Product photography is often the first impression a customer has of what you sell, so the cost question is worth taking seriously — and the honest answer is that it depends. What you'll pay comes down mostly to how the work is produced.
Start with the traditional agency model: a photographer or studio booked per shoot, with agency markups layered on top. Rates commonly run anywhere from $500 to $10,000 per shoot, and once you multiply that across a full catalog, the total climbs fast.
A subscription model works differently. With Baker Brothers' Ship & Shoot, brands send their products to the studio in Portland and the team handles creative direction, photography, video, motion, and delivery as one ongoing arrangement. Packages run $10K–$30K per month — The Reel, The Launch, and The Campaign — on a four-month minimum, trading per-shoot unpredictability for a steady, budgetable rate.
What keeps that rate down is that Baker Brothers own their gear and produce from concept to delivery, so there are no rental markups or agency layers to pay for. The same small team covers cinematography, editing, photography, 3D, and motion, which keeps a consistent look across everything, and the two brothers run the work directly.
So the real cost of product photography isn't one number — it's a choice between paying per shoot as you go and paying a predictable monthly rate for a steady stream of it. For a brand shooting occasionally, an à la carte photographer may be all you need. For one that needs consistent content across a whole line, a subscription often costs less than the sum of the shoots it replaces.
