if you think the answer is to “just raise our prices.” We’re out here trying to provide real value, create lasting memories, and run a sustainable business. Not play a numbers game that only benefits a select few while screwing over the rest of us and the wedding industry as a whole.
Final Thoughts: Let’s Keep It Real
Let’s be clear—knowing your worth is important. Charging what you’re worth is important. But there’s a difference between knowing your worth and artificially inflating it to meet some arbitrary income goal. We need to focus on value—real, tangible value—and keep the industry sustainable for everyone. If you’re a second shooter demanding $100 per hour, maybe it’s time to reassess. Understand that your role is critical but not irreplaceable, and charging rates that force the entire industry to shift isn’t just unreasonable—it’s damaging.
Keep it real, keep it fair, and keep this industry strong. And if you’re in it just to make a quick buck, maybe it’s time to rethink your approach and your place in the wedding industry. Because simply raising our prices to cover your overinflated rates?
That’s not the answer. It’s the problem.
Want to read more articles like this? Check out Engaged AF Magazine and read the latest issue! Don’t agree? Let’s talk about it in the comments
The High Cost of Second Shooters: Why $100+ Per Hour Is Bad for Business
Before I get into this topic I feel like I should mention a few things. One, I come from a working background in a non-creative field and I started working in the late 90’s. I have a different view on wages than I think most of the current wedding industry and I have a very strong opinion on the high costs of second shooters and high costs in the wedding industry as a whole. I think these over-inflated costs are ruining the industry and making it harder to succeed for all of us. I fucking hate this trend of insane wages and I think it’s out of control… So with that said, let’s get into the subject and let me explain why and how this trend is ruining everything for everyone.
When it comes to wedding photography, the role of a second shooter is somewhat crucial but often misunderstood. A second shooter is there to capture additional angles, cover more ground, and ensure that no moment is missed. They’re also there as a comfort to the couple to ease their mind that they have two photographers covering the entire day and nothing will be missed. But lately, the costs associated with hiring a second shooter have skyrocketed to insane levels, with many demanding rates of $75 to $100 or more per hour—just for showing up and shooting without any real client interaction or editing. As a wedding photographer and business owner, these rates are not only unreasonable, but they also pose a significant threat to the sustainability and growth of the photography industry.
Be forewarned that there will be some vulgar language in this piece as I truly hate this aspect of the wedding business and I am vehemently against anyone trying to push these stupid high rates on other businesses.
Let’s get into it…
Breaking Down the Numbers: Comparing Second Shooter Rates to Common Jobs
Let’s put these rates of $75 to $100+ per hour into perspective. A second shooter asking for $100 per hour means they would earn $800 for an eight-hour wedding day. Now, let’s compare that to a few other well-known jobs:
- Registered Nurse: $38/hour
- Electrician: $30/hour
- Accountant: $32/hour
- Police Officer: $29/hour
- Elementary School Teacher: $28/hour
These are all professions that require years of education, training, and in many cases, a high level of responsibility. Yet, second shooters, who have far fewer responsibilities, are demanding rates that exceed these professions by a significant margin. Yes, photography is a skill that requires training, gear, and experience… But it does not fucking justify $100 per hour.
Lead wedding photographers can make a lot of money with weddings, so they can easily pay these rates normally… But they shouldn’t have to at all. The main photographer built a business that fills their calendar and keeps them in business, then this fucking second shooter with limited gigs and an open calendar demands a ridiculous wages so they can supplement their income.
The Real Cost of Running a Photography Business
What many second shooters fail to realize is that the $100 per hour they’re asking for is often higher than what the business owner—who is shouldering all the responsibilities—actually makes by the end of each client’s lifespan. As a professional wedding photographer, your earnings are not just the hourly rate you charge. You have to account for:
- Gear Costs: Thousands of dollars invested in cameras, lenses, lighting, and backups.
- Editing Time: Hours upon hours spent perfecting images after the wedding day.
