On 6 May 2004, at 18:03, Richard Lewisohn wrote:
I can't really understand the concept of charging per frame shot given the fact that I shoot the amount of frames I do to make sure I've got the shot. It's my own decision to shoot 10 frames or 100 frames of a portrait in order to get the one I want. I can't see that it's justified to make this into a cost centre
The camera has a limited life. The number of shots it takes is directly related to this life in the same way a car depreciates with every mile. More importantly it will be redundant technology in two years. How much justification do you need? Did you read the preamble to the manifesto?
I present clients with either 'contact' sheets or online galleries of jobs and charge an equivalent amount to what it would have cost them on film. Its win win. they gain from some editing of what they are presented with and speed of turnaround I gain some claw-back of my investment. If you do not present clients with a choice by selecting yourself then I suppose you will have to build the cost, in terms of your time (therefore money), into your fee.
Therefore although I do want to charge a fair rate for 'post-production' I think it would be ingenuous to expect payment for every single thing that happens to a file once it leaves the compactflash card.
If it takes time it needs to be accounted for somewhere in your fee structure. Even emailing a quick low res version should have a cost attached. Incidentally do you shoot RAW? If not why not. I charge for the processing of RAW which cover the time and minor post production. Again this can be justified as win win to any client exept the odd editorial pic editor who has got used to no brain dump and run photographers lowering professional standards and pricing.
More troublesome is getting a fair rate for post-production when clients expect to agree a set fee before the shoot without knowing whether there will be five or thirty shots that they will want in finished form from a particular day's shoot.
Its up to you to set the boundaries for the shoot.
I can certainly understand why a client wouldn't want to hear after the event that I have spent 10 hours at �100 an hour doing post-production on their job. And sadly I've yet to find a client who would give the go-ahead for this sort of charge. I'm sure things are different in the world of advertising photography; I'm mostly working for design consultancies.
Build the time spent dust spotting and balancing the image into the processing fee. If your style of work involves a great deal of post production then make any client aware that if they want that style there will be a cost. You should be able to accurately estimate this cost based upon experience.
Does anyone get away with that in the U.K? I wish I could! Wrong or not I include a CD sent in the post as part of my fee. The CD itself costs a few pence and a stamp 27p.
And the computer to do it on? and the replacement writer? the software to make the file readable across formats? the time the computer is tied up whilst burning? stock? Charge for it! Again did you read the manifesto?
If I was a superstar advertising photographer I might try and get away with it, but if you're charging $75 for a CD, you are actually saying that your fee is $75 more than you are stating. How can digital images be supplied to clients other than by burning a CD or DVD?
Are you saying that you would previously not have charged for film because it was needed to do the job anyway? Your logic astounds me. I would agree that $75 is rather high and would be perceived as excessive.
I choose to use a pricing model which relates to my days of shooting film. The clients understand the system as familiar, only 'processing' occasionally requires some justification most notably in the editorial world where other photographers have poisoned the pool by accepting bad practices and allowing the p**s to be taken out of them with rates.
Kind regards Jonathan Keenan
Jonathan Keenan Photography
Studio for hire; Manchester city centre, UK
http://www.jonathankeenan.co.uk/studio.html
Jonathan Keenan Photography
Studio for hire; Manchester city centre, UK
http://www.jonathankeenan.co.uk/studio.html
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