[Leica] help - what do I charge for a shoot??

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

On 6/4/04 6:59 PM, "eric" <leica_korenman@hotmail.com> wrote:

> I have been shooting pics of friends and their kids for a year or so.
> People who have seen my work at friends' houses are asking me shoot pics 
> for
> them.
> I am now being asked 'What do you charge?'.
> 
> Well - what do I charge? For friends I have been gifting most prints, and
> charging my cost for reprints.
> 
> What is a reasonable fee?
> Do I charge a base rate for a set number of hours or rolls of film?
> Then charge for reprints?
> 
> thanks
> Eric

I'll reply to this as I'm the one who seems to be shooting his mouth off the
most on it.
Here I've found photographers hourly rates didn?t vary all that much but
what they considerere3d their minimum hours to do a shoot did.
I'm about to go from 2 hours to half day. I know photographers whose day
rate (8 hours) is their minimum rate. So it's at least a grand to shoot your
ash tray or your goldfish.
But on top of that there is the roll rate.
My minimum rate was two hours, a roll and a print.

You could say charge as a minimum a two hundred bucks for two 100 buck hours
and a 40 dollar roll of film (which you explain stays with you and in effect
adds to your "body of work"). (That sentence says a lot without having to
freak them out with the fact that you can make money off their image and you
own the copyright was delineated by the 1978 copyright law to any art you
create be it in pencil, clay or silver gelatin.)

...and a 50 dollar 8x10 print brings it to
200 time
40 film
50 print.
Priced to sell at 290.
And they thought they'd have to spend 300 bucks!!!!!

50 bucks by the way for an 8x10 or any size smaller. Stay out of the
snapshot business. Tell them THEY make better snap shots then YOU do of
their kids as it could easily be true. YOU are providing a quality thing
they are not committed to doing.

They will go way over budget with their print orders and perhaps not get
pissed off about it or maybe they will feel the opposite.

I've found that people with less money respect your high hourly rate but
want to spend Walgreen's prices for the print's

People with much money especially old money do not respect your time and
would expect you to charge less then a dock worker. But will spend 300 bucks
of an 8x10 of THEM. THEY have value. YOU do not.

Just realize that everybody loves you just as long as you have a very low
self concept and charge practically nothing. And that  even at that level
for them to part with five bucks will set their teeth gnashing. You'd be
much better off having them just feeling like they owe you a favor and stay
a bit more on their good side.

But some may respect YOU and your WORK more for your very high self value,
concept yada yada and work priced to match.

By the way "reprint" is not a term pro labs use let alone photographers.
I think it connotes people who cant be bothered with digging up the neg and
just print in a print to have a copy print made.  Which got carried over to
the modern snapshot mini lab biz and very cheap mall portrait people.
You are not "reprinting" you are just doing more printing from the same
negs. You are not Cy the Photo Guy.
Plenty of schlock photographers by the way charge several times more than
the prices I mentioned.
I charge the same for color as I do for black and white and just as much for
the 8th print from the same neg as I do the first. I am much less driven
crazy as a result. When is a reprint a reprint? They'll want it in that
category ten years later not at the time they are making their first order.

Mapplethorpe changed a friend of mine nine grand for a shoot he did from his
wheel chair at the end of his life. Every 8x10 the client ordered was in
effect an addition to their estate whose value would appreciate at a higher
rate than about anything else there including real estate I'm sure. The
prints on the wall more than paid for themselves the day he died if not
before.

IF you can sell the idea that you are a (modest) artist producing "art" and
that is partially what they are investing in in effect it could be said they
are your "patron" then you could get a little more satisfaction then being
in a glorified snapshot business.



Mark Rabiner
Photography
Portland Oregon



New-improved
http://rabinergroup.com/