Luxurious “flying dress” photo shoots in must-see destinations are fueling a boom for the leisure photography industry—and for local businesses.
(Bloomberg) — For the last few years, Flying Dress Photo’s photographers on the Greek island of Santorini have spent their summers capturing the same image over and over: tourists posing against a backdrop of whitewashed houses and blue domes while donning luxurious satin gowns with ultra-long trains. At an average of eight flying-dress photo shoots a day, each priced upwards of €550 ($605) per hour per person, this one small business—whose entire model is based on delivering a single type of highly Instagrammable vacation photo—can bring in almost a half-million dollars in sales in just four months.
That’s a conservative estimate: Customers tend to pile on additional services, which include transportation to and from the shoot’s location (€90), makeup and hair styling (€300), and a personal assistant to help toss the dress’s train in the air (€50). The one-size-fits-all dresses, at least, are provided to customers—though if you want to use more than one, it’ll cost an additional €120. For a single client that books the full package, the shoot costs €1,500 in all.
From Santorini to Dubai, Aruba, Montego Bay and Cappadocia, photography businesses are spreading to cater to tourists who splurge on lavish vacation photos.
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And it’s not just the flying-dress photo studios that are raking in business since the pandemic. Canada-based photography booking platform Flytographer reported $1 million in monthly sales in May—the first time the company broke seven digits in a single month, compared with $400,000 in sales during the same period in 2019. Flytographer provides access to local photographers in more than 300 cities. Its top-three most-popular destinations for shoots this year include Paris, Maui and Honolulu.
“People took a pause on travel and put a lot of things on hold,” says Nicole Smith, founder and chief executive officer of Flytographer. “This is the year that a lot of people are finally taking that trip, and they want to make sure they capture it.”
Booking a shoot through Flytographer starts at $385 per hour, Smith says, and you get a set number of photos within five days. A similar company out of Indonesia, Sweet Escape, has 8,000 photographers spread across 500 cities, charging anywhere from $130 to $300 for hour-plus shoots. Its founder, David Soong, reports his business is nearly back to pre-pandemic levels, especially now that Asian travelers—his largest demographic—are starting to get back out into the world.
While Flytographer and Sweet Escape peddle images that make great holiday cards and can fill coffee-table books for practical-minded families—Smith says 95% of her clients are moms—companies focusing on flying-dress shoots cater to a more indulgent and higher-end clientele.
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“We’ve had persons who traveled just for their [flying-dress] shoot,” says Chrisan Hunter, a Montego Bay native who founded flying-dress photo service HerDress Jamaica in August 2020. “They come for three days, and then they go home.” That happens often with milestone events, including maternity shoots, she says, and most sessions take place in Jamaica’s major tourist areas such as Montego Bay, Ocho Rios and Negril.
Like Flying Dress Photo, HerDress Jamaica was not able to disclose sales figures. The Greek company has photographers on staff, while Hunter’s operation splits the revenue with the photographer and any additional service providers, all of whom charge for their services at market rates and collect all of their respective fees.
HerDress Jamaica “never handles less than 30 shoots per month,” Hunter adds. “We work every day, year-round, basically.” With prices that range from $350 to $450 per hour per person, that yields monthly sales of at least $10,500 to be split among the service providers. Some months, however, there are upwards of 100 photo shoots, tripling the revenue. In June, for example, 118 female tourists staying at the beachfront Grand Palladium Jamaica Resort & Spa booked a group flying-dress shoot at the suggestion of their travel agent: A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that netted Hunter’s company at least $41,000 in sales.
Most often, Hunter’s clients find her services on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok—or via word of mouth. “We currently don’t do any additional marketing, and we’re booked every single month,” she says. There’s room for competition, too: Activities-booking platform Viator is seeing individual photographers crop up offering similar shoots around the world as the trend grows into a type of bucket-list activity, with one Jamaican wedding photographer charging $499 per hour in Hunter’s backyard.
Even luxury hotels are getting in on the action. Five-star properties in Santorini such as Katikies, Canaves and Andronis all recommend Flying Dress Photo’s services, as do luxury cruise liners like Celebrity Beyond, Celestyal Crystal, Virgin Voyages and Disney Dream. “This year we have a lot of groups,” says Vera Arachelova, booking manager at Flying Dress Photo.
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And despite the heavy price tags, consumers see value in the shoots that transcend the virality of their social media posts.
Sandra Upton, a diversity, equity and inclusion expert and founder of Upton Consulting Group, says her photo, taken in Greece in 2022, was a way to mark a monumental moment. “It was a year to the month that I had made the big decision to relaunch my own consulting firm,” she says.
Leah Frazier, CEO at Dallas-based creative marketing and communications agency Think Three Media, considered the images frivolous at first—but then she took the plunge in Bali. She booked a shoot on a swing facing a stunning jungle backdrop, thinking that she could inspire others to travel the island. “It definitely opened up the conversation,” says Frazier. “There were so many people that said, ‘I’m interested in going to Bali, how did you do it?’”
Both women say they’d sign up again on a future trip: Upton is considering another flying dress shoot in the south of France in late September, and Frazier on a trip to Dubai in October.
HerDress Jamaica’s Hunter says the passion she feels for her work goes beyond her bottom line. “Last month, I had a mom hug me and say, ‘It’s the first time I’ve felt like myself and not a mom in a long time,’” she says. “I just want women to feel like their lives have changed in some way.”
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