From: frank theriault
I'm in the process of starting a part time photography business.
Here's the idea:
You've got a kid in Little League baseball, minor league hockey, high
school football, soccer, whatever. For a fee, I show up with cameras
in hand and take hundreds of game photos, concentrating on your kid.
It doesn't have to be your kid, it can be anyone you want to pay me to
photograph.
Then I take the best of them, we look through the proofs and you
choose which ones you want have prints made of.
I guess it would be a bit like what Dave Brooks used to do at horsie
shows except rather than take the photos and try to sell them, I'd be
paid in advance to take the pix (my fee would include one free 8x10,
after that you'd pay per print - I'd say my retail plus 50% is
realistic, but I wouldn't tell the clients that).
Figure out what you need to charge as an hourly rate & figure the
average little league game is going to run at least 2 hrs. Set your
rates accordingly 2 hrs, 3 hrs, 4 hrs ...
I'd also charge more for the prints. You have to cover your overhead in
addition to the costs of the prints themselves, which includes the time
you spent on post process and proofing.
Figure if you're going to spend two hours shooting some kid, you're
going to spend at least another two hours with the mom going through
those photos while she picks out the ones she wants. And it seems like
they're more likely to squawk about the prices if you try to set them
too low than if you set them too high.
It seems to be that if they think you don't value your time very highly,
neither will they.
I'm still working out my own pricing, but I'm figuring on $150 an hour.
If I shoot for 1 hour, I know I'm probably going to spend another hour
in post processing and at least an hour presenting the finished images
to the client. I'm going to charge for the shooting time & the post
process time.
My prices for prints will pay for the time I spend setting up, breaking
down and presentation as well as the cost of the print itself. PLUS a
profit.
If you can find a copy there's a very good video/webinar by Ann Monteith
called "Pricing for Profit".
I've done a bit of research and no one else in town provides this
exact service, near as I can tell. There are guys and gals doing
sports photography, but they'll do a whole team and charge like $2000.
Or, they'll do something similar to Dave where they shoot an event,
post the pix and parents are invited to look online and order the
prints which are then mailed to them by some printing service in the
USA.
So, this would be a more individualized and customized arrangement,
where I'd concentrate on a single player over the course of an event
so the person(s) who hired me could choose from hundreds of photos.
One other thing I'd look into is custom Baseball Cards (or football
cards, soccer cards, ... sports cards - trading cards) for the kid to
give out to their friends.
My question is: What does anyone think I should charge for that one
time (up front!) fee? I'm just starting out, so I can't go too high,
but I also don't want to look like some amateur hack by underpricing.
I will be able to show the baseball pix I took this summer along with
a few other events in my on-line ad, but I don't have a web site so
I'm not going to look terribly professional as it is. If this thing
goes well, a more professional presentation will be invested in.
I won't tell anyone what I'm thinking my fee range is just yet, so as
not to skew answers. I'll be most interested to hear what you have to
say.
Thanks in advance for your input!!
cheers,
frank
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