 Jared L. Loftus |
Ten dollars a person I am doing senior, engagement, and Christmas pictures for friends. This will be the first time I have done anything like this so I'm looking at it as good practice round. I'm charging them ten dollars a person for a CD of all their pictures. I will be messing with them in photoshop and giving them one in color and one black and white copy of each. They will be doing all the printing and framing, and everything that goes along with that. So I am wondering if ten dollars is WAY to little or if it's okay. Now, granted I will still be charging them ten dollars a person because that is what I have told them, but to learn from my mistakes I wanted to know what a reasonable price for all this would be. Jared
|
|
|
|
||
|
Mark Feldstein |
I'll take a wild guess here and assume that you don't have a genuine handle on how much time is involved handling the administrative work for shoots like this. I'll give you a hint: LOTS !!!! If you value your time at that little, why not just skip the $10 bucks and charge three for the CD, plus maybe a buck for the wrapper. Practice first, get up to speed to handle this type of gig, THEN charge accordingly and it really ain't $10 bucks per person for all their pix. Reason is because chances are when it all finishes up, you'll be making less than minimum wage. You have to ask yourself too, why you're giving away CDs while sending all your print revenue out the window as well. C'mon Jared. Ask yourself how much the wear and tear on your equipment is worth, depreciation, prep time, shoot time, handling images, distributing images to CDs, passing out the CDs, billing, etc., etc., etc. THEN figure out an hourly fee, divide that by a realistic number of people you can do all this for in one hour, and charge THAT going in, now, not later.
|
|
|
|
||
|
Pete H |
jared, Sounds like you might be just getting a start in paid photography. If so; I'd ask them to sign a release so you can use their photos in your portfolio or web site as advertising.
Pete
|
|
|
|
||
|
Christopher A. Walrath |
Mark's right. I was asked this question once. How much do you want to earn do photography as a living. I'll use my former photography business as an example. I came up with $40.00 per hour. Not just for the photography itself (which for a wedding is about five hours on a good day, did seven once). But also for the 'sell' meeting (signing contracts which, by the way, every single one included a model release clause), an on-location engagement shhot, the time for those negative to be dropped off and for those print to be picked up and delivered, the rehearsal, the wedding, the trip to drop off the film, the trip to pick up the prints, the time to assemble the proof album, the time to show them the album, the time to make the print order, the time to pick up the prints, the time to assemble the wedding album, the time to seperate the individual print orders and the time to deliver them and also the time to do the books. I figured this at about 24 hours per wedding. So I incorporated $960.00 in each package for labor ONLY, knocked down a bit when I added gas, batteries, film, other odd and ends and also how much I wanted to earn for the business that could be used for advertising and equipment purchases and maintainance, you name it. So, if you want to make a go of it as a pro, there is a considerable amount to consider in the future. Yeah you got stuck a little on this one. But watch out for yourself in the future and the photography business can be a lucrative venture for those who have the diligence and the foresight to see their efforts through. Good luck to you. Chris
|
|
|
|
||
|
This old forum is now archived. Use improved Forum here
Report this Thread |
||