What do you charge?

R13...

R13...

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Let's just say I may have to do a photo shoot. Family photo shoot and have no idea how to price it. Because I will use third party printers for canvass prints and enlarged framed prints I know the costs of those at least, but have no idea how to price my time.

I would like to get some ideas on what to charge for my time at the shoot and all the post processing time. What's a fair mark-up on printing?
 
one thing i have learnt is dont charge a low amount thinking you will make the customer happy. Rather charge a high price. If you charge a low price and later on (on some other photo shoot) you decide to push up the price it can be a bit more difficult.

think to yourself what your time is worth and charge accordingly.

most people charge per hour and per print. If you do the same then i would advise making this clear to the family.

i use to charge R100 once off (did a few favors for people) but im now charging R250 per hour and I only do digital.

You could also charge per hour shooting and then charge a separate flat rate for post.

I am by no means a pro and you should also look around to see what other people charge (online) and what the rest of the guys say


something to look over : http://www.sundownerstudio.com/professional_photography_rates.htm
 
You have two approaches: You work out a complete package in advance, a single figure that includes the shoot (X hours, X locations, make-up services etc), post-processing (X number of photos) and the printing (X prints of X sizes, X photos on a CD).

Or, you work out a base figure for just the shoot & processing & print effort flat fee(X hours, X photos) and then provide them with a straight up price list for the prints and let them choose exactly how many of what they want to get printed.

I think most people prefer this method because then they feel like they have choice and control over the prints, and can control their expenses better. In the meantime, you also know exactly how much you are getting to cover your time, equipment, expertise and effort.

Your time is a hard thing to calculate, and I think it needs to come down to how professional you are. If you're doing this because it's fun, charge less. If you're a novice, charge less. If you're going to spend an hour editing a single photo.. charge less. If this is a full-time job or a serious source of income for you, you'll charge what you need to make your salary.

A good place to start is with how much others charge for this kind of thing.
I have seen 1hr single-location single-outfit shoots go for anywhere between R200 and R800.
If you have to do it indoors with a bunch of expensive equipment and backdrops, in a studio space, you'll need to charge more.
If you're providing make-up services then you'll charge more, or charge for that separately.
A 1hr location shoot where they do their own make-up can go for anywhere between R250 and R500.
These figures include the post-processing on a certain number of images.

I'm sure that if you take a look at how long the shoot will be, where it will be held, how many photos you need to deliver and what sort of equipment you'll need to use/expenses you will incur you'll be able to work out a decent figure. Also if a shoot is just 1 hour, you'd probably charge more per hour than you would if the shoot was several hours long.

Start with the prices you see advertised on other websites.
 
Thanks guys.

Must say I didn't expect a job like this. I like something like a wedding where I know I can say, I will give you a DVD slideshow, coffee table book, one enlargement, etc for such a flat fee. I assume family shoots are for people who want to hang them in the corridor or mantel piece, etc
 
R13... said:
Let's just say I may have to do a photo shoot. Family photo shoot and have no idea how to price it. Because I will use third party printers for canvass prints and enlarged framed prints I know the costs of those at least, but have no idea how to price my time.

I would like to get some ideas on what to charge for my time at the shoot and all the post processing time. What's a fair mark-up on printing?
Click to expand...
How long is the shoot?
Is it at their home, your studio, or somewhere else?
Do you have/need lights?
How many photos are you providing? Will they just be prints or digital media as well?

Post processing time? If you spend more than 5 minutes per image you're supplying you should have taken a better picture. :)
 
At their home with some lights and screens.

Yes you're right - there shall be minimal post processing maybe just colour splashing, some B&W and standard filters.
 
bwana said:
Post processing time? If you spend more than 5 minutes per image you're supplying you should have taken a better picture. :) *
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*assuming what you're working on is something that would have been within your ability to control and would have involved less time and effort to 'fix' in the real world before taking the photo.

I hate the 'get it right in camera' argument. Some people have temporary scarring that you can either mask out in a real darkroom, edit out in a digital photo or get a make-up artist to cover up. Sometimes it's scarring that could occur during shooting from an accident - do you waste time getting a makeup artist to fix it, costing the entire shoot time and you more money out of the pocket to pay the make-up artist, or is it something you can simply deal with using the patch and clone stamp tools?

Is there a background element such as a light stand that you cannot feasibly deal with because to do so would involve having a far more bulky, bigger boom-based system or an armature to put the pole on? Does the pole need to go, or else it ruins the photo? Edit it out. You can do that, so why go through the expense of getting unnecessary equipment that may not be practical to tote around and have to waste time using?

I could go on with examples, but fact of the matter remains that there are countless things that simply do not make sense to 'bother with' in the real world these days simply because you *can* fix them with some light editing later.
 
nanonyous said:
I hate the 'get it right in camera' argument. Some people have temporary scarring that you can either mask out in a real darkroom, edit out in a digital photo or get a make-up artist to cover up. Sometimes it's scarring that could occur during shooting from an accident - do you waste time getting a makeup artist to fix it, costing the entire shoot time and you more money out of the pocket to pay the make-up artist, or is it something you can simply deal with using the patch and clone stamp tools?
Click to expand...

Bwana is right. The 'get it right in camera' is the right way to go. What you're describing is a situation out of the norm.

nanonyous said:
Is there a background element such as a light stand that you cannot feasibly deal with because to do so would involve having a far more bulky, bigger boom-based system or an armature to put the pole on? Does the pole need to go, or else it ruins the photo? Edit it out. You can do that, so why go through the expense of getting unnecessary equipment that may not be practical to tote around and have to waste time using?
Click to expand...

