If you're hiring a photographer to make images for your business — your website, your ads, your product, your brand — there's one thing worth understanding up front, because almost nobody explains it: you're not buying the photos. You're buying the right to use them.

That sounds like a technicality. It isn't. It's the whole thing. And once it clicks, everything about how photography is priced makes sense.

Think of it like music in a film

A movie can't just drop any song it wants into a scene. It has to license the music. And, most directors don’t want to put just any random song in their film… it has to fit perfectly, and usually it’s coming from a super talented musician who works so very hard to create that piece of music. So, they deserve to be compensated since their art is being used to enhance someone else’s art and business.

And here's the part that matters most: when a company licenses a song for a commercial — say McDonald's wants a Beatles track — they're paying for the specific right to use it. They can't chop it up or rewrite it to fit the ad. The license covers a use, and the work stays intact. (Unless they pay extra for the right to remix or make changes, but they usually do that alongside the artist and pay the artist more money for their help in making the song what they need.)

Photography works exactly the same way. My time behind the camera with you creates the images. The license determines where those images are allowed to live and what they're allowed to do for your business.

Why the use sets the price

A photo on your website is doing one job. That same photo running as a paid ad — reaching thousands of people, working to sell your product day after day — is doing a much bigger one. You're not paying more for a bigger file. You're paying for the bigger job the photo is doing for your business.

That's why "how will you use these?" is the first question I ask, and why it sets the price more than almost anything else. The shoot is the shoot. The license scales with the use.