What is included in the price?
A professional sports- or show photographer charges more than most per hour, for good reasons. They have extremely expensive gear to be able to catch things that happen very fast, often in low light conditions, and very few people are really good at it. It's not as cheap as a mobile picture taken by yourself, so you need to check exactly what's included in the price.
The time spent shooting photos is only a small part of total time spent on one assignment. The total time is usually 3-4 times longer than the shoot itself. Travel time, wait time, editing, feedback loop, delivery and invoicing will add up into the invoice. Expenses like flight tickets, taxis, hotels etc will also end up on the invoice if not already prepaid by you.
Some photographers charge ONLY for the photo time and expenses, and include of all the other extra work. It might be 3-4 times as expensive per photo hour, but you then know what sum to expect on the invoice. Just beware, to get a black and white version of a color picture might be charged as extras. You probably will get away cheaper by paying the lower price per hour and have all extra work added, but you will take the risk of ending upp with a higher total. Just make sure you know what you are paying for when comparing prices. The total price, including licenses (explained below), is what you should be looking for. And repeat calls to the photographer to make changes could cost you a small fortune. If you keep it simple, you lower costs.
How are you going to use the images?
What is the effect you want to achieve?
Through which channels will you publish?
Are you going to print images?
How quickly do you need the images?
Sometimes images need to be published immediately. This gets more and more common. You want your audience to follow your channel for the best images and the latest news, with your own narrative, and your biggest sponsor's logo. In these cases a second photographer who is sitting stand by online for editing is great to have. Images gets uploaded directly from the camera and edited and published directly.
A small thing to understand is that professional photographers don't take publishable masterpieces directly. They are taken with editing in mind. That is one of the reasons why they look so much better than photos uploaded directly from mobile phones. Other things are experience, a trained eye, a "sixth sense" of what is about to happen and ability to move around to get the best angle, and a professional has better (specialized and extremely expensive) equipment just to mention a few reasons.
If a few images for immediate delivery online is all you need, then the second photographer isn't an extra cost. To have one extra photographer working simultaneous with editing, or doing the editing afterwards would amount to about the same cost. Sometimes less.
Have you got all needed releases?
This is a legal jungle that is very hard to navigate, even for lawyers, so I will just briefly touch the subject. The law changes over time and I am not a lawyer. But first answer this question: Are you going to publish the pictures or just frame them for your Livingroom. If you are going to publish them, you need to look into model releases. A GDPR agreement can be given in a flash, but also be withdrawn just as quickly.
GDPR is mostly about electronics storing of personal data, which is any piece of data that makes someone identifiable, such as a name, picture with a face, very unique hair, clothing or tattoos. To use a picture, you need to store it. If you just paid for an expensive ad campaign, and one person in the picture withdraw their GDPR permission, the person in the picture needs to be altered (unidentifiable) or the ad has to be cancelled. That is expensive! To avoid this, you can use model releases instead. It is a real, signed, contract and therefore more binding. I'll cover this in another article in more detail.
Sports teams or show companies often make players/performers sign a model release when they sign up, but non professional teams/groups usually do not. And even though your team is in the clear, the other team might not be. What about the referees? Talk to all of them! Shows might have guest stars for whom they have no releases. Will the audience be in the background? Some organizers add a model release when tickets are sold, giving them the rights to use images of every person in the audience for commercial use. Whether this is legal or not, and in what countries, I don't know. Consult a lawyer, because this is a jungle. Your photographer cannot give you what they don't own, so releases is your headache. As I said, consult a lawyer...
What license do you need?
A little known, but potentially expensive, fact is that photographers charge for two things.
1) The making of images (preparations, travel, waiting, shooting, editing, delivery etc),
2) The usage rights of images.
You might assume that because you paid for the making of the image, that you own the image or at least have the right to use it. Wrong! The ownership of the image/photo always stays with the photographer (in most countries), even if it is a portrait of yourself and you paid for the making of it. The photographer decides how it may be used and for how long. There is a simple explanation for this. Someone who just wants a framed portrait does not pay as much as much as an international fashion magazine would for the exact same image on the cover of their September issue.
The usage rights of an image, is regulated in an Image License. The cheapest type would probably be a Personal License. That used to mean "for your eyes only", but after the digital and SoMed revolutions it has shifted to usually mean "for your personal channels only". Some photographers include this type of license when a consumer wants their portrait taken. Always ask if and what licens you will get. The cost of the license might come as an expensive surprise otherwise.
The resolution of the images might also affect the price. Images in lower resolution can be used for fewer things, thereby being a practical way of differentiate price. But it all comes down to the principle of income sharing. If someone uses an image and makes a ton of money out of it (directly or indirectly), the creator/copyright owner should be proportionally paid. If you want to use Disney's famous mouse to enhance your sales, they should of course be compensated for this, if they at all allow it. The same principle applies to photographers. The owner decides.
Think of the license as a rental agreement. You don't own the images, you rent it for a certain time and purpose. In the case of the living room portrait, the rental duration is usually for ever. A big magazine is usually only allowed to use it in one issue or article. Any use outside what the license allows may cause you an expensive trip to court. So always check what the license allows, and to whom that license belongs. Just because you happen to have a copy of an image, does not automatically give you the right to use it.
Your team or production company might be allowed to use an image, while the players or performers might not. The basic question to ask is "did I specifically pay for a license for this image, and do I have it in writing"? If the answer is no, you should definitely avoid using the image until you check with the copyright owner. Using an image without a license can be very expensive. I've heard of photographers making a very good living by making their images easily available and then suing for illegal use them. So be careful!
So now you are a bit more prepared when you book a photographer. It has probably saved you a lot of money already in extra time you don't have to pay for, and for lawsuits that will never happen. There will be more articles like this for you to enjoy. Sign up for my newsletter and get a mail when there is a new article for you.
I let ChatGPT do a caricature of me. This was the output. Feels very much like me!