I am a commercial photographer, one of my clients(a retirement community) has asked me if I am interested in photographing family groups within the communities (4 locations). They would open this up to residents and employees, possibly a lot of photographs, they would advertise it, I would schedule all the photographs. The only thing they ask for is a portion of the sitting fees to be donated back to the communities. They would like to do it in late September/October in time for Holiday orders. I don't really do personal family photography so the pricing I am a little unsure about, Can anyone give me an idea of pricing? All the prints would be ordered through me.
thanks, Dave

To give you some suggestions. You are a commercial photographer, so you should know what your day rate or cost of doing business are.
With that said, these are random numbers so adjust to meet your money goals. With them wanting a portion of the sitting fees I would make this number higher say 50$ and do an A la Carte pricing on prints if you are not guranteed sales. What I would do in this case is to pre sell packages and keep the sitting fees lower and offer to give back a % of sales minus the sitting fee. Doing it this way gurantees you money and if everyone purchases the lower package your not paying money out of the sitting fee with no gurantee sales.
For example a sitting fee of 40$ and Pkg 1.- 4 wallets,2- 5x7 cost would be 30$. Pkg 2. 8 wallets, 2- 5x7, 1- 8x10 cost would be 40$ and so on.
So with the example if 5 families done option one and didnt buy anything you would make 5x50= 250$ then have to pay back whatever you agree on. In option 2 if those 5 families all pre ordered and pre payed for Pkg1 you would get 40$x5=200$ in sitting fees and 5x30$=150$ for a total of 350$.
Now lets say you agree on a 20% give back, in option one you made 250$-(20%)50$=200$ to you for the shoot. If you did option2 at 20% just off pkgs not sitting fees 200-(20%)40$ =160$ and you pocket 160+150=310$ for the shoot.
If you do the pre pkg/sales not everyone will by the lower price most will be in the middle,but some will be on the high end.

just an idea
Andy

Calculate it by your Cost of Doing Business based on the time it takes to perform all the "assignment" steps: prep, loading, travel, setup, shoot, teardown, reloading, unloading, cleaning, stowing.

Use that to generate a price for the session plus a basic package, and then add on extra packages that you can upsell to.

$15 tolls
$9 fuel
$45 parking

That's how much it costs me just to leave the house to photograph something and that's within NYC limits. If it's formal that's another $30 for dry cleaning. So figure I'm 2nd shooting a wedding in midtown Manhattan. It's already costing me $99 just to show up.

Now factor in wear and tear on equipment. Heck, just having that equipment. Let's say for the sake of argument a 5D mk2 with a 24-70 lens. That's $2500 for the body, $1400 for the lens. That's $3900 for the camera. Say I'm expected to upgrade every 5yrs, that's $780 a year. Say I work 120 days a year, let's round that up to a $10 usage/wear&tear fee per job. Now we're up to about $110 for the job and that's just expenses. I haven't even added how much money I need to be paid for my time, skill and experience.

I had a friend suggest I shoot the family groups at no cost and make all my money through print orders, not sure this makes sense to me?

david debalko wrote:
I had a friend suggest I shoot the family groups at no cost and make all my money through print orders, not sure this makes sense to me?

The thing is print orders are not guaranteed but a rate is. There are plenty of business that charge per photo. If you've ever been to a county fair with photo booths it's like $10 for a print. Or pictures with santa, that cost me $45 at macy's. If you really think you'll get enough people to come through then do it. But I prefer a rate, then again I'm not in the business of selling prints, just my service.

swoop wrote:
david debalko wrote:
I prefer a rate, then again I'm not in the business of selling prints, just my service.

agreed

How are print sales going to be handled? If it is going to be a focus and you are prepared to show images (not fully edited) and get orders the day of the shoot or will be returning a few days or a week later to review edited images with the clients, then I think you can expect to be reasonably successful. However, if you are just going to shoot and then stick the images on line for proofing and ordering, the print sales will be much lower.

So I would price the session fee based somewhat on those facts. Obviously the session fee has to cover my expenses. But if I don't expect to sell prints very well, I would probably price the session fee higher. If I set the expectations and have a system in place to sell prints (especially large prints), then I'm OK with setting a lower session fee and making some real profit on the print sales.

But the biggest thing to remember is that print sales do not happen on their own. You have to meet the client in person and go over their images and actively sell prints. Otherwise the average client will not place a big print order.