Two hours costs $500 and covers most corporate evenings in Brisbane: arrivals and canapes, the formal program, and half an hour of candids once the speeches are done.
Three hours costs $750. The gap between those two numbers is small enough that people stop thinking about it, which is how they end up standing next to a photographer at 8:40 pm asking whether he can stay.
The run-sheet test
This takes about four minutes and it settles the question properly.
- Print the run sheet. Not the invitation: the internal one, with clock times against every item.
- Highlight every line where somebody will later ask whether there is a photo of it. Arrivals, the sponsor wall, the keynote, each award, the group shot, the CEO shaking a hand.
- Write down the clock time of the first highlighted line and the clock time of the last.
- Add thirty minutes before the first, for the empty room, the styling, the signage and the sponsor stands while they still look untouched. Add fifteen after the last.
- Round up to the next half hour.
That figure is your coverage. If it lands at 2.5 hours, book 2.5 hours at $625. Do not book two and hope the program runs early. It will not.
The nine packages
| Coverage | Price | What it comfortably fits |
|---|---|---|
| 1 hour | $350 | One fixed moment and the candids around it. 50+ edited images. |
| 1.5 hours | $450 | Formal program plus group shots. 75+ edited images. |
| 2 hours | $500 | Arrivals, the full program, 30 minutes of candids. 100+ edited images. |
| 2.5 hours | $625 | The above with room for a small portrait session. |
| 3 hours | $750 | Awards, or a program that runs past an hour. |
| 3.5 hours | $875 | Extended coverage with a second group session. |
| 4 hours | $1,000 | Full evening including networking. |
| 4.5 hours | $1,125 | Long-form evenings and multi-part programs. |
| 5 hours | $1,250 | Complete coverage, arrivals to close. |
From 2.5 hours upward, every usable image captured is edited and delivered rather than a set number. Additional hours are $250 on any package. Full detail is on the events page.
Four things that break a two-hour estimate
Award presentations. Each recipient on stage takes thirty to sixty seconds and cannot be rushed, because every one of those photographs belongs to a different person who will want it. Forty awards is forty minutes locked in one position at the front of the room, and everything else in your run sheet has to happen around it. Awards nights start at three hours.
A branded backdrop with a queue. If there is a step-and-repeat and 120 guests, someone is standing at it for the first hour. That is either a dedicated hour or it is the arrivals candids you thought you were getting.
Headshots. The sentence "while you're here, could you grab a few headshots" is a separate booking wearing a disguise. Ten people done properly is forty-five minutes with lighting set up somewhere quiet.
Two rooms at once. Parallel breakout sessions need either two photographers or an honest decision about which room matters. One person cannot cover both, and the schedule will not admit it.
Extending on the night
Any package can be extended at $250 per hour, and it happens regularly. Programs run long, a board member arrives late, or the room turns out better than expected once it fills.
The only thing worth knowing is when to decide. Tell the photographer at the thirty-minute mark, not the five. At thirty minutes out there is still time to reposition for whatever you want added. At five, the extra hour buys you the tail end of an evening rather than the part you wanted.
What comes back
One photographer, high-resolution edited images and an online gallery for viewing and downloading, on every package.
A preview gallery lands the same week, which exists for a specific reason: your marketing team needs something to post while the event is still current, and four weeks later it is history. The full edit follows within four weeks, high resolution, no watermark, yours to print and publish.
Payment is taken in full at booking, to hold the date.
Send the run sheet
The single largest difference between coverage that works and coverage that nearly works is whether the photographer read the schedule before arriving.
Send it through with the shot list that actually matters: the speakers by name, the sponsors who paid for visibility, the handshake somebody is going to ask about on Monday. Then the two hours you booked are two hours of the right photographs instead of two hours of a good guess.
