Taking photos is 10%.

Q: I’M AFRAID THAT AS I BECOME MORE SUCCESSFUL AS A PHOTOGRAPHER, I WILL IN FACT BE DOING LESS PHOTOGRAPHY. WHAT PERCENTAGE OF YOUR TYPICAL WORK WEEK IS PHOTOGRAPHY VS. LOCATION SCOUTING VS. CONSULTATIONS VS. MARKETING VS. BUSINESS ADMINISTRATING VS. POST VS. PUTTING OUT FIRES, ETC.?

A: Picking up the camera and taking photos is 10% or so of my job. Ten percent of my time. Think about that in terms of your rates, too. You are getting hired to take photos, but it’s a small percentage of your actual work to be able to do that. You have 100% of work to do. You have to be paid for that 90% of time when you aren’t shooting. The client mainly sees the 10% of what you do.

“It’s just pictures! It’s digital. It doesn’t cost you anything.”

You love to cook. Run a restaurant all by yourself and how much actual cooking will you get to do compared to everything else? Cooking, dish washing, cleaning, serving, bartending, accounting, hosting, ordering food and supplies, marketing, menu planning, etc.

If you want to spend more time cooking and less time cleaning, then you hire someone to clean. Don’t want to do accounting? Hire someone. Want someone else to serve the food? Hire. Soon you will get to spend more time doing what you love, but now you have more people involved, and that costs you more money, which means you have to raise your prices.

That’s what happens for chefs. That’s what happens for photographers.