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Permalink Reply by Francois Cleroux on April 13, 2008 at 6:07am

Are you providing the frames and such or just the photos? How big??

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Permalink Reply by Judy Woodall on April 13, 2008 at 7:33am

I am providing the photos on disk only. 56 photos, which I did edit.

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Permalink Reply by Judy Woodall on April 16, 2008 at 2:20am

Do you need any more information? Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Francois Cleroux on April 16, 2008 at 9:01am

This new digital age has changed everything. Usually, clients paid for the shoot and received a copy of the printed negatives (contact sheet) and then would pay for a large good quality print or Prints.

The shoot would be based on a per hour fee. So now what do you want to charge as a minimum for your time?? Say $40.00 an hour (You may want a two hour minimum fee). I would tack on an extra $10.00 an hour for equipment wear and tear and so on. So let's say $50.00 per hour. The shoot took 1.5 hours. How long did the editing take? How long to copy the files to CD and the cost of the CD? How long for the drive? Let’s say a total of three hours?

OK, that brings us to $150.00 just for your time and equipment. When people used to pay for prints, they were paying for your artistic abilities, your art as it were. So a great quality 16 x 20 inch print done in a lab with some special editing may of cost me $120.00 to $150.00 to get proofed and professionally printed. I would then sell hat print (un-framed) for around $400.00. That’s where I made my money. Not my hourly rate. Later if the wanted another print, or a smaller one for an Ad, they would get billed again and I would make more money.

This new Digital age has screwed things up? Why would you give your "Negatives" away?? Why would you give them the edited images?? Perhaps give them very small or watermarked ones so they can look at it to decide what they want to have printed (by you).

You need control to make sure that what gets printer reflects the quality of your work. If they take a small JPG and try to have it printed at a local lab, they will not print it if there is a water mark. Also, if it is small and they enlarge it, the quality will be poor. Someone may ask them who took the photo. And then you will look bad because of some crappy print job.

The other problem with giving them the "Negs" is that they can keep using your work for ever. Usually a print is a one time fee for one ad. If they want to use it again for something else they should pay you again. It should be outlined in the contract. You can also do a unlimited use time fee so they can use it as much as they want, but then they should pay more for that.

If you have done the work under the assumption they will get the full size digital files, you may just want to use this as a learning experience.

Decide what your time would be worth when you are a full pro. Make it about a third of that for now. As you start getting more work move your rates up. Make money on your printing which is under your control. Never give the digital images away for nothing.

If this is your fist job, I would probably charge $250.00 total ($100.00 for the CD). Not to bad for a 1/2 a days work and they get a great deal as they end up with the negs.

Personally I would charge more, but as a "rookie" you need to start somewhere.

Please reply to my statements to see where your at with all this. Are they getting full sized digital images? How much time did you spend editing? What was stated or asked when they hired you??

Something else you can do is, call a pro photographer in your area. Pretend you own a farm and ask how much he would charge to come out and take these pictures for 2 hours. Then ask what it would cost for you to have the FULL SIZE RAW Images on CD so you can make your own large print. Thank him for his time and tell him you may get back to him.

This will give you a good starting pro rate. If you know of a very good pro in your area do this with two or three of them. Their rates will differ.

In the end, all that matters is that as long as you make money, and as long as you are happy with the money you made, then all is OK. Just don't sell yourself short.

Francois

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Permalink Reply by Peter Salas on April 17, 2008 at 4:41am

I thought I'd offer from the perspective of a consumer as well as from an amateur photographer.

I am getting married in the next few months and the time came to search for a photographer who would be in-line with the same creative vision as us (my fiancee and I). This also included the fact that we really didn't want or need any editing work on the photos themselves and only wanted the digital negatives. The reason for this was because we had already taken studio wedding photos and did not need another photo album and portrait photo; however, we still wanted to capture the still moments of the day. What we ended up doing was trading the time for the photography for a beefed up videography package which the company also provided. The great part is that the photographer and videographer is the same person, so we had a good personal chat about our ideas for the shoot.

The point I'd like to make is that every customer will have different requirements. You may or may not want to cover all scenarios, but having a baseline package I think is important. In the digital age, memory and CD's are cheap and yes I am paying for the creative work of the photographer. However, at the end of the day, I would at least like the negatives of the photos that were taken so that when it comes to 25/50/200 years down the line, I can still print out my memories. The bottom-line is that it is the creative work of the photographer, but it is the customer's memory that you are taking.

This is of course my 2-cents from my past experience with different photographers and studios both in and out of the United States.

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Permalink Reply by Chuck on April 25, 2008 at 4:31am

Francois makes a lot of very good points!
And there are so many variations of what can be sold and how the photography is used.
Generally speaking, if your selling the original digital files at full size - that should have a pretty hefty price. While your not selling them exclusive rights to the photo you ARE selling rights in perpetuity - they can keep using it for whatever they want, forever, essentially.
You can try to sell them the original file and get it in writing that they will only print or use that image for a specific,one-time, purpose and not keep using it down the road (good luck w/ that one).
Weddings are bit of a different story. You should develop a pricing schedule with lots of variations for people to choose from but if they want all the original photo files - it still shouldn't be cheap IMO.

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Permalink Reply by Judy Woodall on April 25, 2008 at 6:06am

Thanks so much. I ended up getting $200 for the job and was happy. Your input was just what I needed.

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Permalink Reply by Ken Lopez on April 25, 2008 at 3:07pm

This is a very complicated question, especially when you're first starting out. I have found a basic solution for a BASE price to help you get start; it's a cost of doing business analysis that I found on the National Press Photographers Association website (NPPA). You can read about it here in my blog. The WORST thing you could do at this stage in your career is sell yourself short. It becomes a hole that may take years to crawl out of...I hope this helps,

sincerely
-Ken

Ken Lopez Photo | The Orlando Photographer

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Permalink Reply by Ken Lopez on April 25, 2008 at 3:10pm

One last thing I forgot to mention... KEEP your copyrights! Even if you don't understand why, do your best to stay out of a written contract that says "work for hire" or "buyout of all images". You could end up being sued for displaying your OWN images in your portfolio.

-Ken

Ken Lopez Photo | The Orlando Photographer

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