How much does a photographer usually cost per hour?

The honest answer is that most of us don't really price by the hour, even though it can be handy to think of it that way when you're budgeting. What you're paying for is the full job: the hours on the day, plus the editing afterwards, the gear, the backups, the planning calls and the experience of knowing when the good moments are about to happen. When you do break it down to a rough hourly figure, somewhere around $300 to $400 an hour is a fair ballpark in Queensland, but a half day or full day package almost always works out better value than buying hours one at a time.

Extending is usually very doable. Most photographers, us included, offer an hourly add-on rate so you can tack on an extra hour or two, and the best time to lock that in is when you book, because day-of overtime is harder to guarantee if we have another commitment that evening. My real tip though: before you pay for extra hours, look at your run sheet first. A lot of couples think they need a longer booking when actually they just need their timeline tightened up, or coverage shifted later so we catch the dancefloor rather than the early speeches. Birtinya and the wider Sunshine Coast give you beautiful late afternoon light, so sometimes a small start-time change does more than an extra hour of cost.

One thing worth asking whoever you book: who actually edits your photos. We're Brisbane and Sandstone Point based, we shoot all over South East Queensland including up your way, and everything we capture is edited in-house by us, never outsourced offshore. That matters because your gallery comes back looking like the day you remember, not run through someone else's template. Happy to chat through coverage and timing whenever you're ready, and best of luck with the planning.