Frame & Field Studios Business Plan — Service Lines, Clients and Pricing

Corporate portraiture, property, events, brand and motion content — what each line bills, who buys it and how the day rate is set.

Service Lines, Clients and Pricing

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3.1 What the studio sells
3.2 Why these clients buy
3.3 Competition

3.1 What the studio sells

Figure 6. Day rate by service line, coloured by AI exposure.

Figure 7. Service mix by share of shooting days.

Service line	Day rate	Share of days	Typical client
Corporate and executive portraiture	R14 800	26%	Listed companies, professional firms, financial services
Property and architectural	R13 200	22%	Estate agencies, developers, architects, hospitality
Events, conferences and documentary	R19 400	20%	Conference organisers, corporates, associations
Brand, editorial and campaign	R33 500	17%	Agencies, consumer brands, publishers
Motion and video content	R38 500	11%	Corporate communications, agencies, brands
Catalogue and product	R9 600	4%	Existing clients only; not actively sold
Blended day rate	R20 946	100%	Against R16 448 on a conventional mix

The blended day rate of R20 946 is 27 per cent above what a conventional studio mix would produce, precisely because catalogue work — the cheapest day rate in the table — is minimised. Avoiding the commoditised work improves the average as well as reducing the risk, and the two effects compound: the mix that is least exposed to substitution is also the mix that prices highest.

3.2 Why these clients buy

Line	The commercial logic	What follows from it
Corporate portraiture is recurring	Executive teams change, firms rebrand, annual reports are produced every year	A single corporate client typically returns two to four times a year, which is what makes the diary predictable
Property photography is volume with a deadline	A listing without images does not sell, and the agency needs them within days	Price sensitivity is real but so is urgency, and reliability wins the account
Events cannot be rescheduled	A conference happens once	The least price-sensitive line in the book and the least substitutable
Brand and motion work carries the craft premium	Agencies still buy a photographer for a campaign	Increasingly as a creative director working alongside generated assets

3.3 Competition

Competitor	Position	How this studio responds
Generative AI tools	Near-zero marginal cost for decorative imagery	Do not compete; use the tools and sell evidential work
Freelance photographers	Lower overhead, lower day rate, single-person capacity	Compete on capacity, consistency and the ability to take a national brief
Established commercial studios	Reputation, client relationships, portfolio	Compete on service mix and turnaround; many carry heavy catalogue exposure
In-house creative teams	Increasingly common in large corporates	Become the overflow and specialist partner rather than the competitor
Agencies with production arms	Bundled with strategy and media	Supply the agency rather than competing for the client

Figure 8. Porter's Five Forces intensity assessment.

Substitutes score highest at 4.5, which in this industry means generative AI rather than a rival studio. The threat of new entrants is 4.0 because a camera and a website are not a barrier — what is scarce is a booked diary and a client list. Supplier power is the lowest force at 2.5: freelance crew are readily available and costed per shoot day.

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