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How do you go about pricing prints of your photographs/ work?

After the cost of the printing and delivery how do you price your work for sale?
Giorgia Young
Giorgia Young
Videographer & Photographer

Replies4

  • Brian Grant
    Brian Grant
    Creative director
    Hello Giorgia,

    Everything will depend on the audience that you are aiming at and how they perceive your work.

    The value of something is based on what a buyer is willing to pay for it.

    There are number of ways to price something, you can use
    • A similar price to other artists / photographers in your field
    • An hourly based price for time, materials and labour
    • A price that you would use as a price to entice buyers in order to build a long-term buying relationship

    The smartest thing to do is to test your pricing because depending on your style, brand and positioning you may get your success charing a lot more than others or a lot less.

    There is no real way to test until you try it in a real market environment. You should also test, open and limited edition print pricing.

    The most important thing to do is to build your own following and market, so that they care less about the commodity aspect and more about the brand that they are buying into, which would be you.

    A Damien Hirst or Kaws print that sells for thousands can be printed on exactly the same type of paper as a print by an artist for £10 that nobody wants, the difference is all in the branding, the following, the audience and desire for the artwork.

    So I would say test prices and build your own following and brand because they will be the ones that will buy your work at any price that you state.

    I hope that helps and have a great day.
  • Janine Shroff
    Janine Shroff
    Digital Designer
    limited edition prints you price based on how much you'd sell the original work at

    so if the original work was priced at £5000

    then if you price a limited edition print at £100 you should only have an edition of 50.

    Higher the price > lower the amount of editions and vice versa

    This is your base price [it literaly just covers your labour]

    now add the printing, postage any other print associated costs to that limited edition price. That will be what the customer pays

    To price the original work I found the most helpful way was to calculate my hourly rate or my day rate then calculate the cost of labour involved in the work to give me an aprox ballpark I need to aim for


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