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Pricing a job – Product photography
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hi, long time lurker, first time poster..and yes with yet another pricing query.
In the past few months Ive been pushing what has been a long time hobby into what hopefully will be a second income, or something that at the very least will pay for itself. ive been taking pics a long time, and at times have done a fair bit of semi pro work, but up until recently had somehwat drifted away.
to build up my portfolio ive been doing a mix of TFP/favour exchange sort of stuff and jobs propper, in as many different genres as possible. this has been to build up my portfolio, and to get a feel for what its all about.
Ive recently been asked to quote for a product photography job.
basically food – fresh and packaged
500 products
standard white background
for web and print
minimal processing as its going to their graphic designer.in time terms probably about 2 days work, split between fresh and packaged stuff.
i have plenty of lighting experience – but no real world product experience (I have shot product style stuff as an exercise before, which you can see on my site). i am confident I can do it but wary of biting off more than I can chew, and would in short like to price at a level that would be competetive and reflect my level of experience.
any opinions welcome!!
How about rying to price it based on your time rather than the number of shots?
If there’s two day’s shooting, how much should you be charging for a day’s work?As a rough rule of thumb, photogrpahy business should be working to a mark up of 65%. (UK average) So lets say you have to take two days off work to do the shoot, the cost to you is whatever you typically get paid for two days work, plus 65% if thats what you want your mark up to be. (assuming you want to make the same amount of money from your photogrpahy as your day job)
Dont forget that even with minimal processing, two days shoot will take time to download, post process (however minimal) back up, store etc and thus you should be pricing for this work as well. (what if your client comes back to you in 6 months time looking for the same images again, you need to have these to hand, so what is it costing to have these sitting in your hrd drive, or multiple hard drives, or at your off site back up etc)
Lets say you can download and back up all your images in half the time it takes to shoot them, and then re upload them to your client’s FTP or burn them to DVD or whatever, your easily looking at the gutts of another days work at least).
So thats 3 days work, to start with, (plus your mark up)
Also, if your thinking about this logicaly, all your equipment is costing yuou money by minute, even if its bought and paid for. Typically you are allowed spread the cost of new equipment over 5 years for tax purposes, so if you bought your camera for £2000 within the last 5 years, technically its costing you £1 a day, (plus mark up etc).
+rental of studio
+travel
+lighting and electricity
+insureance (You are insured arent you?)I know you may not have all these overheads at present, but if you figure out what your costs are likely to be if it was your only source of income, you at least have an idea of what you should be charging if your photography was to be your only source of income, you can at least get an idea of the VALUE of your work, and discount accordingly.
When you start to look at your work like this, its easy to see why sometimes it makes more sense to outsource post processing, or printing or another part of your worflow that you can get done for cheaper than you would need to be charging for your own time. Its also easier to see what you should be charging if you ever want this to be a full time thing.
– Tom
thanks for the extensive reply-
i was leaning towards pricing based on day rates + processing..
next thing is to figure an appropriate day rate!I know your question was to do with rates but I think shooting 500 shots in a two day period the quality of your images is going to be very poor indeed.
I’ve worked many years in a number of areas of commercial photography and have regularly do this type of work. Minimum it’s a week’s work, maybe more, depending on the product type – more to get half decent images that are publishable. At 250 shots a day that’s less than 2 minutes per shot – high end food photographers often take a full day on one shot. I remember I shot sausage rolls for a well know company here and it took us two day to get the product to look edible – occasionally it can go that way. I’m not suggesting that you spend two days per shot or anything like it but you will have to spend longer than 2 mins on each shot
You also mentioned also that some images are of packaged goods. Then you’ll have to deal with reflections and packets that aren’t assembled properly. If you don’t spend the time shooting you’ll only end up spending it retouching.Hope that helps
tag, yeah Ive been giving this a lot of thought over the past 24hrs – 2 days is competely unrealistic. I think, with great reluctance, that as a part timer with another 9-5 im going to have to pass on this one, based on the scale/time. if only they wanted 20 shots done!
thanks for all your input guys!
I hope I haven’t put you off, that said, sometimes it’s better to walk away from a job than deliver work you’re not happy with…
Good luck with what everyou decide
ah no, you just confirmed the way my thoughts were going – id have no qualms from a technical point of view, but the scale/time commitment element of the job would be to big of a step up for me right now..
thanks again!razphoto wrote:
thanks for the extensive reply-
i was leaning towards pricing based on day rates + processing..
next thing is to figure an appropriate day rate!You are not being asked to sell Time here – you are selling Images – because the client wants to Use them.
So sell images – and manage your time.For example, charge £10 per image – and then it’s up to you to figure out the most efficient and economical way to produce those images – for them to Use.
The fee is therefore for the number of images they require and is based on their Usage requirements.
So be sure to clearly state what your understanding of the Media use, Period of use & Territory of use is – to which this fee relates too.
Thereby avoiding any misunderstandings down the road – should they want to Use the images for other things at some stage.I’d have to agree with Ashley (dam :D ) but pricing this job this way would be the way to go. It’ll also stop the client throwing everything at you and expecting you to get it all done in the time you’ve allotted.
You might even find the client will short list the shots to what he really needs rather than a machine gun approach of shoot everthing if he has to pay per shot.
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