Pricing

[Joanna photography]

Hi everyone my names joanna, iv recently got my degree in digital imaging and im actively working but i started off just doing small jobs and it so enjoyable and easy now im getting larger parties and noticing that the post processing times are doubling the hours im actually taking pictures and im not charging accordingly ad im new to this can anyone help with how is best to charge for post processing my last job i took 3000 images and the clent wants to see them all , iv already edit 622 and spent all week doing this but i only charged them for the hours i worked on the night £25 an hour and i got £40 tip but iv been working on these pics now for going into week two ‍. Can anyone help pls ?

 

[KIPAX]

Hi everyone my names joanna, iv recently got my degree in digital imaging and im actively working but i started off just doing small jobs and it so enjoyable and easy now im getting larger parties and noticing that the post processing times are doubling the hours im actually taking pictures and im not charging accordingly ad im new to this can anyone help with how is best to charge for post processing my last job i took 3000 images and the clent wants to see them all , iv already edit 622 and spent all week doing this but i only charged them for the hours i worked on the night £25 an hour and i got £40 tip but iv been working on these pics now for going into week two ‍. Can anyone help pls ?

First off.. You should decide what the client can see not them.. You should cull the 3000 and choose the best and then edit

Second... We dont know how much money you need to run your business and live off.. You need a business plan (download a template online) this will set out how much you need to earn per hr to live off photography by listing what you do and what you need to pay out

Your on the right track. you ahve customers and you know you need to charge more

PS you need to look into your editing process.. search on here maybe...

 

[Box Brownie]

I will echo what @KIPAX says and add.....

Even setting aside the editing time being over what you planned for or anticipated at £25 per hour you are losing money!

Think about another situation where you take your car in for service, the hourly rate for labour is probably between £60 to £80 depending on the garage. The technician who worked on your car is hopefully being paid at least £15 per hour.

As mentioned above, on the surmise, that you really need an income from your photography you need to get back to business basics including looking at your CODB ( Cost Of Doing Business)

I wish you well in your venture and there are many working professionals on this site who can offer you photography business related insights but I am not one.

However, I worked in B2B sales across a range of industries for 36 + years and had a few handfuls of clients who struggled to survive because they seemed to lack some core business skills.

Lastly, sorry remiss of me! Welcome to TP there is a lot to learn and share here

 

[ecoleman]

I'm no event / wedding photographer but I doubt very much there are any that hand over 3000 fully edited images.

You are the photographer so you decide what photos to present. Even the best photographers can have out of focus shots, motion blur, poor composition etc, that's why you take so many to start with so you can weed out the crap and only present the best.

You may be only starting but £25/hour for only the hours you are shooting is peanuts and not sustainable if you want to live on it. Again, there is a reason why wedding photographers charge £2-3k for a wedding.

 

[stumac]

I've worked out in my line of business for every hour I have the camera in my hand I will edit for 2 hours so whatever £s I need for the job based on how long it will take me to shoot I multiply by 3 . But that's for my business and how much I NEED to earn to make a living . Your situation is yours so it's really upto you to workout what you need to survive/thrive

 

[Nostromo]

I can understand why you are charging what you're charging. You want customers and business, you want to be building a portfolio. But there comes a point where it's just not going to make you a living. Those customers that have been paying your current rate will be suddenly surprised at a big hike in your rates.
As others have said, you don't need to or even shouldn't give them all of the photos from the day, I know I wouldn't want to sift through 3,000 shots, many of them could possibly be repeats.
I hope you succeed in and develop your business.
Good luck

P.S.
I would definitely listen to what has been said by those that have commented above, especially those that do this (photography) as a business.

 

[Sky]

Hi Joanna, congrats on your degree and welcome to TP.

You definitely need to address your pricing structure if you're going to want to eat. I was charging your rates once, but that was in 1985.

 

[SteveatVTK]

As in most business, give yourself that cheap label and all you'll ever be is a busy fool.
Look around at other professional photographers prices and charge in line with those.
If you had several jobs like that in a week you'd sink very quickly.

 

[benc98]

One of the sub-roles of being a photographer is that of a curator. I'd get that 3000 down to a more manageable number, or not edit and present them as is (depends on the expectation of the client)

 

[swanseamale47]

When you say your editing them do you mean lots of clever stuff like taking background out and swopping heads, or do you mean basic sorting colour and exposure? If it's the latter in an ideal world you'd get those right in camera near enough. I can get through a 1500 or so wedding shots in a couple of hours, and some of them I'm playing tricks with, arty stuff etc.
Also 3000 seems a lot to be giving the customer (as said above) obviously it's depending on what your doing and have arranged with your customer, but I'd suggest you give the customer less images, a few hundred maybe depending on what your shooting.
To work out your hour rate you need to work out all costs, overheads and a wage (business plan) and base it on that

 

[RichardC27]

So first of all as everyone else has said, you decide which images to show to the client, and I'd say 3000 is excessive. For our entire wedding we received 600 images from the whole day. You can't possibly have 3000 keepers from an event. If my keeper rate from a shoot is in the 40% range I'd say I've had a very good day. For every 1,000 images I shoot I'd only ever really want to keep 300-400 of them.

