preliminary evaluation worksheet

[ababysean]

Would anyone like to share what they use? or the types of questions on the worksheet?

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

4?

 

[KmH]

Uh, preliminary evaluation worksheet to evaulate, what?

 

[ababysean]

lol yea I guess I should clarify

I was told by many photogs they have their clients fill out a worksheet to get a better idea of what type of shoot they desire.
I am trying to make my own, but don't know where to begin.

 

[shmne]

I begin by asking the question, "So what do you want?"

That's just me, call me crazy :|

I use a worksheet too though, generally a blank piece of paper with my letter head on thick sheets of paper (forget the white), white laid. These sheets have a few generic questions, like time, location, product, emotional style, color choices, any brand or identity rules, and that's about it. The rest are just logical questions in my mind

 

[Derrel]

I am gonna try and type this out as dfast as I can, then go out to dinner... Well, break it down. Not sure what services you offer, but for example, there could be
1) Studio 2)Location 3) In-home 4) Work site types of shooting fees.

and 5) Prime time hours (after work, weekends) 6) off-peak or regular business 7) Super-Premium Days when ANYTHING, anything you shoot cost 3x more money... Christmas Week, Holidays, Extreme Cold weather, and Locations Involving Extreme Preparations and 8) On-call shoots, 3x to 4x normal fee, just to show up.

Just firing up the lights and showing up is one way to make money for you,especially today. If Mrs. Rich Parentothree is willing to get Mr. Rich Parentothree to come in off-peak, the sitting fee is XXX. IF however, she wants the family to be photographed on say, Saturday afternoon around 3 PM, or July 4th, or Labor Day or any other time when it will be a PITA, your shooting fee is TRIPLE,at least. As in treble, 3x. Or maybe even quadruple. If they wanna' hire you to come shoot a Midnight Ice Fishing Weigh-in at (lol if you want, but....)8:30 PM on a Saturday Night in January, that's an Extra Prep Shoot, and is 3x the money, just to fire a frame. Same for on-call, "Oh, she went into labor, can you show up? deals....3x, 4x...

You are selling exclusivity, and your time and skill set, so unless it is In-studio, Business Hours, there has to be a tiered rate system. Do you wanna waste your Labor Day Weekend for that 30-person family reunion shot for less than 3x to 4x your normal,reasonable rate? Please, say no, I do not!

Okay....so 8) Woman 9)Man 10) INFANT (notice, Infant is #10!! 11) Twins, which are 1+1 or "two, ie, two identical 1's) 12) 2-child 13)TEENAGER,single

14)14, two teenagers, the most annoying 15) the third ordinal in the teens, 3 teens 16)MW-C Man-Wife 1 child 17_Mw-2kids and so on....

there are a lot of typical pairings....."FG-22"...cripes, a family group of 22....PITA usually.....

EXFG-MG--Extended Family Group-Multi-Generational--old folks,middle age, kids, babies, etc...bring out the posing aids...stools,chairs,risers,apple boxes, lap pillows, puke rags, tickle feathers, and the 15 foot light stands....

wedding, family groups like MW-3C, MW-2C, MW-5C, work promotion portait, pre-engagement portrait session MW (man and woman), pre-engagement SS (same sex,now legal in California, and tact is needed!!!!), MR-MW Multi-racial MW, MR-MW2C,
all sorts of systematized things need to enter into family photography....

If somebody else does bookings, it helps to understand that a

MW-C, MW-2C, MW-Infant-Child, MW-3Child, 3Gen-3Fem 4Gen--

2C-Inf 2 kids and an infant Tod-Toddler 2-Tod (nightmare!!!!) Inf-Tod (SUPER common!!!!) TWN-MF twins-boy and girl TWN-M-F-Ad twins, male female, adult

Permutations. Say a MW-2C, or a man and wife, 2 kids books a sitting. If you are smart, and you really want to make sales, you will photograph Dad alone, Mom alone, parents together, bring in the 2 kids, and finish up with the 2 kids, then each kid alone. Big sellers can be-the Dad, alone...this can be lucrative!!!! Getting a man in to the studio can be very difficult, and his wife or his mom,will buy prints of it. MW, self-explanatory, the couple. The 2 kids,self explains. Have you thought about mixed and blended families??? You need to...

