Last Updated on 07/07/2026 by Armands Sprogis
How to Price Your Newborn Photography Packages
If you’re wondering how to price your newborn photography packages, you’re certainly not alone. It’s one of the biggest challenges every new photographer faces, and even after more than 17 years in business, it’s something I’ve continued to refine and improve.
When I first started my newborn photography business back in 2009, I had no idea what I should charge. Like many photographers, I worried that my prices would either be too high and put people off, or too low and leave me working incredibly hard for very little return.
The truth is, pricing isn’t something you set once and never think about again. As your business grows, your experience increases and your costs change, your pricing should evolve too. Mine certainly has. Over the years I’ve tried several different pricing models, made plenty of mistakes and learned some valuable lessons along the way.
In this guide, I’m going to show you exactly how I approached pricing, the calculations I made, why I changed my pricing several times over the years and, hopefully, help you avoid some of the mistakes I made when I was starting out.
If you’re still in the early stages of building your business, I’d recommend reading my guide on How to Start a Newborn Photography Business first.
🎥 Prefer to Watch Instead?
I’ve also recorded a video covering this topic where I explain my thought process, how my pricing has evolved over the years and the mistakes I’d avoid if I were starting a newborn photography business today
Why Pricing Is One of the Hardest Parts of Running a Photography Business
Pricing is emotional.
It isn’t just about adding up your expenses and deciding how much profit you want to make. You’re putting a value on your time, your creativity and the experience you provide to every client.
One of the biggest mistakes I see new photographers make is looking at a competitor’s website, taking their prices and charging £50 less.
Please don’t do that.
You have absolutely no idea how they’ve worked out their pricing. They might own their studio, while you’re renting one. They might photograph 150 newborns a year, while you’re hoping to photograph 30. They may have another full-time income supporting the business, or they may be the sole earner in their household.
Even worse, they might have priced their own business incorrectly. If you copy their prices, you’re simply copying their mistake.
Your pricing should be based on your business, your costs and your goals—not someone else’s.
That’s exactly what we’re going to work through next.
Know Your Numbers
One of the biggest mistakes new photographers make is choosing a price first and then hoping it will work.
Instead, work backwards.
Before you can decide what to charge, you need to know exactly what it costs to run your business. The more accurate your numbers are, the more confidence you’ll have in your pricing.
Before worrying about pricing, make sure you’ve invested in the right newborn photography equipment and budgeted for future upgrades.
Start by looking at your monthly expenses. Some will already exist, while others you’ll need to budget for as your business grows. Every business is different, so don’t worry if your list looks nothing like someone else’s. The important thing is that you understand where your money is going.
Some of the main expenses you should consider include:
- Studio rent or, if you’re working from home, a proportion of your household costs for the space you use.
- Props, wraps and other posing equipment. I’d recommend setting yourself a monthly budget rather than buying everything at once.
- Camera equipment and lighting. Things break, cameras eventually need replacing and technology moves on, so put money aside each month for future upgrades.
- Website hosting, domain names and maintenance.
- Editing software and subscriptions such as Photoshop, Lightroom and online backups.
- Accounting costs, bookkeeping and any other business expenses.
- Travel costs if you’re photographing clients in their homes.
- Heating, electricity and other utility bills.
- Tax. This is a big one. Personally, I have an automatic transfer set up that moves 15% of every payment into a separate account. I probably don’t always need the full 15%, but I’d much rather have too much saved than not enough when my tax bill arrives.
- Any ongoing finance or monthly payments related to your business.
Once you’ve listed everything, add it together and include a little extra for unexpected costs. I used to add around 10% as a buffer because there are always expenses you haven’t thought about.
I also strongly recommend continuing to build your emergency fund. Business has its ups and downs, and having money set aside will help you sleep much better at night. If possible, keep those savings in a high-interest account so they’re working for you while you don’t need them.
Finally, don’t forget the most important figure of all—your own wage.
This is where many photographers undercharge.
Think carefully about how much you actually want to earn. For some people, photography is a side business that pays for holidays or family treats. For others, it’s their full-time income and needs to support a household.
