How many pictures for client

[Derrel]

I could certainly find a way to make that work. It's $200 for a few snaps. You know how to do location lighting pretty well compared to many people. Set the lens to F6.3 and Bang away with the strobe. Do three maybe four clothing changes in in about one hour,and you're done. Since you nailed the exposure and The lighting of each file in-camera,at the scene, your post processing is at most one hour you're making about 100 bucks an hour. I assume you have a day job, right?

Either you make the $200, or somebody shoots set for her and delivers all the images on the CD or DVD for less money. This is a reality for many people in 2019. The mother wants a few senior pictures of her daughter and 40 shots is not an unrealistic number of photographs.

 

[tirediron]

I charge $750 for a portrait session which includes all final images. For a family session I will usually deliver about 120-150 images. The variation of poses range between images of each family member alone, several different groupings within the family, as well as candids. A lot of my clients make an album with the images and print for wall art, etc.

So, we're probably billing very similar numbers at the end of the day, 'though a slightly different approach. I still prefer to deliver prints as my primary product because (1) it ensures the product they display meets my standards; some of the stuff that the local consumer labs (Wal-mart, et al) produce a pretty shabby product; (2) it ensure it is (or much more likely to be) displayed since a physical print can't be lost in a hard-drive somewhere; and (3) it means if they want more prints they come back to me.

From a personal perspective, I feel this trend of providing huge numbers of images to a retail client dilutes the product. Three to five images? that's something you can enjoy and appreciate. When it's 20, 30 or 100.... you get bored and tired of them before you're half-way through and the whole thing loses impact.

 

[Derrel]

People have gotten used to large image counts. Back in my day as a family photographer for a large, high-volume studio, we would shoot only five images for a single person, seven images for a couple, and 10 images for a family. Today? It is much more likely that we will shoot 50 images to get eight really good for a single person, and cull that down to perhaps the best eight.

I personally think it is foolish to shoot so tightly as we used to do back in the film days, but back then with each exposure costing roughly 1 dollar in total cost, such as film, developing film, proof processIng,and showing of the proofs, the real money was in print sales. And the real big money is still in sales of Prints.

In today's market a 24 x 30" canvas print should be priced somewhere around $450 or more, and even an 8 x 10" should be priced at at least $40.

But the cold hard reality is that today the days of shooting photos for money is no longer a business limited to a select few people, but with the advent of the iPhone in 2007 the world changed profoundly.Today, most people share photos via screen, and photographic enlargements are no longer the gold standard that they once were. In fact for many people today a really good photo that is low-res enough to immediately share on social media is worth a lot of money. I have seen some rather extensive sets of senior portraits shared on Facebook, and it is not uncommon for today's youth to make multiple weeks' worth of Instagram posts out of each professional shoot.

Imagine if you do a good job on this senior portraits set and you make $200 for one hour of shooting, and you get five referrals… Or even two referrals. There is a great tendency to Poo-poo low-paying shoots, but I don't consider $200 to be worth throwing away. No this is not a high end senior portrait session by any stretch of the imagination, but in today's market it's not $50 for all photos on a USB drive.
I have seen your style of photography,
And I think you could do this quite easily.The secret is not to kill yourself making the $200. Shoot quickly and efficiently and spend very minimal time on post processing. Do not turn a $200 shoot into $400 Worth of work on your part. Shoot this in Raw+ JPEG mode, and Nail your Lighting to produce fabulous in Camera images.

 

[Derrel]

As PaigeW mentioned, everyone's pricing structure is going to be different. Again I think you should look at this as an opportunity to test the waters, and to show your skill and your wonderful location Flash lighting work, which I think is your best area of skill.

Your style of photography looks "professional" to many people and I have seen some really lovely lighting work that you have done. I think you should be able to pound out this session with three or four clothes changes in short order. My opinion is that your style of photography looks really good, and obviously the mother of the student in question thinks that you are a photographer who is willing to shoot for hire.

A few decades ago, $200 was a lot more money than it is now to most people. I think you should consider that $200 is considered to be the going rate for a senior portrait session among a certain subset of the population. My experience is that with the right lighting, meaning a 400 W second strobe Pack, and one, two, or three flash heads, and a few light shaping tools, I can shoot straight out of the camera images that look pretty good. I know you
can as well.

Again, the secret is not to kill yourself and post processing should definitely be kept to a minimum .

 

[paigew]

@paigew If my math is right 150 images at $750 is only $5/image. When you say you "deliver", are you doing any editing to these or just dumping JPEGS?

I am absolutely not just dumping the images, my galleries are fully edited and ready for printing. Damn good deal, right?! I used to offer a tiered pricing where I had packages containing less images. As time went on, most of my clients chose to upgrade and purchase the entire session. At a certain point, it made more sense financially to drop my lower two packages and go all inclusive. It's been working really well for me and I have been at this pricing structure for a few years now.

I charge $750 for a portrait session which includes all final images. For a family session I will usually deliver about 120-150 images. The variation of poses range between images of each family member alone, several different groupings within the family, as well as candids. A lot of my clients make an album with the images and print for wall art, etc.

So, we're probably billing very similar numbers at the end of the day, 'though a slightly different approach. I still prefer to deliver prints as my primary product because (1) it ensures the product they display meets my standards; some of the stuff that the local consumer labs (Wal-mart, et al) produce a pretty shabby product; (2) it ensure it is (or much more likely to be) displayed since a physical print can't be lost in a hard-drive somewhere; and (3) it means if they want more prints they come back to me.