Also MW does NOFT MEAN Man and Woman....if it is a B/S or brother sister, you need to know that...posing and approach is entirely different AND you have two,separate,discrete purchasers. THink about that. There can even be THREE purchasers in a B/S...the man, his sis, and their mom..or grandma...

Dad and the BOYS....mom and the girls...can also be big sellers, as can be the "twins" and "little sis" or big sister (aka Sissy)....four girls and a boy??? Dad and grandpa would jiust loooove to have an individual shot of that single girl, or boy....please, it sounds awful, but I have encountered families where hate to say it, but they kept trying to get "one of the opposite gender" and it took 2,3,4, births...

What makes these divided,smaller groups sell is in-laws, grandmas, ad blended family situations, plus that good old same-sex bonding....ie, dad and the boys, mom and the girls...that adds 50% to the pictures right there...

So....what services do you offer? studio only locations? in-home worksite/business? pre-engagement/engagement/wedding/ wed + recep / reception only Full-day half day single shooter multi-shooter
Super Deluxe -Deluxe- Standard - Economizer (4 levels)

Daylight Daylight + AC generator Daylight + Scrims: this is how big is the group, and how much are they willing to pay and what is the estimated ROI.... For a MW2C on a beach....you can make XXX pretty easily and might be tempted to do it aylight only or daylight + refelctor fill and no assistant but If it is a huge family group of 3 generations of siblings in their mid-to late 40's to 60's...there might be a HUGE sales potential,and they might have absiolutely no qualms about paying for what it wil cost to get that priceless family group shot of three generations...

I hate to say this, but if a grandma is involved and she is well-off or middle class or even poorish, she can drop $2,3,occasionally more on a once-in-a lifetime family session that involved her brood....her two daughters, their hubbies, and 12 grandkids...and surprisingly POORER people often are the ones who will, more often than wealthy middle-agers, really drop some coin on family photography...the see the value of family photos. So, when you do tyour consultation, it pays to try and find out who will be coming to view the proofs...so, ask about who will be at the session, "where do they live", stuff like that...

A mom and dad who fly up from Florida and are in their 70's with the session being booked by the OLDEST DAUGHTER, or a 50th Anniversary party can mean a big sale, or a before-it's-too-late once in a lifetime multi-gen shoot,etc,etc,etc. Try and, seamlessly as possible, figure out who is paying/booking/initiating/attending the session, and the proof viewing and sales session.

 

[misstwinklytoes]

... holy crap Derrel.

 

[ababysean]

wow! Thanks so much!

 

[ababysean]

wow! Thanks

 

[shmne]

Lol Derrel I must assume this is a joke. No one in their right mind would ever use a model like that.

 

[PerfectlyFlawed]

Holy sh*t Derrel.... lol
I got half way through that and it started sounding foreign, haha.

 

[Derrel]

Model? This is how family photography really works...you can't schedule a Family Group of say 30 back to back with another similar group in most studios...you'd be overrun with 60 people in a space where the fire code wouldn't allow it.. your parking lot might not even be large enough.

If you want to sell a lot of retail photography, you have to know how the business works. That's how it actually works if your business is run like a business. After 10,12,14 days, you will have all sorts of orders backing up....you need some way to plan and handle the sets you shoot. You need to know if it's a MW-2C set or 2C set of proofs you need to look through....people call in over the phone, inquiring about their proofs, their orders, etc,etc.
When a woman says, "My husband and I came in," the person handling that telephone call needs to KNOW, exactly, what orders are NOT the ones to be bothered with.

This is just a way to run a real business that has say 5 or 6 people running the studio,and actually having a clientele of real people. You need to be able to schdule different kinds of sets...MW...a man and his wife....okay, Easy, Fast. FG-12, much more involved, usually a sibling group, 2 sisters and 1 brother, and their spouse, and 2 kids each, so a Family Group...but if you bring in this Family Group and shoot say JUST ALL group shots, and then let them walk out the door, well, there goes 90 percent of your money; it is not a family group ONLY, it is three,small modern nuclear families, with a history as part of an original, birth family. See that???