- Client Acquisition: The time and money spent on marketing, networking, and consultations.
- Business Overheads: Insurance, taxes, software subscriptions, studio rentals, and more.
After all these expenses and time, the average hourly earnings for a wedding photographer often fall well below the rates these pompous fucking second shooters are asking for. The bottom line? A second shooter demanding $100 per hour is often making more money than the person who owns the business, bears all the risks, and does all the heavy lifting. I hear the arguments now, “then raise your prices to compensate for these rates and make more money,” and yes you are correct with that thought, but who suffers in that situation… The client. Maybe I run my business differently than the norm, but I am trying to maximize the value and maintain prices I am comfortable with without raking the wallets of my clients.
What $100 Per Hour Means at 40 Hours a Week
To further illustrate how unreasonable these rates are, let’s imagine a second shooter working 40 hours a week at $100 per hour. This is a simple formula that makes it fair to calculate wages and what you would pay annually if you were able to work a full schedule. This is what you would use to calculate a main photographer’s hourly wages when including all of the other tasks of running a business that the second shooters do not have to do.
So, at 40 hours a week and at a rate of $100 per hour…This equates to an annual salary of $208,000!!—nearly double the median household income in the United States. And remember, this is for someone who doesn’t have to worry about client acquisition and managing, editing, insurance, taxes, or any of the other responsibilities that come with running a business.
On the other hand, the main wedding photographer (business owner), after all their expenses, might be lucky to bring home half of that if they operate a really successful business. When second shooters demand such high rates, they are not only inflating their own value but also creating an unsustainable model that damages the wedding photography industry as a whole.
Second Shooting: A Learning Opportunity, Not a Six-Figure Career
The role of a second shooter should be seen as a stepping stone in building a wedding photography business, not a primary source of income. It’s an opportunity to learn, to gain experience, and to build a portfolio so that you can someday develop a business strong enough to support itself and earn a great living. Second shooting is a way to supplement your income while you grow your own business and fill your calendar with your own clients. Demanding $75 to $100 per hour as a second shooter is not only fucking unreasonable, but it’s also missing the point entirely and making it even harder to build and maintain a successful wedding photography business.
At a rate of $50 per hour, a second shooter still makes a respectable income—$400 for an eight-hour day and paid at an annual rate of $104,000. That’s still incredibly high and more than enough for a role that requires no client meetings, no editing, no planning, and no business management. It’s a rate that’s fair, considering the responsibilities involved, and it’s more in line with real-world job comparisons.
Even a $50 rate should be solely reserved for vetted and qualified second shooters who you have built a rapport with and have worked together multiple times. Some of these motherfuckers are showing up with one camera, a kit lens, and a couple batteries with one flash attached to the top of the camera talking about the 3 weddings they’ve shot like they have any fucking clue as to what they’re doing. And they shouldn’t have a clue yet, they’ve shot three weddings, they have no idea what they’re doing… Which is why $50 per hour is still far too high… Now I am paying you to learn what I know and give you experience. No. Just no.
The Broader Impact on the Wedding Industry
When second shooters demand these high rates, it forces wedding photographers to ultimately eat the costs or raise their prices to cover these costs. This increase is ultimately passed on to the client, which can price many couples out of the market for a well qualified photographer. The wedding industry is already facing challenges with wild rising costs across the board, and exorbitant second shooter rates only exacerbate the problem.
Moreover, these inflated rates create an imbalance in the industry. They skew the perception of value and make it difficult for business owners to offer competitive pricing while still making a profit. This, in turn, can lead to a decline in bookings, financial stress, and even the closure of businesses that can’t keep up with these unrealistic demands.
Going back to the explanation of rates… If the second shooter wants $100 per hour and the main photographer should make at least double the second shooter to be fair. They are the one who did all the work to this point and built the business to get the booking and hold all of the responsibility of the day… So they should be at $200 per hour to balance it all out.
