Photography pricing is famously opaque. Ask three different studios for a quote on the same brief and you may receive three figures that bear no obvious relationship to one another. This opacity is not accidental, it is a structural feature of an industry where pricing power sits entirely with suppliers and clients have very little context for evaluating whether a number is fair.

We decided early that this was not a dynamic we wanted to participate in. We publish our pricing. We explain what is included. We break down what day rates actually cover. This article is an extended version of that explanation.

What a Day Rate Actually Includes

The day rate quoted on our pricing page is not simply a fee for the photographer's presence on set. It includes preparation time, the pre-production work, location scouting, brief reviews, and coordination that happen before shoot day, typically equivalent to half a day's work for a standard project. It includes the photographer's equipment: cameras, lenses, lighting modifiers, and support gear. It includes a first assistant, without whom a professional shoot cannot run safely or at the expected pace.

Travel time and travel costs are additional for locations outside of Amsterdam, and they are specified in every quote. Some studios absorb travel within a certain radius and charge above it. We itemize it explicitly because it is real expenditure and deserves to be visible rather than hidden in a rounded-up day rate.

The day rate does not include retouching, talent fees, location hire, or props. These are project variables that differ significantly between briefs, and bundling them into a single number would either inflate our standard rate unfairly or obscure costs that matter.

How Licensing Affects Cost

"Vague pricing is a power game. It benefits the vendor, not the relationship. We publish ours because clients who understand our value make better creative partners."

The creative fee, what you pay for the day's photography, covers the creation of the images. It does not cover their use. Usage rights, or licensing, is a separate cost that reflects the commercial value of the images to the client.

An image used on a brand's own Instagram for six months has a different commercial value to the same image used in a national print advertising campaign for two years. The photographer's time to create those images may have been identical. The value the client derives from them is not. Licensing exists to reflect that difference fairly.

We discuss licensing requirements at the briefing stage. For most brand and editorial work, we offer a standard commercial usage license covering digital channels for one to three years, included in the creative fee. Broader usages, print advertising, out-of-home, global rights, are quoted separately and transparently. We will always tell you what a license covers before you sign anything.

Project-Based Versus Hourly Pricing

We do not offer hourly rates. This is a deliberate choice, not a limitation. Hourly pricing creates misaligned incentives: it benefits the photographer to work slowly and penalizes efficiency. A photographer who works quickly through experience and preparation produces the same or better results faster, and should not be financially punished for it.

Project-based pricing aligns our interests with the client's. We deliver a defined set of images to a defined standard. How long that takes is our responsibility to manage. If a project runs over because of our underestimation, that is on us. If it wraps early because of good preparation, neither party loses.

What Clients Are Really Buying

When you book KRYZEN, you are not purchasing a photographer's time. You are purchasing a creative outcome: images that serve a specific commercial purpose, delivered to a professional standard, within a defined process that protects your investment.

That outcome includes not just the photography but the pre-production that makes the photography possible, the direction that makes the images feel right, the retouching that realizes the images fully, and the relationship management that ensures the project stays on track. A studio that charges significantly less is almost always delivering less of one of these things. Knowing which one is what client due diligence looks like.

Red Flags in a Photography Quote

A quote that does not break down its components is a quote that does not want to be compared. Ask for line items: creative fee, assistant, equipment, travel, retouching, licensing. A quote that cannot provide these items separately is either poorly structured or deliberately opaque.

Extremely low day rates are almost always hiding cost elsewhere, in licensing fees that balloon after the shoot, in retouching charged at high hourly rates, or in a service level that is simply insufficient for the brief. There is a floor below which professional photography cannot be delivered, and quotes significantly beneath the market rate should prompt questions rather than relief.

Finally: a quote that has no revision or cancellation policy is a quote that has not thought through what happens when things change. Projects shift. Shoots get rescheduled. The terms around those eventualities should be in writing before anything begins.