From a personal perspective, I feel this trend of providing huge numbers of images to a retail client dilutes the product. Three to five images? that's something you can enjoy and appreciate. When it's 20, 30 or 100.... you get bored and tired of them before you're half-way through and the whole thing loses impact.

Some day I would hope to offer in person ordering sessions. For now, I have to accept that I do not have the time to do so (on top of running a full time photo biz, I also homeschool my two kids!). Of course I do offer prints, wall art, and albums through my ordering gallery, but this is not my focus. I do understand what you mean about getting "too many" similar images. But my shooting style is somewhat documentary, no two shots are alike, and my clients really appreciate the unique special moments I am able to capture. Like I mentioned, a lot of my clients make a yearly album which is always so fun to look through.

 

[smoke665]

I am absolutely not just dumping the images, my galleries are fully edited and ready for printing. Damn good deal, right?!

Exceptional deal!! I think I need to follow you around for a day or two, it would take me forever to final edit 150 images for print, even using Lr and Sync!

 

[paigew]

I am absolutely not just dumping the images, my galleries are fully edited and ready for printing. Damn good deal, right?!

Exceptional deal!! I think I need to follow you around for a day or two, it would take me forever to final edit 150 images for print, even using Lr and Sync!

It takes me about 2-4 hours depending on the session (newborn sessions can take a bit longer). I try to always do my sessions at golden hour which keeps the lighting even and easy to edit. From there I have self made presets with my favorites settings that I apply after correcting wb and exposure. For culling, sometimes I will make a smart collection and cull on my ipad

 

[carlmeyer]

Maybe she meant to say $400 for 20 images, but even at that you can't spend any time in editing.

Most non-photographers are not aware of how much time, effort, and skill is involved in the editing process.

To get 40 good ones, you're going to shoot about 100 and whittle it down to 40 fairly decent shots and of those, edit maybe 10 or 20.

The lady sees only the shutter-snaps and does not see anything of lighting, posing, editing, or your capital investment.

I'd counter her offer by offering a $400 session and 6 8x10 prints. See if she's still interested.

I would not provide any digital files.

Excellent advice, Designer! I also thought that it could be a potential miscommunication when I read the initial post. Maybe she did mean $400 for 20 images! But again, not worth the time, effort and skill.

 

[smoke665]

It takes me about 2-4 hours depending on the session

Still not much time, sounds like you have your exposure and lighting dialed in pretty close up front. I've had a few runs where everything clicked, in Lr, but if it has to go in PS, I can easily spend 15 mins to an hour on one image.

 

[Derrel]

Seriously when you are using studio lighting either indoors or out if it takes more than one minute to edit a photo, then you were doing it not as well as you could have been doing it. I understand spending 15 minutes To an hour on one image, but seriously… For family Portraits, including high school senior photos, that is far too much time per image. If it takes one hour to edit you are really doing something that you should not be doing for your normal clients,the average Time editing spent per image should be closer to five minutes or less.

Unless one is going for an extremely polished,Or heavily retouched look, There is no reason for an image to take 15 minutes to correct.

 

[paigew]

It takes me about 2-4 hours depending on the session

Still not much time, sounds like you have your exposure and lighting dialed in pretty close up front. I've had a few runs where everything clicked, in Lr, but if it has to go in PS, I can easily spend 15 mins to an hour on one image.

I rarely use PS, only for cloning that I can't manage in LR.

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

 

[ac12]

I had a Lady approach me about senior pics and said she would pay 200 dollars for 40 images.
That just seems like a crazy amount of work for just 200..
What are your thoughts

She made the offer. Probably going low, to see what you will take.

I would counter offer, in detail with options.

And make it VERY CLEAR what is delivered (prints, hi-rez images, or low rez-images), and the degree of editing.
Is it on-site (add travel cost), or in your studio?​

She will either accept, settle for something in between, or reject.

 

[Derrel]

Eight scenes of five photos each, as was mentioned earlier. Less than one hour of actual shooting, and if done right "edited " in about an hour.

Hourly rate $100. Look at this the right way,and it becomes a simple,easy money maker. The key is in lighting it well, and shooting it right. Your straight out of camera JPEG images should look very good and in a few seconds you should be able to make them look even better...a quick grab and tweak of the curves in Lightroom,and you should be able to optimize each image in seconds. If there is only one image parameter that you adjust my preference would usually be the curves. I learned years ago how to greatly improve in the image by just adjusting the curves… If you adjust the exposure and the curves it takes a little bit longer,but the idea is to create a digital Image that is well lighted and well-exposed. If you get it right during the shoot there is no reason that you need to spend more than 30 seconds adjusting the image. Trust me on this.

Of course if you were after the ultimate in perfection, you could spend a lot of time adjusting each picture, but that is not what this is about.

I am not talking about slaving over the images in Photoshop, but quickly adjusting whatever needs adjusting to make the image look pleasing and good. You have a good camera and decent lighting gear, and have developed a sort of style, a sort of look.
My idea is that you can pound this session out quickly and make 200 bucks off of it. However if you envision this is some onerous task, delivering 40 JPEG images of some high school student, then this is clearly something that you should probably pass on.