Does he make up content to react to? Is that his thing?

There are loads of us ! At least two.

Bro... Shooting your friends and family is messed up.... Whether someone pays you to or not...

Post a photo so we know you're legit

Exactly.

There is real skill involved in photography, and it takes real time even after being skilled. A 1-hour shoot in a new location still requires probably an hour of planning, maybe an hour or two of logistics, and maybe 2-3 hours of work after the fact to get the photos processed and distributed. And it's basically the opportunity cost that will eat up the entire day, because you can't double book the same sunset or other lighting conditions or whatever. There's seasonality, too, if you want specific seasonal conditions in the shot, if you want to book the Saturday that other clients want, etc.

That's before expenses like insurance, the amortized cost of the software and hardware (including the cameras and lenses and computer), web services for distribution of the files, etc.

It's fair to charge a full day's fair pay for a job like that, and that might mean wanting to charge something like $1000 for an experienced photographer, maybe $500 of which actually represents "profit" for the sole proprietor. But that only happens at that price if there are clients willing to pay that price.

For bigger jobs like parties or weddings, it gets a bit more involved, which is why a 2- or 3-shooter wedding job can cost several thousand, or even above $10k.

But for easy jobs like anything in a high volume studio where the lighting is already known, and there aren't any logistics involved, it should be much cheaper. It just all depends.

I've met too many people who think the number they associate to a thing somehow makes them a better user of it.

Tons of people take amazing photos with tons of thought and skill involved in composition and everything, with a phone camera or shitty digital from 2010.

People who use the price of the equipment to justify expense instead of the quality of their work are usually bad at whatever it is they're charging for.

Our wedding photographer gave us both RAWs and processed JPEGs

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ohhhh this pisses me off soooooo much. I decided to do family photos and specifically asked for the raws before I went into the shoot. They still gave me a hard time after the shoot to get the raws. They gave me a stripped down .dng without any camera settings. Ohhhh that pisses me off so much.

For the price of one shoot, you can buy someone's lightly used $5,000 kit on ebay. I've had a Canon I bought a decade ago that's still works great. Maybe got it for $250 or so IIRC.

… is a bold marketing strategy during an economic depression

Never undersell the possibility that this person is lying.

Or that this is a stock photo and the text is clickbait.

Ehh, They're more expensive, but most of them come with IS.

I'd still rather shoot Nikon.