Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/12/15
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Bill Larsen wrote: > I have seen rates thrown around on this thread. I just > don't understand how you arrive at you pricing. One of my > main indirect expenses is insurance.. snip > Is there > something different about professional photography that I > have to date been missing? > Perhaps you would like to share any > great bargains in insurance? Difficult subject to talk directly to, but I will try. First, insurance is least of my worries. My base overhead is around $4000/month. So I need to bill that much before I even consider taking any home to feed the cat. That includes studio, office supplies, insurance, new gear, repairs, etc. This does not include production costs like film and processing, travel, models, assistants, etc. But given all that, you can fumble around and figure what it costs you to do business, but frankly, just check out the market. I just rough-bid a job in San Diego (one of the rare ones here in town for me) and asked the potential client what the bids were running. She said from $800 to $1500 a day as a basic day rate. And in SD you don't get much more for local clients and there are too many photographers who give all rights without a whimper, so that is your baseline. I understand in LA this is about doubled for standard things. For bigger national clients with lots of useage the rates go up. Usually "day rate" is a base minimum that you can work for and then adjusted for the importance of the work. The PR style work we discussed here recently is usually lower paying because it doesn't have the useage (or value) or the skill levels or equipment levels needed for the higher paying markets. I took a seminar once from a very productive interiors shooter and we penciled out the real cost of being in business and it turned out that to make somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000 a year, a photographer needs to be billing around $180,000. Few do. The nice thing is that once you crack the nut, the profit margin goes up nicely. Of course, this depends on expenses--travel, models, production costs of various sorts, film, studio. I suspect my film and processing expenses this year will approach $20,000. For fashion catalogue shooters, they'd do that in a month, if hard at it. I did a two hour shoot some months ago that billed at $6500. I went over estimate by 15 minutes on the shooting time and the model fee overruns were $550. Which the client demanded that I eat. Plus I had clothing, styling, makeup, prop rental, two assistants. The photo ran worldwide in airline catalogues. It took several days to put that two hours together, casting, finding, etc. And the last part of the job my assistant handed me a Pentax 67 with the strobe plugged into the bulb socket, so blank film. Fortunately I had backed it up on 35. So, the costs are costs, but the market is the market and is the stronger of the two forces, unless you are an extraordinary talent with a unique and highly marketable style. Also, if you can work nationally for larger companies, the fees go up--and so do the expectations and responsibilities. Top level advertising shooters (the highest paid of photographers) can regularily command $5,000 to $10,000 a day and a few (Herb Ritts) get $20,000. Plus expenses! But up in these atmospheres the players have tremendous business momentum, lofty talents (directing, managing, negotiating, as well as photographic.) Last I heard a spread in the Black Book, a sourcebook for the advertising community, was $14,000. So the stakes are high. I haven't discuss magazines, because that is another situation entirely. the above is about "service" photography that ends up in brochures, ads, billboards, newsletters and so on. Hope this helps. donal - -- Donal Philby San Diego http://www.donalphilby.com