And that would take you more than 5 mins?
 
You moved the light stand - now your lighting has changed.

And it's not situations out of the norm... Or are you going to go out of your way to rearrange every little item on a table a bride and groom are sitting at, or ask them if they could just hide their cellphone somewhere quickly, or go move the stand a speaker is on, or ask someone to go change their jacket to get rid of the stain they got on it, or do a variety of other things not unlike this at a wedding?

How about telling that kid that suddenly popped into the second photo of a burst of shots of someone playing a volleyball match on a beach, or a photo you were taking of a surfer, to move? Think you're going to get your better photo by default just because he's no longer in the picture? Are you going to completely discard the second out of three photos because the kid got in the way, or edit it?

Taking photos of a family in a park - some small dog suddenly runs through the frame, but the photo was otherwise exactly what you were looking for. The dog's presence doesn't lend anything to the photo at all, it's purely distracting - the family didn't acknowledge its presence in the photo in a way that mattered.


There are MANY situations that wouldn't be 'out of the norm' where you simply cannot feasibly go about 'taking a better picture', because the moment has already passed or to try and fix things would waste time or cause you to completely miss a moment.
 
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R13 let us know if a random kid pops into the picture at the client's house.

nanonyous said:
You moved the light stand - now your lighting has changed.

And it's not situations out of the norm... Or are you going to go out of your way to rearrange every little item on a table a bridge and groom are sitting at, or ask them if they could just hide their cellphone somewhere quickly, or go move the stand a speaker is on, or ask someone to go change their jacket to get rid of the stain they got on it, or do a variety of other things not unlike this at a wedding?

How about telling that kid that suddenly popped into the second photo of a burst of shots of someone playing a volleyball match on a beach, or a photo you were taking of a surfer? Are you going to completely discard the second out of three photos because the kid got in the way, or edit it?

Taking photos of a family in a park - some small dog suddenly runs through the frame, but the photo was otherwise exactly what you were looking for. The dog's presence doesn't lend anything to the photo at all, it's purely distracting - the family didn't acknowledge its presence in the photo that mattered.


There are MANY situations that wouldn't be 'out of the norm' where you simply cannot feasibly go about 'taking a better picture', because the moment has already passed or to try and fix things would waste time or cause you to completely miss a moment.
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1. I'm asking you if removing/cloning out a light stand will take you more than 5 minutes.

2. The concept of getting it right in camera is going completely over your head. Obviously things happen in live shoots that are beyond our control. We aren't talking about that. The point of getting it right in camera is to make your job easier in post. Meaning get your exposure, settings and composition as accurate to your vision as possible in camera. This is a completely controlled setting.
 
Is it at their home, your studio, or somewhere else?
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You can't control everything about the room in which or the portion of the garden in which you wish to take your photos, and 'somewhere else' could be a location with many uncontrollable variables.

Removing the light-stand by way of editing is likely to take far less than 5 minutes if you know that you intend to do it afterward and have experience with doing so already - at the very least, it may prove more practical than trying to find a different way to get your light into that position, such as having to hire an assistant to hold the light on a boom there or using a far more complicated boom+stand system, which mightn't even be usable in the position required.


This isn't 'going over my head', I'm arguing that the 'get it right in camera' concept in general, as a catch-all, is idiotic. If anything, 'get it right in camera' is far more circumstantial than needing to deal with oddities in 'live' shooting by way of post-processing. You either took a good photo or you didn't - whether you end up performing editing on that photo or not comes down purely to whether or not those are elements of the final product you are controlling or not - the conscious choice was made before or after taking the photo, the method of execution merely differs.
 
bwana said:
Is it at their home, your studio, or somewhere else?
Click to expand...

R13... said:
At their home with some lights and screens.
Click to expand...

nanonyous said:
You can't control everything about the room in which or the portion of the garden in which you wish to take your photos, and 'somewhere else' could be a location with many uncontrollable variables.

Removing the light-stand by way of editing is likely to take far less than 5 minutes if you know that you intend to do it afterward and have experience with doing so already - at the very least, it may prove more practical than trying to find a different way to get your light into that position, such as having to hire an assistant to hold the light on a boom there or using a far more complicated boom+stand system, which mightn't even be usable in the position required.


This isn't 'going over my head', I'm arguing that the 'get it right in camera' concept in general, as a catch-all, is idiotic. If anything, 'get it right in camera' is far more circumstantial than needing to deal with oddities in 'live' shooting by way of post-processing. You either took a good photo or you didn't - whether you end up performing editing on that photo or not comes down purely to whether or not those are elements of the final product you are controlling or not - the conscious choice was made before or after taking the photo, the method of execution merely differs.
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Except no one argued it was a catch all, did they? Just like no one argued that you could control everything on a shoot.
 
Do you understand why I'm quoting that bit of bwana's post? Do you realise that he made the 'get it right in camera' remark before knowing where or under what circumstances the shoot would be done?
 
nanonyous said:
Do you understand why I'm quoting that bit of bwana's post? Do you realise that he made the 'get it right in camera' remark before knowing where or under what circumstances the shoot would be done?
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Yes, and you commented after R13 had replied it would be at the client's house.
 
I would hold the light for free for u guys, I need the experience. Maybe bwana will give me his 1D for that:D
 
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