How much should you charge for your photography? It’s one of the most common questions inside the TMA community, and this episode pulls together some of the most honest answers we’ve heard on the podcast. A handful of photographers, all at different points in their pricing journey, get real about the math nobody wants to sit down with, the fear that comes with raising your rates, and what actually happens once you do.
Pricing Is a Client Experience Problem Before It’s a Math Problem
One theme comes up again and again in this episode: your price tag doesn’t exist on its own. It has to be backed up by something. One photographer put it simply, if you’ve raised your prices and things still aren’t clicking, drill into the client experience so that when someone leaves a session with you, they go tell four friends because they felt genuinely cared for the whole time.
There’s also a cost to staying too cheap for too long. Undercharging doesn’t just hurt your bank account, it can quietly hurt your clients too. When you’re spread across too many sessions at too low a price, you have less capacity to pour into each one. Raising your prices and taking on fewer clients often means you can actually serve the clients you do have more fully.
Finance mentor Shanna Skidmore breaks the money side down into something she calls your “enough number,” or your freedom figure. It starts with simple math: what do you need to make, including taxes, and what does it cost to run your business? “Money is not the treasure, it’s the tool to the life that we want,” she says, and her point is that once you know your number, you know exactly which levers to pull, whether that’s pricing, products, or how many sessions you’re taking on.
What Happens When You Actually Raise Your Prices
Knowing you need to raise your pricing and actually doing it are two very different things, and this episode doesn’t skip over the messy middle. One photographer, Brielle, talks candidly about the doubt that followed her price increase: wondering if she’d made a huge mistake, thinking about closing her business out of embarrassment when bookings slowed down. Her husband Jacob, who runs the business alongside her, wasn’t even sold on the new pricing at first. It took real mindset work, and time, before things turned around. A little over a year later, she’s booking better than ever and says the higher numbers feel, in her words, more digestible.
Another photographer, Morgan, describes doubling her prices as scary but transformative. The shift gave her the margin to create the kind of work she was actually capable of, and to serve her clients on a deeper level. “It gave me the margin that I needed to be able to create the work that I was actually capable of creating,” she says. That margin showed up outside of work too. “I’m a better mom because I made that shift,” she adds, a reminder that pricing decisions ripple into every part of a photographer’s life, not just the bottom line.
Why Photographers Need Other Photographers for This
What stands out about this episode is that no single voice has all the answers. One photographer’s confidence-building trick is standing in front of the mirror and saying her price out loud until it feels normal. Another leans on a spouse who believes in her business even when she doesn’t. Another builds an entire financial framework around one document, a simple profit plan, so pricing stops feeling like a mystery. Hearing this range of approaches from real photographers is exactly why community matters so much in this industry. Pricing can feel isolating when you’re the only one making the decision, but it gets a lot less scary when you’re not figuring it out alone.
This is part of what TMA is built around: mentors and members who have already walked through the exact fear you’re facing, and who are willing to talk about the parts that don’t make it onto a highlight reel.
Listen and Learn More
This week, pick one thing from the episode. Maybe it’s sitting down with your own numbers for the first time, or saying your price out loud until it stops feeling strange. Just start with one, and this episode is worth a listen for the full conversation.
Ready to build a business that reflects your own creative voice? The Motherhood Anthology membership gives you access to expert mentors, live coaching, monthly marketing suites, and a private community of photographers who are invested in your success. Learn more and join at themotherhoodanthology.com.
The Motherhood Anthology is a community and educational resource for photographers who want a profitable and sustainable business they love. With 15+ expert mentors and 7+ years of proven content, TMA helps portrait photographers build confident, thriving businesses through monthly education, mentorship, and a supportive community of 700+ members.
