p.1 #1 · Furniture Photography..how much to charge?
Hello,
This is my firs time doing photographing furniture and I am not sure what to charge.
The owner of the store needs me to photograph 30 items per month for their website.
Some of them are very big an some are small.
Should I charge per day, per item or for the project?
Some of the Dining Room Sets costs $5000.
For few of the Dining Room Sets I would need to use two large paper backgrounds to be able to photograph it.
p.1 #2 · Furniture Photography..how much to charge?
You've got a head start. You've shot some tests, and you know how many pieces there are to do.
Figure out how long it took to set up your test, discounting all the messing about. Then figure out how many pieces of that size you need to do. That gives you an idea of how many hours to shoot the big stuff. Repeat for the smaller stuff.
That gives you an idea of how many hours/days it will take to shoot the stuff. Add in your estimate for post processing, multiply by your desired hourly rate, and Bob's your uncle.
Then figure out whether you can actually do the work for what the client expects to pay, or begin negotiations toward a price you can both be happy with.
Just as a guess, I would figure 2 hours to setup, shoot, and remove a large setup. So I can do 4 a day, so if it were my shoot, I'd figure the large setups at $250 each, etc.
Shooting the stuff is the easy part. Staging and styling takes time. Every piece must be cleaned immediately before shooting. Don't forget the post processing time to cull, sort, export, print, and burn photos for the client.
p.1 #3 · Furniture Photography..how much to charge?
Thanks for the good information Chas.
It took me around 2 hours to set up the test and and I only took around 15 photos of the first table. This was my first project photographing furniture so I was a bit worry about doing it but it seem that I may be able get some OK images and get some experience.
I talked to the owner and he does not want to pay much fro this projects.
he wants me to photograph and edit 25 items for $300....yeah..$300.
A Dining Room Sets counts as an item.
How much should I charge to photograph the 2 sets above?
How about if I photograph one sofa.
All the items are unique and when they are sold the can not get them anymore.
So it seems that could be taking photographs every month.
p.1 #5 · Furniture Photography..how much to charge?
25 pieces for $300 is $12 per piece. So if it takes an hour to move and set up a piece (i.e., table and chairs or sofa), you get $12 per hour for you and your gear. 25 pieces at an hour a piece is 3 full days.
Way too cheap, unless you are living at home with your parents and have no expenses. And don't ever want to buy more gear.
p.1 #7 · Furniture Photography..how much to charge?
he wants to pay $300 for the job? no problem. He gets some boys to move the furniture in and out of shot, you give him two hours of your time, and you shoot on a point and shoot camera. You give him the jpegs on a thumb drive. Strictly COD.
I did a day of furniture shooting back in 1989 at a client's showrooms, with Bron lighting, and billed $2,500...
You could do a contra - furniture for job. With contra, though, you always make your estimate to the full value of the job.
BTW, your test shots look top shelf!
p.1 #9 · Furniture Photography..how much to charge?
Thanks all for the help!
If someone would photograph the 2 sets above how much would cost.
It took me like 2 hours for setup and take the photos I thing.
I used 2 bees 800, I did a bit of reading and I had a polarizer filter on the Nikon 28-70.
The camera was set to ISA-100 f/6.5.
I just pointed the 2 lights to the ceiling and and I took about 10 photos.
p.1 #12 · Furniture Photography..how much to charge?
I do a lot of furniture shots for a manufacturer, and it's not easy to get a fair price. The arrangement I ended with, was as follows:
- 3 staff from the client moves the furniture in and out of the studio and are responsible for cleaning them. If there's a spot, it's not my problem.
- The same staff also changes the position of each piece.
- The client takes care of all post processing (in my case, they have their own graphic department, but that could be a third party).
- The client is responsible for the transport of myself and all my gear to the location of the shooting.
We agreed on a day rate (I won't mention the rate here since I'm in Asia, with a completely different cost level), and I arrive in the morning with all my gear, spend 30-60 minutes to get ready (6 strobes in my case, leather sofas are rather tricky) take the photos, give him the files and go home for dinner.
Product shots of furniture on white isn't very inspiring, so it's important to have routines that work flawlessly. You don't want to do the same pieces again tomorrow. My advise is: Agree on a day rate. You don't know in beforehand how much time you will spend on each piece. Sometimes it's ten minutes and sometimes it's an hour. Be aware also that you might not get away with two strobes for all of the pieces.
$300 for the whole job? That sounds like Bangkok price to me.
p.1 #13 · Furniture Photography..how much to charge?
I'm sorry, but I'm going to highjack this thread for a moment. This reminds me of a funny story.
I think I was just out of college and foundering around trying to get some legs under my career. Somehow I happened into a job with a guy who was starting up a company manufacturing acrylic bar tables. Very cool products, and he wanted some catalog art that did it justice. He showed me some shots that another photographer had done. Let's say it was less than uninspired work.
I figured the table guy is new at his business, and I'm new at my business. We can probably work something out. I'll ask what I think he can afford, and at the very least I'll have some commercial-ish shots for my book. He gave me some samples, I borrowed some studio space and shot the whole thing on 4x5 Ektachrome. Turned out very nicely, if I do say so myself.
Guy paid me, no problem. As a matter of fact, he seemed a bit surprised at how little I was charging. A few weeks later, I found out why.
Before the catalog was ever close to being published, the guy got arrested. Turns out he was this southern California cocain kingpin laundering his money in legitimate businesses. I guarantee he was spending more on dinner every night than he paid me for my work.
The lesson I learned from that was that you need to figure out what your time and talent is worth and charge at least that for every job. I should have asked for a market rate. The guy would have paid it and I still would have had work for my book. If the client says no to your bid, you probably need to find a better client. And believe me, your time is better spent on putting together a good client list than shooting on the cheap. It goes without saying that you gotta learn to shoot, and you need to provide a quality product. But honestly, learning to shoot is easy compared to learning how to sell.
