Background: I\'ve been hovering in that netherworld between amateur and semi-pro for a little while now. By \"semi-pro,\" I\'m talking about getting paid to subsidize my hobby; I have no intentions at this point of quitting my day job and becoming a pro photographer.
The family of a friend co-owns a successful micro-brewery in the area, and my friend does the web development for the company. He asked me recently about doing product photography for their beer lineup. (He said he used to take pictures of the beer himself.) I said I would be happy to do the pictures, but that I would need some more details before giving him some pricing. I did some sample beer shots a few weeks ago, and he was thrilled with what I sent, so now we\'re moving forward. He is aware of my \"mostly amateur\" status, FWIW. They\'re a small company, but they are certainly a business, so I\'m treating this as such.
At this point, we\'re looking at doing all-white backgrounds. I need to confirm exactly what they\'re looking for, but I think they want just straight beer bottle shots, and then some shots with a bottle and six-pack packaging. (He had sent me to http://www.ohbeautifulbeer.com/ to show me examples of the type of photography they\'re looking for. What I\'ve done compares favorably with what I\'ve seen there in general.)
I haven\'t confirmed this (though I asked), but my impression is that they\'d like unlimited usage of the images forever. (I\'ll be going through details with him this week, but that\'s what I think they\'d like.)
I\'ll be shooting at home, and once I get one lighting setup, it will be easy to swap out bottles for the other beers. Each lighting setup requires some tweaking, obviously.
I\'m located in PA in a medium-sized market (i.e. not Philly, not the country).
When I\'ve tried to research online, I\'ve seen everything from $29/image to $500/image. (!!!) My guess is that I\'ll want to fall somewhere in between. I actually told my friend that I would provide a discount on the first round (reflecting my lack of commercial experience), because I want to get my foot in the door with them, as this likely could be an ongoing gig. I discussed this with a few people, and it seemed to make sense; it makes coming to me an attractive option and allows me to prove myself, but doesn\'t set me up to work for less than my value in the future.
Can anyone provide me with some feedback on pricing for this shoot? I have pushed for details, but with him being busy, etc., I haven\'t gotten details yet. At this point, I feel like I need to come up with an idea in my head of where I want to come in, and then if he throws anything unusual into the mix I can adjust as needed.
Thanks for any help!
(And... it would be great if we could avoid any deeper philosophical discussions about whether or not I should be doing a \"professional\" shoot for a company when I\'m not a true professional. Thanks!)
May 13, 2013 at 09:23 PM
Previous versions of KaBudokan's message #11551260 « Pricing help for product photography (BEER!) - updated with more info... »
