How do I price photos when taking pictures of people?
michelle d asked the question:
I am definitely persuing a career in photography. I am still building a portfolio and taking some courses.My husband’s friend just had a baby & my husband told him that I could probably do some photos. This will be my first time photographing people besides my family. Should I do it for free and add some photos to my portfolio or should I charge them? If I should charge them, how much should it be? Specific ideas will be appreciated.
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Filed Under Photography |
Tagged With Photographing People, Pictures Of People, Pictures People
Comments
5 Responses to “How do I price photos when taking pictures of people?”
It is your first time. Unless you are a prodigy you are probably going to have mistakes and growing pains.
Be gentle, just charge them your actual print cost.
Charge, but offer him a discounted rate. You are still doing work and you shouldn’t do it for free, otherwise you are going to regret it later…especially if the baby doesn’t cooperate and takes you longer to photograph.
ged classes
I don’t think I would charge your husband’s friend. I think you could use this as experience and add to your portfolio. You can do a search on the internet to see what people are charging, but keep in mind that they are profressionals. You could also take a photography class so that you can learn the basics of the industry, etc. Good Luck.
When doing photos for friends, you can do them for free. That way you will get word of mouth advertising. Don’t be a push over though, the 1st one who is referred to you, charge. A good way to set your prices is to take into consideration how much time it takes to go to their home, set up time and processing fees. You also have to figure in the cost of film and your lights and backgrounds. Since digital photography is taking over, you will have to keep discs of all the pictures for each shoot. Weddings always start at $200 and go up as the final pictures are selected and the album is chosen.
If it becomes too much of a problem, step back and take some shots around your area in Parks and towns. Children and Nature are always a safe bet to build your portfolio. Remember that composition is everything, sometimes you have to take many shots to get the right one. Even Pulitzer Prize photographers have 1,000’s of unpublished pictures.
I’ve shot 100’s of scenes just to get the ones I really wanted.
Good luck, hope you make a go of it!
I wouldn’t charge if it’s for a friend of your husbands…. if it’s just an aquaintance I would charge. But it being your first shoot, I would think that the experience would be more what you are looking for than the actually monitary gain. So just charge to cover the cost of your expenses (travel to location, and print costs) plus 15% of that total should be fine. (For aquaintances…)
If your friends like what you do, the word of mouth from them will be worth more than if you charged them and they didn’t like what you shot.
Also, be willing to re-shoot if it’s not what they wanted or expected. (And do not charge for reshoot.)
I don’t know what the standard is for adding pictures of people to your portfolio… make sure you get their permission before you shoot that you can use the photos for your professional portfolio - get it in writing. (I’m real selective about who can have pics of my kids, and what they do with them…)
Good luck.