Whatever your situation, don’t be afraid to pay yourself properly.
You’re no longer just taking photographs. You’re running a business, investing in your education, providing an experience and creating something your clients will value for many years.
Remember to include tax in your calculations too. The amount you pay yourself isn’t the amount you’ll keep.
Working Out Your Minimum Session Price
Now that you’ve worked out your monthly expenses and decided how much you’d like to earn, it’s time to turn those figures into something useful.
The next step is to decide how many sessions you realistically want to photograph each year.
Be realistic here.
Don’t forget to give yourself holidays, allow time for editing, marketing, bookkeeping, training and all the other jobs that come with running a photography business. Very few photographers spend five days a week behind the camera.
Once you’ve worked out roughly how many sessions you can photograph each month, the calculation becomes surprisingly simple.
Expenses + Wage
─────────────── = Minimum Income Per Session
Number of Sessions Per Month
That’s it.
This doesn’t have to be a complicated spreadsheet. The important thing is understanding your numbers so you know the minimum amount each session needs to generate before you even think about profit or upgrades.
Let’s use a very simple example.
Monthly expenses: £1,500
Monthly wage: £3,000
Total required income: £4,500
If you plan to photograph 12 sessions per month, your calculation would look like this:
£4,500 ÷ 12 = £375 per session
That means your pricing needs to generate at least £375 per client before you even begin making additional profit through upgrades or extra sales.
If that number makes you feel slightly uncomfortable……that’s probably a good sign.
The biggest mistake photographers make is comparing their prices to what they personally would pay. Your clients have different priorities, different incomes and different reasons for investing in photography.
Never assume people won’t pay your prices simply because you wouldn’t.
Know Your Ideal Client
For years, I never really understood why every business coach or mentor kept talking about having an “ideal client.” It sounded like another marketing buzzword that didn’t really apply to me.
Looking back, they were absolutely right.
Understanding who you want to work with influences almost every part of your business. It helps you decide how to price your photography, write your website, choose your products and even where you spend your marketing budget.
If you’re trying to attract everyone, you’ll usually end up attracting no one in particular.
Take some time to think about the type of client you’d genuinely love to work with. What stage of life are they in? What do they value? Why are they looking for a newborn photographer? What experience are they hoping to have? The better you understand your ideal client, the easier it becomes to build a business around them.
Personally, I started by writing down my own thoughts, but after being in business for around six years and noticing clear patterns in the families who valued my photography the most, I hired a professional PR and marketing company to help me develop a proper Ideal Client Profile. They took everything I’d learned over those years and turned it into a much more detailed profile that influenced my website copy, marketing and pricing.
To give you an idea of what an Ideal Client Profile can look like, here’s a shortened excerpt from mine. Don’t worry about making yours this detailed when you’re starting out. The important thing is simply to understand who you’re trying to attract.
Example from my ideal client profile.
Michelle is a busy working mum in her late 20s to late 30s, living in or around Edinburgh with her husband and young family. Together, they earn a combined household income of around £80,000 or more, allowing them to invest in experiences and products they truly value. She values quality over the cheapest option and understands that professional photography is an investment rather than an expense. Family is incredibly important to her, and she knows how quickly her children are growing up. She wants natural, timeless photographs that capture this stage of their lives and preserve memories she’ll treasure for years to come.
Before booking, Michelle spends time researching photographers, reading reviews and looking through portfolios until she finds someone whose style, personality and approach she connects with. Price matters, but it isn’t the deciding factor. She’s looking for a photographer she can trust to guide her through the whole experience, make her family feel relaxed and create beautiful photographs and artwork she’s proud to display in her home.
Your ideal client may look completely different to mine, and that’s perfectly okay. The goal isn’t to copy someone else’s client profile—it’s to understand the type of people you want to attract and build your business around them. Once you know who you’re speaking to, everything else becomes much easier, from your pricing and marketing to the products and experience you offer.
