Dear list I�m struggling here with the old chestnut of charging for work and thought I would stir up the debate again.
I am just getting around to invoicing for a fully start to finnish digital job. I usually work on film and scan. The shoot was on a hired S1 capturing around 30 images of a theatre production. 7 of these were later chosen, by me, to be printed (inkjet) for press & PR. The fee and cost of printing fits into my usual pricing and I have no problem with. I have had many conversations with other photographers on this matter with my view being to charge per captured image, however, where is the line drawn. The saved 30 ish were themselves chosen from around 50 finally stored �in camera� when the job finished. Many were easily rejected for technical or aesthetic reasons. The 30 could therefore now be reduced to about 15 images. The 15 was again reduced to the short list of 9 images from which 7 different images were finally used to produce prints. It could easily have worked out that only 2 images were printed. The final requirement was for 18 prints. So what do I charge for, 50, 30, 15, 9, or 7 captured images? Then again maybe the answer is to charge for the hire (which I do not usually do) and forget capture charges or to increase my fee and not charge anything for capture or hire. I think my view is to charge a relatively high amount per capture for the 7 images finally used, plus charge for image prep time. Then archive the remaining work but charge for it if the theatre comes back for some different images. This may well have been made easier if the client had had the time to make selections and I had presented �contact sheets� of the original 50. In general a client may be after a single image but be presented with a choice of hundreds of digitally captured photographs from which to select the right one. Should the client pay for only the one they choose, and the photographer archive the others only if he/she thinks they may have future value, or should the client pay for all they are presented with as they would have been with film. So what should, or is, the industry standard for this sort of thing. All thoughts welcome. Jonathan =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
