There is a moment on almost every shoot that tells you what you are really buying. Someone who has spent years avoiding cameras stands stiff under the light, jaw set, sure they will hate every frame. Then you show them the back of the camera. Their shoulders relax an inch, they go quiet, and then they say, softly, oh, is that me.
That inch is the whole job, whether it is one headshot or a full day building a brand. I would rather be transparent about the investment than leave you guessing, so here is the outlook of both.
Start by putting down the wrong yardstick. You’re not buying an hour of a photographer’s time. A good headshot does not take 3 hours, and the ones that stretch to fill 3 are padding a price. What you keep is a set of images you are genuinely glad to put your name beside. That set is the thing you are paying for, not the minutes in a room.
Headshots start from around £170. At that entry a session hands back 4 fully retouched photos, plenty for someone who needs one steady image for LinkedIn, a CV and the foot of an email.
Step up to around £260 and you add a second outfit and eight finished frames, so the same person has a profile, a website line and a byline covered without booking again before the year turns.
As a gift, a headshot is one of the few things a friend will use every week. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that “the only true gift is a portion of thyself.” A headshot hands a portion of the receiver back to them, the version they are becoming, right at the threshold of something new.
Brand photography is a different question with a different answer, and it starts from around £350. A headshot tells a stranger who you are, brand photography tells them what it is like to be in the room with you in and around your business. This is more about showcasing your products and services, how you operate, engage with clients and the feeling you want to transmit through your environment and surroundings. The entry set gives you two scenes and a small gallery, enough to lift a website out of stock imagery.
Around £800 opens it up to 6 scenes and roughly 60 images, indoor and out, a wardrobe of moods, enough to carry months of posts without repeating yourself. The full brief at £1,500 runs to a dozen scenes, well over a hundred images and a working LinkedIn banner, the band founders and ICF coaches choose when their face is about to be seen everywhere and generic will no longer do.
The honest divide sits here. If you need to be recognised, spend at the headshot band and stop. If you are building a presence that has to say something before you open your mouth, brand photography is where the money earns its keep, and starting from £350 you can begin small and grow the library as the business does.
I do not price by the clock, and I would rather you invest at the band that matches what the pictures have to do, not a pound more.
Live pricing for every band sits at fieldsofgrowthphotography.com. For the coaches and founders building the LinkedIn presence these photos sit on, the writing and strategy side lives at fieldsofgrowthmedia.com.