So at $200 per hour a normal 10 hour wedding would mean they earn $2000 and the second shooter earns $1000 making the wedding package cost $3000… Right? Well, wait, what about all of the hours and effort put into getting the client in the first place. If that takes an average of 50 hours not including the wedding day itself… At $200 per hour, that’s $10,000 more. Now the wedding package should cost $13,000 to pay everyone involved at the crazy rates that second shooters are demanding. Oh but then there’s all of the costs associated with building and running a photography business… Logically you should integrate some of these costs into your wedding package, but for simplicity we’ll stay at a $13,000 wedding package.
That’s just fucking dumb.
I value myself and my industry, but $13,000 – even though I know some clients would happily pay that – is beyond the value of our services. Maybe I come from a poor childhood and didn’t have access to a lot of money, my highest hourly rate ever was about $18 per hour… So when I see these numbers and see these high hourly rate demands from second shooters it breaks my brain. Ultimately, run your business your way, but also try to consider the ramifications throughout the entire wedding industry and the impact to the entrepreneurs trying to create a successful company.
Conclusion: Fair Rates for Fair Work
Second shooters are undoubtedly important, but they are not vital enough to justify rates that outstrip the earnings of the business owners they work for. A fair rate, such as $35 to $50 per hour, reflects the true value of the role without placing undue strain on the photographer’s business. It allows second shooters to earn a decent wage while they build their own careers and business, without damaging the industry as a whole or any of the established photographers who are helping them by hiring them as second shooters.
By keeping rates reasonable, we ensure that wedding photography remains financially accessible to couples, sustainable for established photographers, and keeps it as a valuable learning experience for second shooters. Let’s keep the focus where it should be—on delivering beautiful, lasting memories for our clients, without unnecessary financial pressures and creating an industry where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.
A No-Bullshit Response to “Just Raise Your Rates”
Alright, let’s cut through the bullshit. For all the second shooters and anyone out there telling photographers to “just raise your rates” to cover these sky-high second shooter fees—fuck you.
Seriously. There’s a financial limit to the value of what we do and offer as wedding photographers and there for damn sure is a limit to what a second shooter offers. Sure, you can price yourself out of the stratosphere, and yeah, some clients will still book you. Hell, some people want to pay $8,000+ for a photographer because they think the higher the price, the better the experience, the skill, the quality. And yes, generally speaking, some of those photographers do have more experience and knowledge. But let’s talk about the cap—the cap to what we should charge for wedding photography services, the cap to what’s fair, and the cap to what’s fucking reasonable.
The truly sad thing about photographers who charge above 8k for just photo, they are, in my experience, the photographers who operate a transactional business and don’t really give a fuck about clients at all. They pretend they do, and they have enough experience to make clients feel special, but they deliver only a few hundred images, hoard the RAW files, and do not utilize their knowledge and experience to better the clients wedding day unless it affects them directly.
I have no issue with charging 8k if it is justified in the deliverable value of the package. If you have less than a decade in business and are under 400 to 500 weddings worth of experience… You should not be charging that much at all. What happens is photographers arbitrarily raise prices annually to reach their financial goals… So they book about 25 weddings per year and after about 5 years of raising their prices they reach 6 to 8k per wedding and have really only shot about 125 weddings or so. Which is a lot… But at 8k, you’re priced far above your experience level.
