Cait Oppermann is a New York–based photographer and the founder of FLOWERS Full Service, a creative studio/production company, and BaseRate, a pricing toolkit for photographers and producers. Through her own practice and platforms, Cait has become a leading voice for transparency in the creative industry, especially when it comes to rates, licensing, and the true value of artistic labor. In this conversation, she discusses why rate transparency matters, how BaseRate is reshaping the way photographers calculate budgets, and why protecting the value of human creativity has never been more important.

PC: Why is rate transparency SO important?

CO: The industry standard is often multiple times higher than what a lot of artists and creative people might feel comfortable saying their time is worth. If you're a freelancer without a salary, it's hard to guess at rates, especially if you're doing what you love. Doing what you love or are good at doesn't mean you should do it for less. Chances are, the opposite is true.

Brands and corporations are willing to pay a lot of money to get their product in front of their customer base and audience. That makes creative work—good creative work—very valuable. Advertising is an industry where a lot of money is spent so that corporations can turn around and make even more money. That's why creative work is worth a lot.

A lot of creative people don't know what those numbers are. Rate transparency also keeps those rates high by not keeping the information secret. In the age of AI, the difference between advertising that looks like slop versus valuable skills like taste, original thoughts, unique IP, style, and point of view becomes even more important. Robots don't have a point of view. That's what makes human creative work irreplaceable.

PC: Who benefits from understanding how industry standard rates work?

CO: Everyone. Every creative benefits from pricing transparency because otherwise, rates are just going to be as low as creatives' self-esteem when it comes to advocating for themselves. And business and rates have to do with industry standards and nothing to do with one's subjective sense of self-worth…!

PC: Can you describe some of the elements that go into rate calculation?

CO: There are so many factors that it can feel like a mysterious equation at first. That's why I built BaseRate. I honestly wanted it to feel like operating a "mission control" because you have to adjust for multiple variables:

Usage/licensing - where photographers make their real money in the commercial world, not day rates.

How long will the images be used? Where will they appear? Are they asking you to sell the rights so you can no longer claim it as your own? That's a really big ask! Naturally, that costs more.

Career level - this matters. Someone who's been vetted by Fortune 500 brands over and over can charge differently than someone who's new and untested.

Client size and budget - Obviously play a huge role. A small startup has different needs and budgets than a massive fintech corporation. Non-profits require a different approach entirely.

We also built a day rate calculator because many photographers don't know where to start. They don't know if it's $5,000 or $500, which is a problem.

There's so much uncertainty and some of that has been intentionally kept mysterious by people who think there's not enough room for everyone.

But there is room! There are lots of businesses in the world that need good, quality imagery to tell their story. If a company puts your photo on a billboard and gets massive brand attention from your work, they need to pay for what that's worth to them.

PC: What does BaseRate provide users with?

CO: BaseRate is a professional-grade commercial photography pricing toolkit. We're building pricing infrastructure for anyone who works with commercial photography budgets, rates, and licensing.

Three Core Tools (& building!):

Usage & Licensing Calculator - Calculate licensing fees for Out-of-home (OOH) campaigns, owned channels, digital campaigns, and print advertising.

Smart Day Rate Calculator - Project-specific photographer day rates based on experience level, location, and complexity modifiers.

Budget Builder - Complete production budget creation with smart prompts and completeness checks. Professional budgets in 15 minutes instead of 4-hour Excel sessions. We're about to add collaborative features (think Google docs) so that multiple people can view and edit.

The goal with all of these tools is to help industry professionals (photographers, producers, anyone who wants to price out a project) to advocate for themselves, save time, earn more, enjoy life, ha.

I created it for myself first as a sort of mission control for my pricing decisions and wanted to expand to others in the same or similar boat.

PC: Is it sometimes worth it to accept a sub-par rate in the pursuit of greater opportunities?

CO: Absolutely, but you have to think hard about who's asking you to do that. If a major bank wants a massive discount, think very, very carefully! They don’t need a massive discount.

If it's a smaller startup and you want to establish a relationship, or you think it could strengthen your portfolio or validate you to other clients, that makes sense.

There's no right or wrong way to charge for your work, but you should know that advertising budgets are huge because they make companies tons of money. You should have all the information in front of you to make informed decisions.

You should also be able to show clients what industry standard pricing looks like. BaseRate can generate a PDF showing what things actually cost. You can use that as backup to say, "This is the industry standard, but I really want to make this work."

It's important to establish what things cost so that if you give a massive discount, clients know what they're getting. Not to make them feel indebted, but transparency in pricing helps everyone understand when they're getting a good deal.

PC: What other business practices are essential for young creatives just getting started?

CO: Creatives need to feel confident advocating for themselves and negotiating. Negotiating is an important life skill, not just for work and business. It's a crucial interpersonal skill, which I feel becomes more and more important as the world changes.

It's important to advocate for yourself rather than having someone else do it if you can. Understand your worth and have a sense of what your time costs. I learned this in a very personal way since leaving my agent almost two years ago to start my own creative studio and production company.

Also, I'm actually making substantially more money now than I did when I was with my agent, which I think many would be surprised to learn. But it is 100% true and one of the best decisions I've ever made in career and life.

PC: What larger, long-term effects do you foresee with more transparency around industry rates?

CO: I hope transparency around rates will keep creative work valued appropriately, especially as AI becomes more prevalent. The difference between human creativity (taste, original thoughts, unique perspective, and style) and AI-generated content becomes more important to preserve and value correctly.

When everyone knows industry standards, it prevents a race to the bottom. It establishes that creative work has real value and that corporations who benefit from that work should pay appropriately.

I'm also looking at where we can help outside the photo industry because so much feedback is "Can you build this for other fields?" I've always been interested in thinking about creative (human) labor and what it costs in terms of market value. It's a subject many have shied away from (usually at the expense of creatives), so hopefully at the very least we can generate more conversations about money so creatives can use their power a bit more practically.

Learn more about Cait and BaseRate. Don’t forget to follow her and BaseRate on Instagram.

How to Own Your Rate With Photographer & Founder Cait Oppermann