Also, editing 600 images should not take a full week. What software and hardware are you using? I can cull, edit and pick a gallery of 100 images from a full 2000 image race weekend in a few hours, all on an iPad. Learn how to speed up your editing workflow, which will come with practice. If you're doing this as a job then investing time in decent, fast gear to help with your processing will pay for itself in no time.

 

[KIPAX]

As in most business, give yourself that cheap label and all you'll ever be is a busy fool.
Look around at other professional photographers prices and charge in line with those.
If you had several jobs like that in a week you'd sink very quickly.

There is room for the cheaper photographer just like any business ...They are NOT fools and it is possible to make a living.. Juts hard work

 

[Kell]

I don't shoot weddings in any sort of professional capacity, so have no idea how you end up with a final cost, but I'd definitely suggest making it clear upfront what will and what will not be provided. If people are aware upfront, then they'll be less likely to make demands down the line.

Back when I got married (in the days of film) we got a certain number of prints included in the cost, but never had access to the negs. But this was back in the day when perhaps hiring a photographer for the day was cheaper as they supplemented that daily rate with selling copies of prints to family and friends.

With the switch over to digital, it's a little harder to control what happens with JPEGS. And as such maybe it's more justifiable to have a higher daily rate, because you'll be making £0 from selling copies. If you supply copies to your couple then you can be 100% certain they'll be distributed to everyone they know.

The biggest thing is to absolutely cut down the amount you're editing. as a possible customer, there's no way I'd expect to receive 3,000 shots. Even a few hundred seems over the top to me - but that's because I think we ended up with around 20 prints. As an amateur tog, the idea of fully editing 3,000 shots doesn't fill me with any sort of joy.

There could be a halfway house in that you could supply all the images, but only edit, say, 200. With a view to charging more for editing any particular favourites further down the line. the rest you could supply as downsized JPEGS.

Just bear in mind, people will just do just about anything to avoid paying for stuff. So assume any viewing copies you provide (even unedited) will be downloaded and kept.

Especially when they don't see the true value of them. They see you taking the shots and think that the process starts and ends there.

You need to factor in to your final price:

Time for a recce - scout out the venue, look at possible locations for unusual shots.
Time to shoot - this may or may not include travelling time if it's a long way away.
Time to edit - this is the unseen time that people don't expect to pay for.

The other thing to say is good luck. I've often thought of making the transition to shooting weddings - apart from a) I've never thought I'm good enough and b) I don't particularly like people. It has the potential to be a rewarding job when you're capturing people on the happiest day of their lives. (Hopefully.)

But only if you're the one in charge.

 

[Phil V]

Congrats on your degree. Welcome to TP, and welcome to the seemingly impossible world of running a photography business.

Before you go any further - there's 2 rookie errors you have to address:
1: You decide what you're delivering - not the client*

2: Before you price for another job, you need to realise the difference between an employed hourly rate of pay, and what you need to earn as a Self Employed person. There's loads of ways of doing this, but you could do worse than start with a freelance pricing calculation. Or even simply by calculating that you need to earn your required hourly rate for all the editing as well as the shooting. So if you expect to gross £20 an hour (not enough btw) you need to be pricing £60 - £80

But just as important as the above; you need to work smarter at both shooting and editing. For events and weddings, a good rule of thumb is something like 1 to 2 hrs of post work per hour of shooting (it might take longer at first, but you should be working towards that). For news / sports it's nothing like that long. For high end portrait / fashion work you might need quite a bit longer (so editing time varies with genre). The key though, is to ensure you're not including rubbish in the frame that you're later gonna want to remove, shooting loose enough to allow reframing, and then being absolutely brutal with your initial culling. Otherwise the only way you get to be able to afford to eat is by charging £1000 an hour.

BTW happy to chat through an editing workflow - and you might find some previous discussions here that might help (search wedding workflow)

*clients will never be any good at editing. and no one should ever see a single photo that you are not 100% happy with. If you shot 3000 images, you'd probably want to deliver something less than 1000. That cull should take you a couple of hours tops. And editing the 1000 should be done within a day easily. One of the key editing timesavers is to bin any image that'll take a long time to 'correct'