Do You Need Photography Business Insurance?

Investigating photography coverage isn't as enjoyable as planning your next wedding session or providing new parents the opportunity to capture their baby's precious first weeks at home professionally. But it is essential when you're a professional photographer.

With all the weddings, newborns, family portraits, and other events that happen daily, your skills as a professional photographer are required. As a photographer or videographer, you are entrusted with capturing images from significant occasions that visually tell stories or document events. A loss of your equipment wouldn't just be costly, it would halt your photography business. And when you don't have sufficient money to replace your loss, you could be out of business for a while.

You might already have basic photography coverage in place or you might be launching a new business. When you're trying to determine exactly what your small business requires and how much it's going to cost—we want to assist you. So what do you need for photography business insurance?

Who Needs Photography Insurance?

Do you operate a photography company? Or are you a freelancer? Either way, you need to safeguard your business with insurance protection. Here are additional examples of professionals who should evaluate photographer coverage:

• Wedding photographers

• Newborn photographers

• Portrait photographers

• Photography studios

• Commercial photography

• Drone photographers

• Real estate photographers

• Videographers

When you shoot a camera professionally in any capacity, consider properly protecting your business and your photography equipment.

Photographer Insurance: Coverage to Consider

What coverage should a photography business evaluate to protect their business? Here's what we suggest:

General Liability Insurance

Sometimes called photographer liability coverage, general liability protection is a policy an insurance carrier provides that shields photographers from claims of third-party bodily injury, property damage, or personal injury: Some policies even include product liability protection.

Bodily Injury: Photographers frequently use expensive lighting and camera equipment, tripods, and other photography gear in their studio space that can create trip hazards. When a client trips and hurts themselves on your equipment, do you have protection? General liability coverage can help pay third-party medical expenses and other related costs.

Property Damage: Anytime you work outside of your studio, you risk damaging property. One misstep and you might accidentally break something valuable. A general liability policy can help pay the cost to repair or replace a costly mistake.

Personal Injury/Libel: When you're shooting at a charity event with multiple celebrities in attendance and accidentally leak information about the event, you could be held responsible. Photographer liability coverage can pay defense expenses or settlements when you're sued for defamation or libel.

You might be able to protect additional insureds on this policy (since most photographers shoot with assistants).

Professional Liability Insurance for Your Photography Business

Professional liability coverage—frequently called Errors and Omissions Insurance (E&O Insurance) is another excellent business insurance for photographers to evaluate. Professional liability coverage can protect you when accused of professional negligence, missed deadlines, and undelivered photography services.

Example #1: You outline the exact shots you'll capture during your client's wedding in your contract. However, on the event day, you miss some of the special moments—which can never be taken again. An errors and omissions insurance policy can't erase the problem, but it can compensate the client when they sue you for undelivered services.

Example #2: While working on editing photos of a client's wedding reception, you discover one of your memory cards has been corrupted, resulting in complete photo loss. While your 2nd shooter obtained some similar shots, there will be missing photos. When your client accuses you of professional negligence, a professional liability policy can help pay costs if sued.

Why Photographers Should Consider a Business Owner's Policy

Some insurance carriers—such as Hiscox—that provide coverage for photographers offer comprehensive business owner's policies (BOP) that include equipment coverage, general liability insurance, business property coverage, and business interruption protection. This policy type is typically only available to small businesses.

Camera Equipment Insurance: This coverage can protect your camera body(s), lenses, tripods, lighting equipment, and more. Protecting the equipment that costs you thousands of dollars should be your priority. When you drop a lens or your camera body is damaged, this protection can help pay repair or replacement expenses.

Business Interruption Insurance: Frequently called business income coverage, A business owners' policy would compensate videographers or photographers for income loss when your photography business must close due to property damage.

Depending on the insurance carrier, some include other business insurance protection in their BOP's. An agent that specializes in the photography industry can help you get protection designed specifically for you.

Other insurance protections to evaluate:

Workers Compensation Insurance: When you hire a second shooter full-time to help your business expand, you'll need workers' compensation in most states.

A Special Event Policy: An event policy can be purchased for a specific event or photo shoot when you don't want to pay for ongoing protection.

Single Shoot Insurance: This is another one-time-only policy that can be purchased through an insurance carrier (like Fullframe Insurance). You'll pay more for a single event policy than you would for ongoing professional photographers' coverage.

Photographer Insurance Cost

The cost of coverage for photographers varies depending on the risks you face in your business operations, including:

Type of photography: Are you simply shooting weddings? Contracting with magazines? Shooting in a studio? Your photographer coverage is based on the photography type you're doing.

Additional services: Do you offer videography? Drone photography? Do you provide lighting? Editing?

Business property: Mobile or Studio? When you have a physical studio, your photography coverage can protect the property.

Insurance company: Costs and coverage limits will vary from one insurance carrier to the next.

Some insurance carriers offer general liability coverage as low as $99 annually for basic and affordable protection. As you add additional protection, it will be an additional cost. The best way to get an accurate quote on the cost is to speak with a knowledgeable agent.

Get a Free Photography Insurance Quote

When you've been in operation for a while, and have a current photography insurance policy, you might want to investigate other options and get several quotes to see if you can economize. It's always good business to ensure you're maximizing your profits, but the best business is ensuring that unplanned events don't derail your dream. When you examine your existing photographer coverage, evaluate the risk types it covers, ask yourself if you need to expand it, rather than try and reduce it.

Photography is rewarding, but you need to protect yourself from risk. Whether it's props and lighting, in a studio or on location, or the possibility of damages while in a client's home due to negligence or simple accidents, you don't want to lose the unique opportunity you have because an unforeseen risk wasn't covered by an available photography insurance policy or add-on. You can protect your business with the right policies with the right insurance carrier.

Our goal at Harper is to help protect photographers like you! Call today to speak with one of our insurance professionals at +1 (470) 410-0093 to see what kind of photography coverage is right for your business. Or, complete the form at the page top to start the process for getting your quick, free, competitive quote.