Think about the brands you admire. Louis Vuitton isn’t trying to attract every handbag buyer, and Cartier isn’t trying to sell jewellery to everyone. They know exactly who their ideal customer is, and everything they do from their marketing to their pricing is designed with that person in mind. Photography is no different. You don’t have to position yourself as a luxury brand, but you do need to decide who you want your business to attract.
My Pricing Journey
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over the years is that pricing isn’t something you set once and never change. As your photography improves, your confidence grows and your business evolves, your pricing should evolve too. I’ve changed my pricing several times over the last 17 years. Looking back, I can clearly see what worked, what didn’t and why each change happened.
I’m sharing my old pricing menus not because I think you should copy them, but to show you how much my own business has changed over the years.
Hopefully, it’ll also reassure you that it’s perfectly normal for your pricing to evolve as your business grows.
My First Pricing Menu 09-13
This was my first proper pricing menu, and at the time I was really happy with it.
I charged £85 session fee alongside four collection options, giving clients the choice between digital files, printed products or a combination of both.
Looking back, I can see that I’d already started encouraging clients towards my higher value collections. My base package was there to give people a starting point, but in reality, I hoped most families would choose one of the larger collections.
Interestingly, the majority of my clients did exactly that. Around 30% chose my top package, roughly 50% chose the digital collection, while the remaining families selected one of the smaller options.
One thing you’ll probably notice is how close together some of the prices are. That wasn’t an accident. I wanted the larger collections to feel like much better value, making it an easier decision for clients to upgrade.
Looking back now, I can still see why this menu worked so well for me.
What I learned
- Keep pricing simple.
- Guide clients towards the collection you want to sell.
- Small price differences can encourage upgrades.
My 2017 Pricing
By 2017, my pricing had changed quite a bit.
Looking back, I’m honestly not sure why I made some of these decisions. I think business had slowed down slightly, and I was experimenting to see if a different approach would encourage clients to spend more.
If I’m being honest…
…I don’t think this was my best pricing menu.
Looking back now, it feels more complicated than it needed to be.
Clients naturally gravitated towards digital files, and unless they started adding extra images, there wasn’t much incentive to purchase printed products.
Sometimes we overcomplicate things because we think more choice is better.
It usually isn’t.
This menu taught me that lesson.
What I learned
- Too many options create confusion.
- Simpler pricing is easier to explain.
- Digital products naturally become the easiest choice unless physical products offer clear value.
My 2018 Pricing Menu
By 2018, my thinking around pricing had changed completely.
I had been watching a lot of training on CreativeLive and one course in particular by Julia Kelleher really stood out. I loved her simple two-step ordering process, where clients first chose the product they wanted and then selected the digital files they wished to include. It was actually very similar to the way my previous top package worked, but much easier for clients to understand.
This was also around the time I started pricing wall art by the longest edge rather than using fixed sizes. It gave me much more flexibility and made pricing larger pieces far more consistent.
Looking back, I really liked this pricing menu. Instead of pushing everyone towards the same package, clients could build a collection that suited them. If they wanted wall art, they could choose exactly what they wanted and then decide how many digital files to add afterwards.
The biggest downside was explaining it.
During an in-person viewing appointment it worked brilliantly because I could guide families through the options and answer any questions they had. Over the phone, however, it was much more difficult. Most people had never seen this type of pricing before, so it often sounded more complicated than it actually was. I found myself explaining the A La Carte prices first, even though the Build Your Own Collection offered much better value.
Looking back now, I still think it was a really good pricing system, but it taught me another valuable lesson.
The simpler your pricing is to explain, the easier it is for clients to buy.
What I Learned
- Simplicity almost always wins.
- Giving clients flexibility is great, but not if it creates confusion.
- Your pricing should be easy enough to explain confidently in a couple of minutes.
- A pricing menu might make perfect sense to you, but what really matters is whether it makes sense to your clients.
My 2021 Pricing Menu
By 2021, my approach to pricing had matured considerably. During the Covid period, I invested heavily in mentoring, spending several thousand pounds learning from some of the biggest names in the photography industry. Looking back, that investment completely changed the way I thought about pricing.
