We did a photo shoot for a girl's senior portrait(s) on Saturday - our first for pay.
Every job we do, we conclude that we're underchaging.
The original deal was an hour's on-location shooting for $100, which gets the client CDs with all of the images and then it's up to them to get prints made.
This gig ran three hours, but we stuck with the contracted $100 price. It looks like most of our business will be by word of mouth from satisfied clients, so we resolved to suck it up and give it our best shot and charge more up front next time.
The original plan when the mother contacted us a couple of months ago was to wait for the leaves to change to their fall colors and we penciled Saturday, Oct. 15 in as a possible date. By late last week, it was obvious that the colors would just not be there yet, so I assumed we would reschedule. The mom called at 8 a.m. Saturday to confirm that we were going to be at their plate at 9 a.m. I noted that the trees were still pretty green, but she felt we should go ahead because it was a bright sunny day.
Bright sunny days may be nice for landscape photography, but they make for deep facial shadows and lots of contrast that is bad news for portraiture. Nevertheless, we threw all of our gear into the back of the Subuaru Forester and drove to their place.
The girl and her family live on a farm near us and have horses, so they went with mostly equestrian themes.
The first outfit they had for her was a white satin gown straight out of Lord of the Rings and the plan was for the girl to wear it while walking her snow-white horse through a field. Sounds fine in concept, but white horses and white satin gowns in brilliant sunlight make for a huge tonal range that exceeds the capacity of our digital cameras and is way beyond the even more limited total range of film.
Consequently, about two-thirds of those images were so blown out with light overload that they were unusable, although we did get a few that are pretty decent.
Then she changed into jeans, t-shirt and vest and we did a series of shots of her riding the white horse.
Next, we put her in a cowboy hat and posed her at the door to the horse's stable.
The girl is a classical pianist, so her mom next dressed her in a red satin gown and we posed her at the keyboard of their baby grand in an impossibly small music room - thank God for wide-angle lenses. Then mom put her on top of the piano in a Jessica Rabbit-type set of poses.
Finally, the girl changed into a t-shirt and cammo pants to pose with her cat.
We ended up shooting about 900 images, which we ended up paring down to about 670 usable pictures, including 63 that we recommended as candidates for the final selection.
I've not done the math to figure out how much we made per hour, counting shooting and photo prep, because I know I would be very depressed. I'm pretty sure it would be less than the current Federal minimum wage.
But what the hell? It's a start and, if they like our work, they'll show it to friends and that could lead to more (appropriately priced) business.
1 comment:
Absolutely the correct attitude. Bravo!
And dont forget when next speaking to them to mention that you purposely undercharged as a special package because you are counting on her to make up the difference with word of mouth advertising. If she is anything like my customers, she will be more than happy to.
Customers LOVE it when you ask "favors" in lieu of asking for more money in the form of advertising to all they know. If you have extra flyers or business cards ask her to hand them to her daughters friends ( think past the grad pictures to future bride pictures)
Great work but you are right the white on white and sun look like it was a b*tch to shoot, and I know zilch about photography!
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