a girl wanted me to quote her for coverage of her cotillion party (18th birthday, debutante ball). it involves about 8 couples as well as the debutante herself, all needing formal portraits. i have done one before, actually her sister's, and made great images and got paid next to nothing. keep in mind this was two years ago, my business has vastly expanded and my skill set as well. for reference of my work see my WWW in my profile.
the party is 5 hours long, and i will need to go about 1.5 hours early to do all the formals, an indoor event. i plan on proposing $600.00 for:
a 1 hr portrait session the day before
6.5 hours day of
1 11x14
2 8x10
4 5x7
15 4x6
20 side 10x10 album custom designed
i basically shoot this exactly like a wedding. is that a reasonable price? thanks
The link from your website to your myspace page is broken. It is not working in Firefox. You need to delete the space after your embedded link.
2nd. Get control of your WB. I am looking at your site, I can tell that some of it is intentional, but some of it is just tones that shouldn't be there.
3rd.
A package like you describe, I would be charging significantly more, Sergio.
If you feel you have to charge this because you are in High School and know the people well, then go ahead and do it. But I will tell you that you will never make a living charging prices like that.
What album company are you using?
After you take out the costs involved to you, you are probably making less than some of your friends working at the mall...this doesn't take into consideration the investment of your gear either.
You are a way better photographer than you are charging for.
i was going to use asukabook. costs would be about 150..
fixed the myspace link... personal choice on the tones not gonna go through and change them over one persons comment, understand where youre comin from though.
yeah i am probably gonna set that at 800 and say basically i am shooting a wedding here, and perhaps let her decide how badly she wants that album, etc.
thanks for thinking im a decent photographer though man, it means a lot
I guess I could be more specific. The images I saw color issues were with number 1 and number 6 (the image on the left side) under portraits.
Really any of the images with that girl in #1 need some WB. I guess it is just because she has red hair
I would honestly say go for $1,000.
Figure this. You are working 6.5 hours that day, plus an additional 1 hour the day before. I am also going to assume you will have at least 6 hours of processing on something like this.
Lets say you have $250 in costs for your goods. (Gas, prints, album, appropriate attire)
So now you are at $750.
I bet you have at least $5,000 in gear. (just a guess) Figure you want to pay for that gear in 1 year of business. I'll assume you do 20 events like this a year. That means your annual gear cost is $250 a session.
Now you are down to $500.
This will have you being paid at $37 an hour for the 13.5 hours you will work. Not too shabby. You can make a nice living like that if you are full time 40 hour a week employee somewhere. That is $77,037 a year at 40 hrs a week.
If you do it for the $600, you are now basically being paid $7.40 an hour and will earn $15,407 annually.
What lifestyle would you want to live?
Edited by Matt Graves on Mar 14, 2008 at 12:50 AM GMT
Yes, Matt, that is a great answer. Really makes a person think of the things that a job really costs! And how much has to be done to actually pay a living wage. And what does each one of us personally think is a "living wage"
Thanks for spelling it out. That's the type education that needs to be promoted.
I was asked a few months back to do a quincianera (similar to the above job) and gave them a price. This is a lot more involved job, because they not only want a formal portrait session before the occasion, with a 24 x 30 to display the night of, and they want me to start early the morning of the celebration with photos of the girl waking up, getting ready, and all through the day till the party is over sometime around midnight!
I will have at least one assistant and one 2nd shooter for part of that. So my price, for my 30-years experience, was not cheap.
They wanted it; agreed it was a fair price, but affording it was a problem. They don't have the usual sponsors to help. Well, I didn't budge on my price. I couldn't afford to. A few minutes ago she called and they're bringing over a check tonight with the signed contract!
Something I've done with past clients that are used to my old (LOW) rates is to put my current rate on the contract and then give them a discount on that. This allows you to give them a polite nudge re: pricing and you can still get the job - provided you want it.
larhouser wrote:
Something I've done with past clients that are used to my old (LOW) rates is to put my current rate on the contract and then give them a discount on that. This allows you to give them a polite nudge re: pricing and you can still get the job - provided you want it.
If you are going to charge such a low fee, the above is a good idea.
You are a real photographer and real photographers charge at least $1,500 as a day-rate plus extra for correcting and printing, albums etc. At least let them know what your real rate is before giving them the bargain basement price.
