If you feel like you’re constantly busy but never quite profitable, your pricing model might be working against you. Most newborn and family photographers start their businesses the same way: charge a flat fee, deliver a digital gallery, repeat. It feels simple. It feels fair. And for a little while, it even feels sustainable. But there are other pricing models for family and newborn photographers that may serve you, and your clients, better!
The Problem with Shoot & Burn Pricing
The Shoot & Burn model—sometimes called all-inclusive pricing—is now the most common pricing structure in the photography industry. You charge one upfront fee, clients get all (or a large number of) their digital images, and the transaction is complete.
But before digital photography took hold of the industry, professional photography pricing looked very different. The standard model was a session fee (also called a sitting fee) followed by the customer purchasing the prints and products they wanted.
On the surface, shoot & burn makes sense. Clients know exactly what they’re paying. You know exactly what you’re delivering. Clean and simple.
But here’s what that model quietly costs you:
Your income has a hard ceiling. The only way to earn more is to raise prices or book more sessions. There’s a limit to how many sessions one photographer can physically shoot and edit. You’re trading hours for dollars with no room to scale.
Clients comparison shop on price alone. When everything is included upfront, your $400 session looks a lot like someone else’s $350 session to a client who hasn’t seen either of your work. The value of what you do gets flattened into a number.
You absorb all the risk. You invest your time, creativity, and editing hours before a single dollar of profit is guaranteed beyond that flat fee.
And ironically? Shoot & Burn can actually be a worse experience for clients. Receiving 80+ digital files sounds like a dream…until the decision fatigue sets in. Most clients have no idea what to print, what to frame, or what to do with a massive gallery. Those images often sit in a cloud folder, shared once online, then go unseen and unprinted, which means the memories you worked so hard to capture never actually make it onto their walls.
There’s a Better Way — And Two Better Pricing Models to Prove It
Shoot & Burn isn’t the only option. In fact, it’s not even the best one for most photographers.
Inside The Haven, there’s a dedicated video lesson that walks through all three primary pricing models for newborn and family photographers including the two alternatives to Shoot & Burn that give you more control over your income, a better client experience, and a business that doesn’t run you into the ground.
You’ll learn exactly how each model works, the pros and cons of each, and how to figure out which one is the right fit for where your business is right now.
*Hint: The first year that I switched from shoot & burn to a different pricing model, I was able to make the same income but take on half the number of clients!
The Haven: Behind-the-Scenes Access for Photographers Who Are Ready to Grow
The pricing models lesson is just one piece of what’s waiting for you inside The Haven: a comprehensive online resource built for newborn and family photographers who want to run a beautiful, profitable business.
Inside, you’ll find:
- 📹 Dozens of BTS videos from real client sessions — see exactly how a high-end newborn or family session unfolds from start to finish
- 💰 In-depth pricing model masterclass covering all three strategies in detail
- 📣 Marketing strategies to attract your ideal clients consistently
- 🤝 Client experience lessons so every family feels taken care of from inquiry to delivery
- 💻 Tech and software tutorials (including Aftershoot*, Evoto*, and Tailwind!) to streamline the business side of photography
- 🎨 Editing videos to level up your post-processing workflow
- And so much more
Whether you’re brand new to the industry or you’ve been shooting for years and feel like something just isn’t clicking, The Haven gives you the behind-the-scenes access and business education that most photographers never get.
Join The Haven and watch the full pricing models lesson →
Your work deserves to be priced in a way that actually sustains you. Let’s get you there!
*These are affiliate links.
