Perceptive Photographer #35: Price and Value of a Photograph

I often times get asked about how to price a photograph for sale. When looking at basic models for pricing, you only need to know a few things. The cost of your expenses plus your required profit equals the price. If you want to break it down even further. You should look at the cost of your materials (paper, frames, ink, film,  matte board, et)+Labor (what you make an hour..which is not much if you are an artist)+Expenses (rent, electricity, cameras, printers, memory cards, etc)+profit is equal to you wholesale cost. Multiple that cost by 2 and you get the retail cost. Using this basic formula, you can figure out what the price of a photograph should be. In this podcast, we talk about how in our society we tend to equate price and value. The more expensive the more valuable. However, I would like to challenge that notion. In the second half of the podcast, we talk about what makes something valuable. What is it in your own work that you find valuable? Is it the experience, the work, the craftsmanship. Is sharing the work on social media for free more valuable than the money. As an artist, you have to decide those answers for yourself. In the end, what we really want to create is work that we think is valuable. To do that we should figure out what value means to us. Particularly if it is something more than dollars and cents.