You know those conversations that happen completely by accident and end up being the most valuable 30 minutes of your month?
That’s exactly what happened when Charla ran into Elizabeth Flake of Elizabeth Flake Events and they fell into a completely unplanned, totally honest conversation about pricing.
One text later, Elizabeth agreed to bring it to the podcast. And wow, are we glad she did!
Elizabeth runs a full-service wedding planning team, which means she’s on the receiving end of pricing inquiries all day long. She sees the full picture: what builds trust with planners, what quietly gets you removed from a referral list, and why some photographers are accidentally blocking their own bookings without realizing it.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
- Why photographers who ask “what’s the client’s budget?” before quoting are raising red flags, and what to do instead
- The real reason planners might think you’re out of their price range (even when you’re not)
- How pricing that swings wildly year to year is quietly costing you planner relationships
- What the kickback conversation is actually about, and where Elizabeth stands on it
- Why transparency isn’t just a nice idea; it’s the thing that builds long-term trust across the whole industry
Your price should be something you can confidently explain.
If you can’t quote your rate without first knowing the client’s budget, that’s a signal—to you and to the planner—that you’re not fully anchored in your own value. Elizabeth’s frustration isn’t with photographers who charge a lot. It’s with photographers who can’t just say what they charge.
The move: Lead with your average or typical rate. Then invite the conversation. Something like, “I typically run around $X—happy to talk through what your client needs and see if there’s a fit.”
If your price tripled in a year, be ready to explain why.
Elizabeth makes this point really clearly: pricing going up makes sense. Inflation is real, experience grows, and demand shifts. But doubling or tripling your rate in a single year, without a proportional shift in experience or deliverables, is hard for planners to justify to clients. And if they can’t justify it, they’ll just quietly stop reaching out.
Your perceived price might be higher than your actual price.
Charla shared that Elizabeth had assumed she was “around $50K” and had been hesitant to reach out for years because of it. Meanwhile, Charla absolutely was not $50K (at least not as a starting point). Both of them had been sitting on a potential working relationship that almost never happened because of a perception gap.
The takeaway: If you’re doing work at a certain tier, planners might be pricing you out of conversations you’d actually be perfect for (and affordable for). You don’t have to announce, “I’m cheaper than you think!!” But being accessible, approachable, and clear about your starting rates helps planners actually use you.
Read the room on timing and market.
January is not peak season. A down year is a down year. Some photographers rode the post-COVID booking wave to a new price point, then held that price even as the market cooled, and now they’re scrambling to fill their calendars. Elizabeth’s perspective: Being flexible on timing, or for a first collaboration with a planner you really want to work with, isn’t a weakness. It’s how relationships get started.
On kickbacks: Elizabeth is a hard no, and here’s why.
This part of the conversation is worth a full listen. Elizabeth started hearing from vendors that some planners in certain markets were asking for kickbacks in exchange for referrals. Her take: it’s a liability issue, a trust issue, and ultimately bad for everyone: the vendor partner, the planner, and the client. She’s seen planners at lower price points who are clearly supplementing their fees this way, and she finds it messy at best.
If a planner asks you for a kickback, you’re allowed to hold your ground. And if a planner in your market expects it as standard practice, that’s worth knowing before you agree to work together.
Transparency is the whole game.
Both Charla and Elizabeth came back to this again and again. The confusion clients feel about photography pricing, the Reddit threads, and the distrust, ALL traces back to how opaque the whole system is. Different packages, different deliverables, wildly different rates, all described in ways that make apples-to-apples comparison basically impossible.
You can’t fix the whole industry. But you can be the vendor who’s clear, consistent, and easy to trust. That reputation compounds.
Work on Your Pricing with Confidence
If this episode stirred something up—if you found yourself nodding along and then immediately thinking “but what IS my price supposed to be?!”—that’s exactly what our pricing course is here for.
We built it to help you figure out a number you can actually stand behind, explain it without apologizing, and adjust it strategically as your business changes.
Build a pricing strategy you actually believe in →
Resources Mentioned
If you got something out of this episode, we’d love it if you’d leave a review! It genuinely helps other photographers find the show. And if someone in your world needs to hear this conversation, this is the one to share.
+ view the comments
