pricing for a product photography shoot

<p>Hi Friends-<br>

I was just wondering if I could get some input on pricing for a shoot I was just asked to do.<br>

A packaging-design company recently asked me to shoot all of the images for their new website. This would consist of about 500 images, mostly of different sizes of similar paper bags. Probably about 25 slightly different lighting situations, same background.<br>

I figure that once the lighting is set up for each style of bag it will go pretty quickly.<br>

I'm thinking the job should take about 3 days. I'm going to do it at my own studio.<br>

I mostly do wedding and portrait work (available light, on-camera flash), have been assisting another table-top photographer for the last couple of months, but still feel a bit green in terms of pricing in this arena.<br>

Does $1200 sound reasonable? The budget is supposedly between $500-$2000-pretty big range.<br>

Thanks for any feedback!<br>

-Rikki</p>

<p>I don't do catalog work, but your price seems awfully low. Three days shooting, plus post-processsing of 500 files seems like a lot more work than $500-$2000 will pay for - at least around here (Silicon Valley).</p>

<p>Twenty-five setups across three 8-hour days seems pretty ambitious, that's one each hour, and depending on the products, shooting 20 per hour might be more than ambitious.</p>

<p>Post processing 500 images shouldn't take too long if you get the setups right, so 5 minutes times 500 pieces is only 40 hours of work.</p>

<p>I'd certainly count on having an assistant to keep track of what's been shot and what hasn't and what frame numbers match what product numbers. A friend shot 400 purses once, the logistics turned into a nightmare.</p>

<p>Instead of quoting a fixed price, you might consider a per hour rate with perhaps one rate for shooting and another for post processing.</p>

<p>My WAG is that this is a couple of weeks work, between organizing, shooting, and post processing, so $1200 works out to $7.50 an hour. Not my idea of a good price.</p>

<p>In general, if you have done this kind of work before, you should have some idea of how long it will take and how much work is involved. That should lead you quickly to a price.<br>

If you haven't done this kind of work before, consider declining the opportunity and passing it off to someone who knows what they're doing, because if you undertake the job and fail big time, you'll do serious injury to your reputation and credibility. Turning down a job does no damage.</p>

<p>Good luck<br>

<Chas></p>

<p>Three days? By yourself? I think you are either fooling yourself or will be disappointing your client. </p>

<p>I think you are not counting the time to do all of the pre-shoot and post shoot organizing of the items, as well your pre and post shoot production work.</p>

<p>$1200/500 = $2.40 per item.</p>

<p>I think you will be lucky if you can shoot 4-6 items in an hour. So let's say that is an average of 5 per hour.</p>

<p>5 x 2.40 = $12.00 per hour. It also equals 100 hours of work or 10 ten hour work days.</p>

<p>And that only includes getting the item up on the table, checking the lighting on the item so it shows it off in an okay manner, shooting it, checking it off your shot list, taking it off the table and grabbing the next one, with no post shoot processing. </p>

<p>If you have similar items around your house try shooting them and timing how long it takes you per item to make it look right.<br /><br /></p>

<p>I know this is late but, wow. $2000 limit and in three days? Considering that we sometimes pay outside studios $1200 for half-day, or $4000 full day to cover maybe three or four products, or supports for a single brochure.... suicide.</p>

<p>I do much of this in-house for our company, and the most I ever hit in a single day was about 50 small plastic connectors for a poster. Those were simple table shots, white and chrome parts on white sweep. You still have to factor in the post work: the renaming, keywords and cataloging (hours of keystrokes). Move up to props and putty and then it's round trips through photoshop for edits to remove.</p>

<p>Many times you will have customers attending the shoot, and they'll add in extra hours in lieu of communicating wants, giving direction and approvals. There simply is no piece rate. They are essentially renting your time and gear. What are you worth? In fact, do you really want to establish a reputation of being cheap, not competitive, but cheap?</p>