Tech Talk: Pay rates for unit stills photography work

The most common questions I seem to get from aspiring unit photographers lately relate to how much we should get paid or how much they should charge for their work.  So I’ve gathered together some thoughts on the topic that may be of use to other photographers attempting to determining what rate to charge (or accept) for services to a production.  The thoughts outlined below are specific to drama and factual work work.

NOTE I don’t feel I can tell anyone how they should charge but I can give an indication of the relevant considerations determining your own rate. Please do not take this article as legally enforceable. You should seek your own independent advice if you are unsure of what rates to charge for your work.

National Minimum Wage and Freelancing / Self Employment

The HMRC lists Still Photographers that provide their own equipment as being “accepted as self employed” (see HMRC’s VTAXPER63200). This means that productions can hire you as a self employed freelancer.

If you’re engaged as a self employed (which HMRC allows for) then the UK National Minimum Wage laws don’t apply and you can be hired at whatever rate you negotiate with the producers.

Despite this, I would suggest that accepting a rate that works out to be less than NMW for a 10hr day is a highly unsustainable approach. I would encourage any one who plans on a career in the creative arts think long and hard about whether to agree to rates below this.

Other Rate Regulation

BECTU (Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union) is the union that covers unit still photographers in the United Kingdom. BECTU does publish rate cards for many film and television job roles and you can find them on their website After a long break (2005- October 2017) the rate card now includes rates for unit stills photographers. Here is the link BECTU Camera Department Ratecard October 2017. Personally, I their rate cards are flawed in a few places (particularly at the low budget TV and film end of the spectrum) but are generally good start in determining appropriate rates for your work.

For North American based photographers you can find out more about union rates and conditions from IATSE (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees)

For Australian and New Zealand based photographers you can find out more about union rates and conditions from Alliance (The Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance)

Kit Rental or Box Hire

Stills photographers are generally expected to supply all their own equipment. Many other roles (particularly camera department) ordinarily have equipment hired for their use through the job through rental companies. Where crew provide their own kit for use on the job they get paid an additional rate to cover hire of their kit. This rate reflects the cost of owning, maintaining and upgrading where necessary. These kit hire rates are ordinarily much lower than the cost of renting the same gear through a hire company.

I’m a strong advocate for maintaining this practice for stills photographers. If you were to price up the cameras, lenses, sound blimp/s other kit we use to hire on a daily basis you would easily be over £200/day in London and that wouldn’t even cover insuring that equipment. Your kit hire would vary depending on what equipment you have and how well you can negotiate but £50/day is a minimum rate to consider.

Other considerations:

Single Fee For the shoot

This phenomenon seems to be a new one for me and mostly comes from low budget productions. The producers will ask for me to agree to a single fixed fee for services to the production.

Where this comes up, I simply divide the rate they’re proposing by the number of shoot days to determine my daily rate and use that to determine whether or not the project is financially worthwhile for me.

Where the stills budget is nominated by the producers as being fixed, you can then negotiate fewer days for the same rate in order to get your rate up to an acceptable level.

Post Production

We don’t get a DIT (Digital Imaging Technician) to download and manage our files. This process accounts for at least one hour (often closer to two) per shoot day in my experience.

Some days you might get that work done on set during turnarounds or other down time it is most likely that post work needs to be done outside of shooting hours. In addition, I’ll often spend 1-2 days managing my files after a shoot has finished, outputting files, making final selections and edits for the client not to mention getting the images to the client. Often you can negotiate “wrap days” (as other crew often get) to cover this work time.

Specials / Gallery Shoots

These should be charged at entirely different and usually substantially higher rates to unit still photography.

Consumables

As with Camera Dept and Sound Dept we generate lots of data day to day on film sets. It is my standard practice to include in my invoices an amount to cover the purchase of at least two matching portable USB drives for the production.

Travel Days, Accommodation, Per Diems, and Travel Expenses

These issues are common to all film crew and when negotiating with producers I expect these to be provided in line with industry norms and other crew members engaged on the same production.

Final Thoughts

So, with this post, I haven’t given any definitive answers to the question of how much a unit still photographer should get paid. Hopefully it does give you an idea of the considerations involved in deciding to accept or refuse a job from a remuneration perspective.

Do you think I’ve missed something? If so, drop me an email or comment below!

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  • JohnJune 30, 2015 - 6:29 pm

    I work as a union stills photographer in Canada.

    As of out latest contract- which I think came into effect two years ago- we are paid a set minimum ‘processing fee’ for every day we shoot unit on set.

    You can still negotiate a different rate, and some productions would prefer to pay you the specific hours worked, but in general, I’ve found it works really quite well.

    We get $150/day for processing, paid as a labour cost, to cover the time we spend in Lightroom/whatever processing/exporting/whatever we do to unit shots.

    I like it- and I think it works well for stills guys and for productions: productions know what it’ll cost to shoot unit, and they can budget easily, and stills guys know that they don’t have to fight for the time to do the work in post that they want to do.

  • PSbyAYJuly 2, 2015 - 7:34 pm

    John, Thank so much for your input. It’s great to hear that the post production side of things is being addressed on your side of the pond. How does that align with the role of the photo editor/lab side of the stills business? Does it sit along side or supplant their role?