Nancy, born in 1960, her sister Bethany born 1962, and Chuck, born 1966...originally the Stone kids...now all married, each have 2 kids per spouse...you need to shoot the girls and their brothers ALONE, and sell that to them, and to their parents, who are now 80-ish. Then all the grandkids. And then each girl wants a shot of HER, and her hubby, and her and her buggy and their kids. So, two individual men, alone. And then, they want a shot of JUST their kids, so thats 2 - 2- 2 of the kids, and then they want ALL the kids ie "the cousins" whom are also :"the grandkids", for them, and for their parents, ie Nanna and Boppa Stone, Nanna and papa Wilson, and Nana and her second husband Wilson and one for Grandpa and Trophy Wife Whatsername.

So, the MW set, the man and his wife is easy, and there are three combos--Man, Wife, Mand and Wife together. Very simple. Decent sales potential. But it pales, totally, in comparison to a MW2c-MW2C-MW2C, which is what a family of two sisters and their brother and three spouses, and three sets of two kids each couple really is. Typically, this kind of a FG-12 situation involves one or two couple and their kids driving or flying in from out of town for a special occasion....if that special occasion is a premium time, you need to charge a lot more money because a simple couple of MW2C sets could KILL the opportunity to take on say, two or three much,much more-lucrative sessions with nine or ten times the money at stake.

 

[shmne]

I'll be honest I didn't read it all the way through the first time :gah:

This is actually an excellent write up for someone doing the family photog thing Since it is something I'd never touch with a 10ft pole it sounded ludicrous at first, but once I really read through it, everything makes sense.

 

[IlSan]

Two thumbs up for that one Derrel!! :thumbup::thumbup:

 

[PerfectlyFlawed]

Model? This is how family photography really works...you can't schedule a Family Group of say 30 back to back with another similar group in most studios...you'd be overrun with 60 people in a space where the fire code wouldn't allow it.. your parking lot might not even be large enough.

If you want to sell a lot of retail photography, you have to know how the business works. That's how it actually works if your business is run like a business. After 10,12,14 days, you will have all sorts of orders backing up....you need some way to plan and handle the sets you shoot. You need to know if it's a MW-2C set or 2C set of proofs you need to look through....people call in over the phone, inquiring about their proofs, their orders, etc,etc.
When a woman says, "My husband and I came in," the person handling that telephone call needs to KNOW, exactly, what orders are NOT the ones to be bothered with.

This is just a way to run a real business that has say 5 or 6 people running the studio,and actually having a clientele of real people. You need to be able to schdule different kinds of sets...MW...a man and his wife....okay, Easy, Fast. FG-12, much more involved, usually a sibling group, 2 sisters and 1 brother, and their spouse, and 2 kids each, so a Family Group...but if you bring in this Family Group and shoot say JUST ALL group shots, and then let them walk out the door, well, there goes 90 percent of your money; it is not a family group ONLY, it is three,small modern nuclear families, with a history as part of an original, birth family. See that???

Nancy, born in 1960, her sister Bethany born 1962, and Chuck, born 1966...originally the Stone kids...now all married, each have 2 kids per spouse...you need to shoot the girls and their brothers ALONE, and sell that to them, and to their parents, who are now 80-ish. Then all the grandkids. And then each girl wants a shot of HER, and her hubby, and her and her buggy and their kids. So, two individual men, alone. And then, they want a shot of JUST their kids, so thats 2 - 2- 2 of the kids, and then they want ALL the kids ie "the cousins" whom are also :"the grandkids", for them, and for their parents, ie Nanna and Boppa Stone, Nanna and papa Wilson, and Nana and her second husband Wilson and one for Grandpa and Trophy Wife Whatsername.

So, the MW set, the man and his wife is easy, and there are three combos--Man, Wife, Mand and Wife together. Very simple. Decent sales potential. But it pales, totally, in comparison to a MW2c-MW2C-MW2C, which is what a family of two sisters and their brother and three spouses, and three sets of two kids each couple really is. Typically, this kind of a FG-12 situation involves one or two couple and their kids driving or flying in from out of town for a special occasion....if that special occasion is a premium time, you need to charge a lot more money because a simple couple of MW2C sets could KILL the opportunity to take on say, two or three much,much more-lucrative sessions with nine or ten times the money at stake.

Makes a lot more sense now! ( btw, thanks for the PM info on this.)
:thumbup::thumbup:

Need more educated, photo smart, and C/C Generous people like yourself on this forum.lol