I was asked by a client, in a dept other than photography, to shoot their wedding party, this was a fake ceremony as they got already officially married and wanted to throw a party for guests and family by the place where I live and work which they all love.
Long story short, I asked to have another photographer with me as I never did a wedding, I have tone portrait but never such a thing but they said they like my shooting style and they are fine with whatever it comes as they only wanted candids and ceremony/party memories.
I shoot from 6pm to 2am, all in natural light, mostly a Nikon Z6II with the 24-120 during daylight and Z8 with the 85/1.2 for 90% of the shots, I was positively impressed by the results which usually won't be me as I am very self critical, I showed them previews and they loved them, I now got down to about 80 possible candidates and have to decide how to charge them, if for the whole party service, by the hour and then charge for the post processing time, my guess is that once they browse the photos and decide which ones they won't want prints but only files.
In the past when I did some portraits for clients I based the billing by the hour within a 120-150 euros per hour (Italy here), I think that's a bit cheap but I am not 100% sure of this and I would very much appreciate your input before I get down to the invoicing.
Here a shot from the wedding, I don't like it much as the face is in the shade but it was kind of like a semi-candid and showed it to them they loved it.
My only comment to improve the shot would be to use a flash, in this case camera left, and even when outdoors, to light her face. It doesn't need to be a big soft box, but does need to be able to light her full face and upper left arm. The shot is great, but could have been better if her face wasn't in shadow. I would have used one of my AD200 Pro II with the round reflector at about 6' away camera left and aimed at her face, but a speedlite could have been used from the same position for this..
I have an AD200Pro and a tiny IT30Pro but figured that given the venue, the request to have candids and the on and off bad weather it was not the case to carry modifiers, stands and strobes, they wanted the photos to be the most possible natural
Nice shot. I prefer the look of natural light myself also.
As far as billing, I shoot a lot of frames and make sure I'm completely covered. I'm usually delivering 50-100 shots for every hour I'm shooting, and that's after rejecting 95% of the rest. I work really hard to get all of the details and both the quiet and peak moments.
My post sessions take a lot of time, because I make sure I do it right and give them good work.
When it comes to billing, I give them a simple number that reflects both the effort I put into shooting, editing and post processing. My fees reflect a rate of $500 for each hour of shooting, and that will cover all of my post production time which is usually 1.5 - 2x the shooting time. So, for an 8 hour event plus 12 hours in post, that's $4000.00 USD, or $200.00 for every hour spent working on the job.
I just didn't have time to think of rates etc as I didn't know what would I face, I proposed to have an extra photographer, one of those who run around here as paparazzi just to have a backup but they both denied and said they like my style (...) which flatters me but also put pressure, I had many other things to do for them so I am not afraid at all about billing as we know each other since years professionally wise and he's always been very respectful of my job and this won't be an exception, they had a professional photographer, I guess, during the real wedding in their country so for sure he's prepared to a bill not to mention that for his it's not the first wedding ;-)
