Here's a few from a shoot I did yesterday. C&C please

[page_tyson]

A friend's sister asked me if I would take some pictures of her three kids. This was the first time someone has paid me for their pictures. I'm just curious to hear someone else's point of view on the deal (She says that she loves them). she paid me $30 for 1/2 hour, 3 kids, and will end up with about 50 pretty good pictures and I plan on editing most all of them. I'll give her a cd of the photos also. So here's my question, I know I gave her a good deal, but looking at the quality of the pictures are they good enough to charge others for similar shoots? Or should I continue do do free ones till I get a better feel for my camera and composing portraits? (I've only had a camera now for 6 months so I'm still not quite confident with my work).

1.

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2.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_J7ue77DSmF4/S_CTDw1DjnI/AAAAAAAAA2I/mJCK6z6rNGI/s1600/IMG_6788e2b.jpg

3.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

I like your images.
I normally don't care for tilted images, but I actuall ly it in the first one. Love the editing on these. Only complaint is that he girls skin is a little blown.

As far as charging, most people charge a sitting fee, and then charge for images. Are you charging for that CD of images they can print an infinite amount of pictures from?

Are you getting paid adequately for your time? How many hours did it take you to edit all the images?

 

[page_tyson]

I'm not charging for the cd, I had a hard time asking for anymore than that for my first time and they are pretty close family friends. The editing has taken about an hour so far, I'll probably do another 45 min to an hour to finish them up. I know that $30 isn't a lot for 3-4 hours of work, but if I could spread the word and get more clients I'd love to make enough to upgrade my stuff and keep funding the hobby. Thanks for the comments, critiques and compliments.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

The trouble you will run into, is word of mouth will spread about your quality AND your price. When you start raising your prices, people will squawk. "But you only charged so-and-so $30."

You will also need to be consistant with how many images people get, because again, if one knows their friend got 50 images, and they only get 30...

Personally, if I were getting into portraiture, I would do it for free until I was comfortable charging a fair (market) price for my services, and I knew I was getting consistant results.

 

[cailinp]

Wow, what pp program are you using and with what camera. I love this photos and have been trying to achieve this same look. What kind of editing did you do with the little girls eyes? They look so great!

 

[page_tyson]

I have photoshop, but I didn't do a lot to them. The girls eyes were already pretty easy, if you want to lighten them up a bit create a new layer and change the layer opacity to 50% and the brush opacity to 50% and paint white over them and then adjust them to your liking. Or if you're familiar with actions you can find some actions that will help with that too.