Introducing travel fees + the hidden costs behind every session

Starting this season, travel appears as its own line on every quote I send. It is not a price increase and it is not a surcharge I invented on a bad day. It is me moving a cost that was always there out from underneath the sticker price and putting it somewhere you can actually see it.

I want to explain the reasoning properly, because “travel fees now apply” on its own sounds like a bill nobody asked for. It reads better when you can see the arithmetic behind it.

What is changing

Anything within 40 kilometres of Halifax stays included, exactly as before. Beyond that, travel is quoted at a flat rate per kilometre for the round trip, and it is always on your quote before you sign anything. If a location is far enough out that I need a room for the night, that is in the quote too.

Nothing gets added after the fact. The number we agree on before you book is the number on your final invoice.

Why not just fold it into the price

That is what I was doing, and it turns out to be quietly unfair. When travel is baked into a single flat rate, everybody pays the average. The couple whose engagement session is fifteen minutes down the road is subsidising the wedding four hours away in Cape Breton. That worked when almost every booking was local. It stopped working the moment it was not.

Averaging travel into one price means the closest clients quietly pay for the furthest ones.

Itemising it means your quote reflects your booking rather than everyone else’s. If you are nearby, you are no longer paying for somebody else’s ferry.

The costs that live behind a session

The other half of this conversation is the part photographers tend not to talk about, which is where the money actually goes. A session is never just the hour you and I spend together. For a typical two hour session, here is the real shape of it.

• Editing time. Culling and editing a two hour session runs six to ten hours. A wedding is closer to forty. This is the single largest cost in the whole operation, and it is invisible to you by design, because the point is that you receive a finished gallery and never think about it.
• Camera bodies and lenses. Working gear wears out. Shutters have a rated life, lenses take knocks in fields and on shorelines, and I carry a second body to every wedding because cameras occasionally fail at the worst possible moment. That backup exists purely so your day is never at the mercy of one piece of hardware.
• Insurance. Liability coverage, which most venues now require in writing, plus equipment coverage. It is the least interesting line item and the one I would least like to do without.
• Software and storage. Editing software, gallery hosting, and backups. Your photographs live in three places for at least a year, including one copy that is nowhere near my house. Redundancy is not optional when the files are irreplaceable.
• Travel. Fuel, yes, but also vehicle wear, and the unbilled hours of driving. A session two hours away is a seven hour working day before a single photo is edited.
• Taxes and the rest. Income tax, business registration, accounting, and the ongoing education that keeps the work improving rather than merely repeating.

None of that is a complaint. It is the cost of running something properly, and I would rather you know what you are buying than assume the price is arbitrary.

What this means for you

For most people, nothing changes at all. Local sessions cost what they cost. If your location is further out, you will see exactly what the travel adds and you can decide whether to keep the location or pick something closer. Some couples move their session. Plenty do not, because the spot mattered to them. Both answers are completely fine.

What I care about is that you are never surprised. You should be able to read a quote from me and understand every line on it without having to ask.

Current collections and the travel rate are on the investment page. If your location is somewhere unusual and you want a number before you commit to anything, just send me a note and I will work it out for you.