My camera cost nowhere near $5000, and I'd gladly take $100-300 per shoot with it. Hell, I'll even develop the film for you since it ain't a digital camera.

Not every gig is gonna earn you the cost of that camera. And it doesn't need to.

the camera doesnt matter. are your skills any good?

If my photographer can get me the picture I need with the $300 camera, I’m hiring them first. Not everyone needs their pictures on a billboard or TV ad.

Twelve bucks? That's ... Probably not a livable wage with cost of operating a vehicle. Let's assume you do four of those in an hour for 8 hours, that's 32 jobs a day, grossing 8 hours a day for $384/day and just under 100k/y... But you have overhead. You have to pay for the vehicle and it's operating and insurance costs, and your own operating costs and insurance. If you live in any sort of American wider metro, 100k alone isn't cutting it.

So let's say you drive 6 miles per $12 on average. Operating a new car for a business is about $0.76/mile, so you subtract $4.56 of your $12 right off the bat, leaving you with $7.44/job.

That doesn't include accidents or your tax, either. Let's assume you get in one medium accident a year and you have minimal insurance. You pay out of pocket for your own repairs glhf.

Now you also pay 15.3% tax on your earnings because you aren't an employee and Uber says to go fuck yourself. So on your 100k a year, you pay another $15,275 in tax.

That leaves you $46,625/year, driving full time.

If you bought the car on a loan, you make negative money.

If you get in an accident, you make negative money.

For full time.

Enjoy.

Good luck eating or paying 36k a year for an apartment.

Photography is harder than most people think. You need to get to the places where you are doing your job, there is tons of communication involved, then there is editing and proper archival stuff you need to do, accounting is also completely different from that of an uber driver's, and it's not just the camera that costs more than 5K (looking at you BRIESE and any basic lens set – telephoto, normal, wide angle, zoom, low light will quickly exceed the 15K mark if you care about professional standards). It's really a whole thing.

A 10 min ride home is not the same as a 3 hour wedding and 12 hours processing images and video.

skill isnt bought

Really depends though.

I do photography/videography as a salaried employee with my personal $5k camera and singular 50mm lens, so my paycheck is technically what I'm paid.

I made my work buy 4 other specialty lenses and continuously growing inventory of accessories. So probably push that number up around $10k+. My services at my job equals like $50ish an hour. With my $10k+ worth of equipment. But I get health benefits... yay...

When I do side jobs, I don't charge much. Corporate headshots for example are about $100 per person or $300 for a certain amount of time for everyone on the same day. So depends how much of a pain in the ass they'll be.

I also have worked with scheduling external photographers by the hour, photo journalists, not your wedding/graduation people which she looks like based on her images style. Costs are regional and based on demand/completion in that area. So someone can cost $1,000 for 2-hours on-site in Boston and someone can cost $400 for 2-hours in middle nowhere Kansas.

So what I'm saying is equipment costs a lot obviously. Yes it's fair to charge more than $300 a session, but you better be damn good to ask $1,000 for 2-hours of your time.

My house cost 300 grand and you want me to look after your kids for 60 quid a day?

You may have bought an expensive camera, and spent a good amount of time honing your skills, that doesn't mean I'm paying you $6000 for 3 days of work.