Photo Shoot

What would you charge to drive 30 minutes away, shoot 20 useable group photos

(about 40 rough) of a group of people (it's for a large cosmetic company & going

on a postcard.)

I charged $115-was that high?

Low. Let's say your time is worth $50/hour. Your one-hour round trip is taking up $100 worth of your time right there, not counting fuel. Your shoot HAS to have taken you at least a couple of hours to set up and execute, and then there's the time it takes to work over your shots afterwards, communicate with the customer, and deliver to them the finished work. Take into acccount the time it takes you to draft and chase around the paperwork, the purchase and wear/tear on your equipment, your taxes, etc... if you do the math, you were essentially charging well below minimum wage for a professional service. It's up to you if you're comfortable at that rate (which CANNOT be profitable in the traditional sense, but you may find important value in the experience, exposure, and portfolio/resume side effects), but please keep in mind that there is now a company of 40 people out there that thinks they can get a photographer to come on site, direct them into a good pose, shoot, process, and deliver images for their commercial use... for less than it would cost to order pizza for that same group of people.

I'd say it was about 500 -1000% too low.

I really had NO idea what to charge and I admitted it to the lady who organized the shoot, she is an aquaintance that I met through my soon to be ex's work she is getting a friend rate. If I had an SLR I would have charged more, I was out there with my point & shoot on a tripod-but this lady didn't care! She told me to do whatever I could!\

The whole thing took about 2 1/2 hours-drive included, I will be doing minimal post processing work.

Even for point and shoot work I bet that if you added up all of your time and real expenses you'd see that you were getting around minimum wage for your efforts.

Yep, way too low! That's the bad news. The good news is that you now have a reference point to judge future work from. I know that you felt odd doing it with a point and shoot but as you said, she really didn't care. It would seem more professional if you had an SLR, but in the end, what matters the most is the final result.

Thanks for your help guys, I will know better next time...!