!HELP! Commercial Restaurant/Hotel Photography Quote

[jaggedlens]

Hey Guys!

So i've recently been commissioned by a hotel to shoot one of the restaurants in their lobby. I've never done a commercial shoot before so i'm hoping you guys could give me some insight on what I can charge. It will be a two day event. The first day I will be shooting food (5 hours of work). The second day I will be shooting the space. Now the space shoot will involve something like 12 models, lighting and some rental equipment.

Now here is the kicker: Because the chef likes my work he already scheduled me and I came in this week and shot the food. The contact at the hotel said just send us your hourly in an invoice once the shoot is done. So now i've already done a 5 hour shoot and the next shoot with the models and the space is already scheduled for next week. I definitely don't want to undercut myself because I am a good photographer and I have a pretty decent amount of experience under me but I also don't want to charge a ridiculous amount either as to offend or make the person that referred me look bad. Also I know nothing about licensing. So like i said...HELP! lol

 

[vintagesnaps]

Help is right! it would have been better to submit your pricing and have a contract in place before you started shooting. You can find resources thru PPA or American Society of Media Photographers although the pricing might vary depending on where you live. PDN (Photo District News) often covers commercial photography. I don't know that there's a quick answer, you'll probably have some 'homework' to do.

 

[tirediron]

Bill the work at whatever your hourly/daily rate is. Don't forget to add in travel time, time spent on the 'phone making arrangements, etc, as well as the cost of equipment rentals and anything else. I would think that on straight time, you should be up around $2K + expenses. Licensing depends on a lot of factors: (1) Do they want exclusivity, or can you use the images elsewhere? Exclusivity costs... A lot! (2) How will the images be used? The larger the image(s) and the more of them that are used the more they cost. The more exposure, the more the cost; and (3) What is the period of use? It's virtually impossible to estimate this without knowing a LOT more about it, but I could easily see for a major restaurant with licensing for unlimited multi-media advertising that this could reach $5-7K depending on the number of images you give them.

 

[jaggedlens]

Bill the work at whatever your hourly/daily rate is. Don't forget to add in travel time, time spent on the 'phone making arrangements, etc, as well as the cost of equipment rentals and anything else. I would think that on straight time, you should be up around $2K + expenses. Licensing depends on a lot of factors: (1) Do they want exclusivity, or can you use the images elsewhere? Exclusivity costs... A lot! (2) How will the images be used? The larger the image(s) and the more of them that are used the more they cost. The more exposure, the more the cost; and (3) What is the period of use? It's virtually impossible to estimate this without knowing a LOT more about it, but I could easily see for a major restaurant with licensing for unlimited multi-media advertising that this could reach $5-7K depending on the number of images you give them.

Thank you for your detailed response! I think what they'd be looking for is unlimited rights to the photo. I'll prob be delivering about 20-30 16mp photos if that helps.