Together with my mentors, I developed a pricing structure that combined many of the lessons I’d learned over the previous decade. Although I’ve simplified it slightly since then, the core principles remain the same and still influence the way I price my photography today.
I moved back to a package-based system but kept one of my favourite ideas from previous menus—every collection included a physical product. My folio boxes had always been incredibly popular, so they became the foundation of the collections, with clients receiving credit towards additional wall art if they wanted to expand their order.
What I liked about this menu was that it naturally guided clients into two clear paths. Some families simply wanted digital files, while others wanted a complete experience with printed products. Because the price difference between the two was relatively small, many clients saw the value in upgrading to the larger collection. Around 20% would even add wall art on top, increasing the overall sale.
Looking back, I think this pricing menu struck a good balance between simplicity and flexibility. It encouraged clients towards printed products while still giving them the freedom to choose what suited them best.
What I Learned
- Investing in education can completely change the way you think about pricing.
- Physical products still have a place in today’s photography market when they’re presented well.
- Small price differences between collections can naturally encourage upgrades.
- The best pricing doesn’t pressure clients—it simply helps them see the value in choosing more.
My Current Pricing Structure
After years of experimenting with different pricing models, investing in mentoring and learning from both my successes and mistakes, I’ve finally settled on a pricing structure that works for both my clients and my lifestyle.
You’ll probably notice that I’ve gone back to a package-based approach, but with everything much simpler than before. Clients choose one of two collections before their session, and afterwards they have the opportunity to upgrade if they wish. Interestingly, around 86% of my clients choose to upgrade, which tells me the system works well for both sides.
One of the biggest changes I’ve made is asking clients to purchase their chosen package before their session. I really like this approach because clients arrive already invested in the experience. As the saying goes, “Money spent is money forgotten.” Rather than facing one large bill after seeing their images, the investment is split into two stages, making the whole process feel much more relaxed.
Another change has come from my own circumstances. As I now balance photography with a full-time job and family life, I’ve focused on making my business more efficient rather than simply trying to increase turnover. I’ve introduced shorter newborn sessions, simplified my workflow and stopped spending unnecessary hours editing photographs that clients may never choose.
Yes, you read that correctly, I no longer edit every single image.
Instead, I carefully edit the photographs included in the client’s chosen collection, while the remaining images are sold with only basic adjustments. This has dramatically reduced my editing time, allowing me to spend more time with my family while still delivering the quality my clients expect. Surprisingly, clients actually appreciate receiving their photographs much sooner.
Looking back over the last 17 years, I realise that good pricing isn’t just about maximising profit. It’s about building a business that supports the life you want to live. For me, that means creating beautiful photographs, giving my clients a fantastic experience and still having time to enjoy life outside of work.
What I Learned
- Your pricing should evolve as your business evolves.
- Simplicity creates confidence for both you and your clients.
- A more efficient workflow can be just as valuable as increasing your prices.
- Success isn’t just measured by income—it’s also measured by the quality of life your business allows you to have.
Final Thoughts
Pricing is probably one of the hardest parts of starting a newborn photography business, and if there’s one thing I’d like you to take away from this guide, it’s this:
Don’t copy someone else’s prices.
Take the time to understand your own business, work out your numbers, think carefully about the type of clients you want to attract and build a pricing structure that works for both you and your lifestyle.
Will you get it perfect the first time? Probably not.
I certainly didn’t.
Over the last 17 years, my pricing has changed several times as my business, confidence and personal circumstances have evolved. Every change taught me something new, and each version brought me a little closer to the business I wanted to build.
Don’t be afraid to review your pricing regularly. Small changes over time are far better than leaving your prices untouched for years and then making one huge increase that surprises your clients.
Most importantly, have confidence in the value you provide. You’re not simply selling digital files or printed photographs. You’re offering your experience, your creativity and memories that families will treasure for generations.
Take what you’ve learned from this guide, put pen to paper and start building a pricing structure that works for you. It won’t be perfect—and that’s okay. The important thing is to get started, learn from your experience and keep refining it as your business grows.
