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How much would you pay a photographer?

How much would you pay a children's photographer for an on location shoot?

  • I've been portfolio building for a year and will be ready to start charging "for real" prices in another 6 months or so. When I do a shoot, it is on location and I spend 1-3 hrs with the family/child and do journalistic photography which captures the personalities of my subjects. I am charging $50 for the session and then either ala' carte for print orders or $225 for the CD of the whole shoot (usually more than 100 shots). A typical shoot will take me an average of 2 hrs shooting and 8-10 hrs editing and preparing the photos for gallery viewing. So for 10-12 hrs of work, I'm only making about $25 an hr if the client orders the photo CD. I hope to at least double that, but not overprice my market. We are in Rhode Island, but will be moving to Everett, Washington in the 08. It is there that I will officially launch my photography business. What is a fair sitting fee for time and talent of the photographer? www.brenandcompany.smugmug.com

  • Answer:

    Do children get a discount? The charge should reflect your time, overhead and additional costs of providing the proper "location" equipment (portable background stands, portable lighting, etc) and the cost of getting to the location. The subject is really not the issue when figuring our your fair price for your work. Your work-flow seems to be a little intense. I use an editing program (photo mechanic) to sort through the images and pick out the really outstanding, marketable images. Then I go to Bridge and append all the copyright, client and my own business information using my premade XMP file. I can do a couple of hundred images in a few minutes. The I make a CD with an attached Word file that explains exactly what rights they have to the images. If they are only using the images for reference to later purchase images from me, I only send them 600x400, 72 ppi images. Those I again batch process using Bridge I hope this is of some help. Be sure to print your copyright notice on the front of the CD, including the phrase, "All rights reserved"

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You need to change your workflow! Spending 8-10 hours on editing your photos just to have them ready to view online is way too much time! For example I shot a quickie wedding this Saturday - 2 hours, and I give the client 85 photos on a CD. I shot about 400 photos in those 2 hours (I also upsell and get them to buy more afterwards). Once home I downloaded all the photos, then: Edit in using Bridge (star the photos to keep and ignore the rest) Sort by stars Edit only those photos (173 photos total) from RAW to jpegs Upload Jpegs to Exposure manager (like SmugMug) Choose which 80 to give to client Burn a cd Total time it took me for this was 2.5 hours (inluding downloading). When I do portraits I charge $150 for the session, and then ala carte also. But even if I only make $150 (and take 200 photos edited down to 100, shot in one hour), I'm making $50 an hour minimum. Most of the time it's more due to the CD or prints. I'd defintely look at your workflow and research editing in.

kate_az3

If you are moving to a complete different area, you'll need to adjust your prices to meet the market you are going into. I would get some price quotes or check websites for prices of photographers in that area, then charge accordingly. It's the only way to do it and know a proper price. Also, like a previous poster stated. If it's taking you a full working day to do post on just a CD, then you need to streamline your workflow. If you are doing a lot of post processing for exposure and WB, then you might want to start looking at your settings and get the shots as close to spot on as possible. If you are doing other post work(special effects, selective color, blemish correction) then that should be an additional charge as well.

gryphon1911

I am a child photographer and my session fee for onlocation is $150, that includes any retouching i have to do. I take about 60-100 images and proof 30-40. I dont give the client a cd at a cheap price, if a client wants to buy the cd i charge $1200 for it because once they buy the CD im not getting anymore profit from that person so I have to make my profit from the sell of the CD. Im actually about to stop selling the CD b/c almost everyone is doing that, money making comes from the sell of PRINTS if your prices are structure right. Set your rates at what you think they need to be, dont take prices from other ppl sites, another reason i dont list my prices on my site.

photographer_chic

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