So these prices lead to fewer weddings but making the same amount of money, which is a good thing, but it also leads to these same shooters having open dates and then becoming these high priced asshole second shooters demanding insanely high rates. They have experience and they think their time is worth $100 per hour because they have shot more than 100 weddings and they have a Canon whateverthefuck… You know most of these types of photographers don’t even have or know how to use off camera flash. But I digress…
The Income Cap: Know Your Worth, But Don’t Overinflate It
Here’s the deal: A lot of photographers (and other wedding industry folks) have this weird twisted view on how to set their prices. They whip out a spreadsheet, decide they want to make $80K a year, then think about the workload and determine that they would really only like to shoot about 10 weddings in a year, and boom—suddenly they’re charging $8,000 per wedding because that’s what the math says. But did they increase their value? Did they add anything new or better to their offering? Nope. They just adjusted the numbers to hit their personal income goals. This has nothing to do with the value they’re actually providing nor in a alot of cases their experience level and everything to do with how much money they want to pocket. It’s a numbers game, not a value game. These are the ‘transactional’ businesses we spoke about earlier.
So then, when these high-price photographers aren’t booking 30+ weddings a year or making their planned $80k (because, shocker, most clients don’t want to drop $8K on a photographer), what do they do? They start second shooting. And because they’ve convinced themselves that their time is worth more than a normal fucking person, they demand $75 to $100+ per hour as a second shooter, without doing any of the heavy lifting that comes with running a photography business. And you know what that does? It fucks with the whole industry and now everyone is asking for $100 an hour as they think it’s the new fucking standard wages for second shooting… News flash fuck face, your starter kit mid tier gear and 3 full half days working as a second shooter at a wedding doesn’t justify those rates.
These types of people would rather harm the wedding industry instead of finding different ways to earn a living or raise their overall product value to a point that brings in enough revenue to support themselves. The reason these photographers are not earning what they would like to earn is not because they are charging too much, it’s because they are offering too little of value to justify their asking price… They have a product problem. And they’re assholes, but that’s just my opinion.
The Real Problem with “Just Raise Your Rates”
When these second shooters start throwing around these ridiculous new “industry standard” rates, they force the rest of us into a corner. Either we pay these overinflated rates and eat the cost, or we have to jack up our own prices to cover the expense. But here’s the kicker—there’s a limit to how much clients are willing to pay. You can’t just keep raising prices indefinitely. There’s a cap to the market, and we’re all bumping up against it constantly. Not everyone has $10K to drop on a wedding photographer, and not everyone should have to. There needs to be a balance in prices and a reasonable standard… $10,000 for just photography is definitely not it.
You think it’s easy to just raise our rates? It’s not. Pricing is a delicate balance between what we’re worth, what the market can bear, and what clients are willing to pay so that we book enough work to cover our operating expenses. And when you have these assholes artificially inflating their worth because they decided on a whim they should make six figures with minimal effort, it screws with the whole ecosystem. We’re not talking about premium luxury brands here—we’re talking about real people with real budgets who deserve real value.
The Fallout: Inflated Prices, Fewer Bookings, and a Broken Industry
What happens when everyone raises their rates to cover these absurd second shooter fees? Couples get priced out. They start looking elsewhere—maybe even skipping on a professional photographer altogether. And then what? We all lose out. The market shrinks, fewer people book, and the whole industry suffers. All because a few people decided they’re worth more than they really are and pushed the costs onto everyone else.
So yeah, fuck you if you think the answer is to “just raise our prices.” We’re out here trying to provide real value, create lasting memories, and run a sustainable business. Not play a numbers game that only benefits a select few while screwing over the rest of us and the wedding industry as a whole.
Final Thoughts: Let’s Keep It Real
Let’s be clear—knowing your worth is important. Charging what you’re worth is important. But there’s a difference between knowing your worth and artificially inflating it to meet some arbitrary income goal. We need to focus on value—real, tangible value—and keep the industry sustainable for everyone. If you’re a second shooter demanding $100 per hour, maybe it’s time to reassess. Understand that your role is critical but not irreplaceable, and charging rates that force the entire industry to shift isn’t just unreasonable—it’s damaging.
Keep it real, keep it fair, and keep this industry strong. And if you’re in it just to make a quick buck, maybe it’s time to rethink your approach and your place in the wedding industry. Because simply raising our prices to cover your overinflated rates?
That’s not the answer. It’s the problem.
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