In just a few weeks time, Thomas Nguyen and I will be heading to New York City to photograph our senior teams in the Big Apple! Every year, we do a huge destination shoot. We love being able to travel to a new city and be able to photograph our teams in locations that are so iconic that everyone recognizes. Not only is this a huge draw from a marketing perspective, but it also allows us to have a creative outlet and come into our senior seasons feeling refreshed.

But, it’s also really easy to lose money when doing a destination shoot. How do you price your senior destination shoots to make sure that you’re not losing money and that you’re actually walking away with profit?

The first step is that you’re going to want to make sure that you’re planning out all of your expenses. This includes everything from hair and makeup, travel costs (flights, gas, Uber, parking, meals etc.), permits, hotel, etc. Literally anything and everything that is going to cost you money you need to make sure you are keeping track of that ahead of time. If you underestimate this or forget something, this is going to put you in the hole when you go to price out your destination shoot. If you’re going to offer digital images only for the shoot, this is going to look a little bit different in your costs than if you’re going to include physical products for the shoot.

Based off these costs, I then create a spreadsheet and price out what I need to make to make it worth my time, how many individuals are going to come and this spits out a cost per person to attend the destination shoot. I love the calculator that we have included in the Senior Destinations Guide because it does all of the work for you and is exactly what we use on our destination shoots!

From there, it’s simply a matter of putting it out to your clients. Is this going to be just for your senior rep team? Are you going to offer it to your top clients? Regardless of who you invite, make sure that you are charging what you need to to make the destination happen and ensure that you’re not losing money on the destination!

Want to learn more about destination shoots? Make sure to download our FREE GUIDE for our 5 Tips to doing your own senior destination shoots!!

——

Sean Brown is a senior portrait photographer based out of Vancouver Washington and Portland Oregon. His goal is to bring out every senior’s personality in their images and is dedicated to making sure that every senior session is different so that no two senior images are alike. Sean is now booking the Class of 2020. To learn more about being an SBP Senior, click here.