School photographer here. (Don’t shoot me? Idgaf about any of it lol)

So I used to do senior portraits maybe seven or eight years ago for a small studio that had this business model.

Basically, the way it worked was parents had a couple of options. Option one was they paid NOTHING (including the sitting fee) and the studio took a photo of the kid for the yearbook. Period. That was the beginning and end of the transaction. They weren’t required to buy anything. They weren’t sold anything. They wouldn’t get the photos. The pic would go to the yearbook and that was it.

Option two was the parents paid a basic $50 sitting fee for us to take their child’s full session of photos in our mobile studio that we brought to the school’s parking lot (it was a giant trailer attached to a truck that was maybe 12-18 feet long?).

So what is a basic sitting fee? Well, in my case, this type of session with a senior involved taking 12-14 poses of them with 3-4 backdrops in all. It typically took 15-20 minutes and we could only schedule three per hour we were there.

The sitting fee (in this case if we were fully booked three $50 payments for $150 total) covered my hourly pay of around $20, the cost to run our trailer (it ran on diesel gas and was pricey), the basic business overhead, the cost to pay our full time studio editors to edit the 12 best photos, the price to physically print the proof photos that were mailed to the student’s house and the cost of postage.

There really wasn’t much profit to be had per kid under this model. The point of the session was to give a basic photography session at a fairly low price (At the time full senior photographers were charging $200 for the session plus charging for prints.) and to hope the kids bought photo packages.

There were also two other price points for sitting fees. $75 got you everything from the first session plus an additional batch of photos in the physical studio we had. $125 or so got you all of that and an outdoor session at a beach or somewhere near your school.

The sitting fee was a separate cost because you were paying for the actual staff of human beings working for you. At no point was any student REQUIRED to pay for this.

It worked and likely still works the way any good or service works. If you want it, you pay for it.

Folks who complain about the costs of these sessions are uneducated at what it costs to run a photography business like this and what a similar session with a professional photographer would cost on its own (I’d personally never take a session like this for less than $300)

As to the folks in here saying “Oh, just take your own photos … I say go for it. Camera phones are fine now and entry level professional cameras aren’t too pricey. Shoot until your heart is content.

Just don’t complain when your kid’s senior photo looks like shit because you don’t know anything about proper lighting or posing. And don’t whine when her friend has a better photo than she does because she was willing to pay for a professional photographer.

People like to trash photographers because they think it’s so easy in 2025 to be one and they’re right. It is easy to grab a camera and call yourself a photographer.

But it is hard fucking work to actually be a GOOD photographer and while you may not care about photo quality, I assure you many people do and the results will be glaring and embarrassingly obvious who skimped out and who didn’t.

And please don’t come at me thinking I’m overvaluing myself. I don’t give a fuck if you hire a photographer or you don’t. I only work with people who appreciate my skill and efforts and I am BEYOND fully booked.

I don’t need, or want your little $135 sitting fee you speak of like it’s a seven figure military contract or the headaches that come with it with dealing with cheapskate clients. 🤣🤣🤣