Senior portraits ?

[SpeedTrap]

IF you do this...I would make sure that your daughter is present for each and EVERY photo shoot that she VOLUNTEERED you to do.

And make sure you teach her how to do the retouching. and then give her 10% of each sesion.
If she has to do the work for only a little bit of the money she might not be so quick to offer it for so little.

 

[zerofourtwo]

I personally wouldn't go so far to say it's not worth your time, but i would change some things. For one if you just give your shots to a client on a cd you pretty much have given up all digital rights to photo, which would allow your client to run down to walmart and print them on poor quality paper, or even worse crop/create incorrect proportioning to the image. Everyone is a potenial customer and if someone sees those prints in poor quality your name will go with it. I highly advise that you if you are to jump on board with this and offer your services that you sign up with a print company like WHCC (whitehouse custom colour) then you can offer print packages to your customer that will be in the highest quality. People pay good money for photography services and expect good quality in return.

 

[msf]

I personally would love to have that opportunity just for the experience. Its obviously way cheap at $50, but the only way to really get more business is word of mouth. I do like the idea of $50 for the session and additional money for the prints or cd. I say go for it!

It seems the people that are complaining that this is unbearably to cheap, etc, are the ones that are loosing business to people that are offering their services for so cheap.

Another perspective is if you get 10 clients this way, your getting experience with senior portraits, your making $500 before print expenses, and you can turn these 10 clients into school reps for you to bring you more business, at a more reasonable price.

For $50, you dont have to do a ton of work, give them a 15 or 30 min session, so some quick processing and show them the best of the group, and let them order a couple prints. Then try to encourage them to spend extra and buy more.

Then put the proofs on a facebook fan page, and send fan requests to them or alerts, so they will "become a fan" and send links to their friends and family on facebook.

This could be a pretty good opportunity and not a bad marketing idea.

Teaching the kid how to do processing, and once they reach a level of competency that your happy with, why not get them to do the busy work for min wage. : )

for an added "bonus", give each client some rep cards with your info on the back, for them to give to their friends. Free advertising. Be sure to let them know the current price you want to charge for this.

 

[den9]

maybe 50 an hour, then charge them for prints and a cd. you would still have to do touch ups i guess.

 

[phocus78]

Yeh I thought you were talking about old people at first.

 

[kkamin]

You are going to spend some time before the shoot preparing, say 15-45 minutes.

The shoot will probably take an hour.

Breaking down after the shoot will take say, 20 min.

There might be some driving time involved.

Touching up the photos well, would take, say, another 1-2 hours.

Then a little time to deliver them, or have your daughter deliver them. 15 min - 30 min.

In the end you are making around $10 an hour. If you pay taxes, you'll take home $7.

Then there is overhead, CD-ROMS, wear and tear to your camera and equipment, price of your computer, software. And all the time you've invested in studying and practicing photography.

If you are looking to build a portfolio, I could see someone doing this.
Otherwise, as a business model, I don't see it being worth it. And people are right about having people print the images themselves--Walmart doesn't care if the skin tone is too cyan.

 

[craig]

Once again they OP has yet to chime in. Kind of a bummer.

)'(

 

[Actor]

At first I thought you were talking about senoir citizens! :blushing:

Me too!:lmao:

I've been a senior citizen long enough to figure out that this phrase does not apply to me.

 

[Actor]

Looking in my checkbook I find two entries: one dated 11 Aug 2009 for $16 for senior pictures of grandchild #1, the other dated 16 Sep 2009 for $22 for senior pictures of grandchild #2. In both cases I had to ante up before the shoot. These were the cheapest packages the photographers were offering (different schools, different photographers). I assumed that both photographers were making a profit. I did not ask for nor, as far as I know, receive any discount. Maybe they just break even, or take a small loss, on the basic package and make a profit on those who buy more expensive packages.

 

[SpeedTrap]

Looking in my checkbook I find two entries: one dated 11 Aug 2009 for $16 for senior pictures of grandchild #1, the other dated 16 Sep 2009 for $22 for senior pictures of grandchild #2. In both cases I had to ante up before the shoot. These were the cheapest packages the photographers were offering (different schools, different photographers). I assumed that both photographers were making a profit. I did not ask for nor, as far as I know, receive any discount. Maybe they just break even, or take a small loss, on the basic package and make a profit on those who buy more expensive packages.

I think you may be talking about School Pictures, Senior portraits are a very different thing.
School Pictures and packages are done in a makeshift studio at the school and are all the same. Senior Portraits are done in a one on one sesion with a photographer at various locations and are more casual and almost always privide better results.

