Atlanta is not a fashion market with film work attached — it is a production market with fashion attached. Film and television spent $2.3 billion in Georgia in fiscal 2025 across 245 productions, and that shapes every board in the city: the strongest agencies here are hybrids that can book you for a Delta commercial, a Home Depot catalog and a day on an episodic series in the same month. The names that matter are Click Models of Atlanta, Factor Women, The Salt Agency, Atlanta Models & Talent (running since 1959), Houghton Talent and Formation, formerly People Store. Below: what each books, the real rates, and how to submit.
Why the film incentive sets your booking calendar
Georgia offers an uncapped 20 percent transferable tax credit with a 10 percent uplift for carrying the state promotional logo, on a minimum spend of $500,000; because the credits transfer, a broker market clears them at roughly 88-90 cents on the dollar. From January 1, 2026, HB 129 adds a postproduction credit — 20 percent on qualified in-state postproduction above $500,000, plus 10 percent if the project also shot in Georgia and 5 percent in rural counties, capped at $10 million over five years.
For a model that means volume and rhythm. The Georgia Film Office counted 245 projects in fiscal 2025: 13 feature films, 42 independent films, 145 television and episodic productions, 40 commercials and nine music videos. Episodic television dominates, and it books faces continuously rather than in fashion-week bursts. FY2023 direct spend was $4.1 billion, so $2.3 billion reflects the post-strike contraction, with trade reports of a rebound through 2026. Add the corporate base — metro Atlanta counts roughly 13 to 17 Fortune 500 headquarters depending how the region is drawn, including Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, UPS and The Home Depot (17th on the list, about $157 billion in revenue) — and you get a second, quieter stream of corporate and e-commerce print.
The fashion and print boards
Click Models of Atlanta
The local office of a network founded in New York in 1980 by Frances Grill, Joey Grill and Allan Mindel — the name an homage to the camera shutter. Click represents over 1,000 models across its offices, with divisions for Women, Men, Plus Size, Runway, Showroom, FIT and Television Commercials. Showroom and FIT boards exist because Atlanta has a wholesale apparel industry, not just an advertising one.
Factor Women
The deepest lineage in the city. According to industry directories, the operation traces to Elite Chicago and Elite Atlanta in the 1980s — the Chicago office credited with signing a teenage Cindy Crawford — before Jane Stewart launched Factor Women as a standalone women's fashion agency in December 2009. It rebranded as Factor|Chosen in 2015 and was acquired by MP Management in January 2018, connecting Atlanta to Milan and Paris. If your target is high fashion, this is the pipeline.
The Salt Agency
Founded by Madeleine Almering, an agent with more than 25 years in the business, Salt built its identity on an explicitly inclusive board — all ethnicities, heights, sizes and genders, plus models with disabilities — across print, runway and commercial work. In a market casting national campaigns for consumer brands, range is a commercial strategy.
The hybrids that book the film money
Atlanta Models & Talent
The city's oldest continuously operating agency, and its history reads like the market's own. Per the agency's history page it began in 1959 as Model's Inc., established by Dot Barber, and was bought by Beverly Needle Copen — for one dollar — who renamed it and, in 1972-73, became the state's first film representative under then-Governor Jimmy Carter. Kathy Hardegree joined as a receptionist in July 1970, bought the agency around 1975 and ran it nearly forty years, taking a SAG agent-of-the-month honour in September 2010 as the only Georgia agent to do so. Sarah Carpenter and Susan Fronsoe purchased it on January 27, 2011; Carpenter became sole owner in 2015; Jason Lockhart and Kelly Nehmen took over in 2026. Its divisions — Commercial/Industrial/Print, Voice-Over, TV & Film, Vertical and Youth — are the shape of an Atlanta career.
Houghton Talent and Formation
Houghton has represented on-camera, commercial, voice-over and print talent for over thirty years; voice-over matters more here than in most markets because corporate work runs year-round. Formation, formerly People Store, is the other legacy house on the film side. A hybrid means one profile serves print bookers and casting directors at once — the trade-off being that you compete with trained actors on camera, so a reel eventually matters as much as your book. To book yourself meanwhile, see our freelance modeling guide.
What Atlanta actually pays
Published Southeast rate guides put commercial print at $400-950 per day and advertising or product print at $500-1,200 and up, with hourly work around $75-150. ZipRecruiter's Atlanta data for commercial models averages $62,744 a year — about $30.17 an hour — with the 25th percentile at $38,000, the 75th at $78,400 and the 90th at $97,608 (July 2026). The spread, not the average, is the real story.
Film pays on a different ladder, and most Georgia background work is non-union: $100-200 for a twelve-hour day standard, $150-300 featured, $250-500 for special skills such as dance or instruments, $350-500 on commercials, with bumps of $50-100 for overnights and $50-150 for hazard conditions, and overtime past twelve hours at time and a half. Union background under SAG-AFTRA sat around $182 a day as of 2024, with pension and health contributions of 21 percent for principals and 20.5 percent for background paid by production on top. Background is not a modeling career, but it is a paid on-set education available almost every week of the year here.
The two weeks that move local casting
Atlanta Apparel at AmericasMart is the wholesale event no other Southeast city has. The August 2026 edition runs August 3-6, with co-located Formal Markets August 3-7, covering apparel, accessories, footwear, bridal, prom, homecoming, children's and social occasion lines. Showrooms hire models to present collections to buyers — steady, repeat-booking work that rewards reliability and standard sample fit, which is why Click keeps dedicated Showroom and FIT boards. Atlanta Fashion Week, set for October 1-4, 2026, is the runway counterpart, with models largely chosen by the participating designers. One caveat: the Bronner Bros. International Beauty Show — the country's largest multicultural beauty gathering at around 22,000 attendees and 300 exhibitors as of 2015, and a reliable source of hair-model work — has been paused by its organisers pending a relaunch.
How to submit
Every agency above takes direct submissions through its site, and Click's Atlanta form is a good template: two images, a very clear headshot and a full-length, no makeup, shot outside in natural light, in a basic solid top and bottom, under 2MB — the discipline covered in our digitals guide. Check your numbers with our height requirements guide; Atlanta's commercial boards are far more forgiving than the runway boards in our New York agency guide, because a Home Depot campaign is cast on believability, not sample size. Apply to four to six agencies in parallel, time it ahead of August market, and answer live briefs on the casting board while you wait, comparing boards in the agency directory. The permanent rule holds: a real agency earns commission on work it books you, and anyone requiring a paid photoshoot as a condition of representation is selling you something.
