This really isn't up my alley, but by any first world standard, $30/pic is hardly "an exceptionally high rate." How long does it take you to set up and render an image? If it takes more than 15–20 minutes, I'd say that's dirt cheap, assuming that the image is going to be used exclusively by your customer.

I know there's no way I could provide a decent image in less than a couple hours. But of course it depends on what type of renders are required. Non-realistic shots can render considerably faster (depending).

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3