Taking kids photo for a Daycare

[123sillyboy123]

I am new to this forum, not sure if this is the right place to ask. If not, admin please redirect my thread accordingly.

The principal of my daughter daycare approached me couple days ago, he asked me whether I have time to do their school photo this year. Their school has around 70 students and 10 staffs, what they need is some basic portrait for each kids and a class photo. He said I will create packages and so parents can buy the photo from me if they want to.

My question is, do I suppose to charge the school for my shooting work? what's the rule out there? I asked some buddies, some said I shoot it free and get paid by selling my photo to parents while other said I get paid for the shooting as well as for selling the artwork.

I want to hear from some other experienced photographer.. anyone has school photo shooting experience?? Do you charge the school for shooting? What's the charge supposed to be?

Thanks in advance.

 

[tirediron]

Generally, the parents pay all of the costs. If it is a particularily wealthy school, they may subsidize the cost to some degree, but AFAIK, that's not very common. In order to determine a fee schedule you will need determine your costs, and how long it will take you. I would budget 15-20 per student for shooting and processing.

Do you have insurance? I would strongly discourage ANYONE from taking on this sort of paid work if they are not fully licensed and insured.

 

[CCericola]

Hi There,

I have done daycare and preschool school portraits for 2 different studios. There is no fee for taking the pictures. You make money based on sales and so does the school. Make sure when you are pricing the packages that you take into account that 5-10% of the sales goes to the school a a fundraiser.

Lifetouch is the largest company out there doing school photos. I have seen packages range from $10 - $50. Lifetouch also provides proofs for daycares. This was something I always told my bosses we should do instead of prepay to compete with Lifetouch.

Is your daycare part of a corporate set of daycares like Knowledge Beginnings? If so they are under contract with a specific company so sales might be low if you come in after the corporate hired photog company was there. Let me know if you have any other questions.

 

[JohnBoy]

The question of prepaid versus proofs is an interesting one. Use proofs with schools and you will almost always have fewer sales. The reverse, as CCericola says, generally applies to daycare, kindys, preschools etc. The average sale per student and indeed the number of students who actually buy anything at all diminishes with increasing age of the students. There are many photographers doing this sort of work who will tell you that if you can get enough bookings, leave schools to the big corporate operators and go after the pre-schoolers.