 

[Actor]

I think you may be talking about School Pictures, Senior portraits are a very different thing.

I did not know that. I bet that most people don't know that. I speculate that RobDavis305's daughter did not know that. Maybe even RobDavis305 himself does not know that.

Therein lies his out. When people call just tell them the $50 offer is for "school pictures" and not "senior portraits." Apologize for any misunderstanding. In fact he can modify the deal any way he wants and simply say the deal offered by his daughter was a misunderstanding. Should work. After all, Best Buy did not have to honor that advertisement of theirs that offered a Hi Def TV for $20.

As long as I'm speculating, I'll further speculate that RobDavis305 is not a professional photographer, otherwise he would not be asking if the $50 thing was a good deal. He'd know.

 

[msf]

Hmm, no word back from Rob how he handled this opportunity. Im curious.

 

[fiveoboy01]

It seems the people that are complaining that this is unbearably to cheap, etc, are the ones that are loosing business to people that are offering their services for so cheap.

No, the people who say it's too cheap know what they're talking about from experience, and know what's involved with running any kind of money-making venture.

Another perspective is if you get 10 clients this way, your getting experience with senior portraits, your making $500 before print expenses, and you can turn these 10 clients into school reps for you to bring you more business, at a more reasonable price.

The sheer time involved with shooting 10 students and then having to cull through images and edit the best ones will bring his hourly rate down to about nothing.

And it will bring him MORE of the business he DOESN'T want, IE people who want something for nothing.

For $50, you dont have to do a ton of work, give them a 15 or 30 min session, so some quick processing and show them the best of the group, and let them order a couple prints. Then try to encourage them to spend extra and buy more.

I could see $50 for one 15-20 minute sitting, one outfit, 40-50 shots total and 6-8 "final" photos after processing. To me that's still on the cheap side... I'm willing to bet the OP will get sucked into WAY more than that.

This could be a pretty good opportunity and not a bad marketing idea.

Good opportunity yes. Good marketing idea, no. Now everyone knows you charge next to nothing and if you try to raise your prices, you won't get business.

Learn what you're doing, then charge competitive prices, otherwise you'll just attract cheapos from the beginning.

We don't even know if the OP knows how to do processing of if he has the equipment to do so. Does he have sufficient equipment to at least do a "pretty good" picture? I'm wondering if he does. After all, he's asking if $50 is the right price:meh:

for an added "bonus", give each client some rep cards with your info on the back, for them to give to their friends. Free advertising. Be sure to let them know the current price you want to charge for this.

How is it free advertising? He has to pay for the cards....

 

[kkamin]

It seems the people that are complaining that this is unbearably to cheap, etc, are the ones that are loosing business to people that are offering their services for so cheap.

No, the people who say it's too cheap know what they're talking about from experience, and know what's involved with running any kind of money-making venture.

Another perspective is if you get 10 clients this way, your getting experience with senior portraits, your making $500 before print expenses, and you can turn these 10 clients into school reps for you to bring you more business, at a more reasonable price.

The sheer time involved with shooting 10 students and then having to cull through images and edit the best ones will bring his hourly rate down to about nothing.

And it will bring him MORE of the business he DOESN'T want, IE people who want something for nothing.



I could see $50 for one 15-20 minute sitting, one outfit, 40-50 shots total and 6-8 "final" photos after processing. To me that's still on the cheap side... I'm willing to bet the OP will get sucked into WAY more than that.

This could be a pretty good opportunity and not a bad marketing idea.

Good opportunity yes. Good marketing idea, no. Now everyone knows you charge next to nothing and if you try to raise your prices, you won't get business.

Learn what you're doing, then charge competitive prices, otherwise you'll just attract cheapos from the beginning.

We don't even know if the OP knows how to do processing of if he has the equipment to do so. Does he have sufficient equipment to at least do a "pretty good" picture? I'm wondering if he does. After all, he's asking if $50 is the right price:meh:

for an added "bonus", give each client some rep cards with your info on the back, for them to give to their friends. Free advertising. Be sure to let them know the current price you want to charge for this.

How is it free advertising? He has to pay for the cards....

To piggy back your tough love points, if the OP does not have a lot of experience with professional posing, working with strangers (who probably don't want to be there), and in producing professional level portraiture, this could be disappointing for both parties.

But when I think about it now, I think fifty is fine if he is on the cusp of breaking into being a freelance professional and needs padding for his portfolio and more practice (meaning, he is good enough to actually do the job, has a small bag of tricks for tight spots, but needs more practice on making the mechanics of the shoot go smoother and in being creative and spontaneous in the moment, so things go effortlessly when he does charge $150/an hour)