...They have a nice new DSLR's they bought at Sam' Club that came complete with a Proclamation declaring the new owner to be a professional photographer.
I'm assuming your post is in jest.
To respond to Tireiron's previous post, and this will be my last response on the subject. Yes anyone who's been working in any of the art fields these past fifteen years can tell a horror story about clients either not being upfront and honest or being so ridiculously undercut that it boggles the mind. I've got friends in corporate sales who tell stories that are just as bad if not worse, it was recently reported on a multi-million dollar contract that doesn't account for even the operational costs required to do the contract and everything is going to court. A major city in the US is going to get sued big time because of an obvious lowball quote. Does that mean companies should adjust their price for these extreme examples? I photographed a project within an hours drive of Cleveland last year, similar to the OP's and billed for many thousands of dollars. So while you may quote one single rumor of a project going for a ridiculous rate that is not the norm. Your CODB is not a number pulled out of the sky, it's a number that keeps companies
in business and I know you know this.
My point and reason for my response on this thread is the education system has failed the independent artist and the forums (online) are the way people seem to be getting their education. I feel it's irresponsible both to our profession and even the OP to state the sky is falling especially on a media that has both a life span, up to years with google search, and is understandably inaccurate for relaying all the relevant info for any given question. What if your clients read your posts(fears) and then won't budge in any of your contract negotiations believing this was the way things are? (because quite frankly most of this thread will be taken out of context for an outsider who reads it)
If you want some horror stories relating to undercutting photographers, I've got some. I believe when the 5dm2 came out that entire year
one third of all the projects I photographed were reshoots. In that the client had hired someone for
too good of a deal and then needed to apologize to
their client because they would need to access the space again to have it rephotographed. Money lost on purchasing props for images that never arrived. I interviewed with one large interior design firm where they dumped a pile of prints on the conference table, one lady was practically in tears, they had paid this photographer a good chunk of their marketing budget, had scheduled with their clients all these spaces (busy - commercial spaces) and now they had all these images that they could NOT use. The quality of a photograph communicates the quality of the company. I can't reduce my costs even if I truly want to help. Hiring a cheap photographer is never going to be beneficial if in the course of the photography the architect or design firm lose their relationship with
their client because someone had no professionalism
I doubt you can even find an assistant in Ohio for a hundred dollars, none the less one who supplies equipment without a rental fee. To clam that the way into our profession is via lowballing projects is absolutely wrong, take some college classes, assist other photographers, etc.. Why is it for a lot of the lowballing photographers that sprouted up I've either heard horror stories or they are no longer in business. There was rumors that one was dodging legal action, moved in the middle of the night not to be sued.
It's not just wether we have an artistic eye it's our professionalism, our responsibility to hire help so the garbage can in front of the building gets moved, to put forth the effort to create accurate proposals so the client know's how much the final invoice is going to be without surprises. And our responsibility to keep our profession a profession.