A single executive portrait in Los Angeles can run into 4 figures. A leadership team of ten to twenty co per person, can run over 5 figures falling as the group grows. Below that range you are usually buying volume work; above it you are usually buying a photographer whose name does something for the portrait. What follows is what actually moves the number.
What you are paying for, in order of cost
Time on the day. Fifteen minutes per person is a working portrait. Thirty is a considered one. Two hours is a portrait made for a boardroom wall or an annual report cover, and it costs accordingly because it occupies a day rather than a slot.
Retouching. This is the largest hidden variable. Volume operators deliver an automatic pass — skin smoothed uniformly, everyone rendered slightly plastic. Considered retouching is done frame by frame, keeps the texture of a face, and takes roughly twenty minutes per image. Ask any photographer what their retouching workflow is; the answer tells you more about the final image than their equipment list does.
Usage. A portrait for a LinkedIn profile and a portrait for a national campaign are not the same commercial object, and no honest photographer prices them identically. Most corporate work is licensed firm-wide and in perpetuity, which is what you want; be careful of quotes that look low and turn out to be twelve months.
Location. On-site costs more than studio for small groups — I am transporting and building a set — and less for large ones, because we are not moving forty people across the city.
What makes it cheaper
Group size, straightforwardly. The set-up is the same for eight people or thirty-eight, so per-head cost falls sharply with volume. Booking a full day rather than a half. Consolidating: three departments photographed on one day rather than three separate visits over a year, which is how most firms accidentally spend twice what they meant to.
What makes it more expensive, legitimately
Multiple locations. Multiple set-ups — a seated portrait and an environmental portrait are two different builds. Same-day delivery. Executives who can only give you a fixed twelve-minute window at seven in the morning, which is a scheduling cost rather than a photography one.
The number nobody calculates
How long the portraits last. A cheap set gets replaced in eighteen months because nobody likes them and the firm quietly stops using them. A properly made set is still on the website in six years, still being sent to conference organisers, still on the pitch deck. Divide the cost by the years and the comparison stops being close.
I have made portraits that entered the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Collection. That is not a reason to charge more for a LinkedIn photograph. It is a reason to expect the photograph will still be worth looking at when the person in it has moved on.
How to brief a quote properly
Send: number of people, seniority mix, city, preferred dates, on-site or studio, and what the images are for. That is enough for a real number. A quote given without those five things is a guess, and it will change.
Corporate and executive commissions in Los Angeles, New York and London are quoted individually. Email RL@rorylewis.studio.
