Pricing for an architect shoot-

Have two good opportunities to shoot archetect photography. One for an architect firm who has lots of

projects to be shot and the other for a large brick company who has several properties each month to be shot.

Rented a TS lens for first job and told them i'd do it as trial. If they like the images, they pay me $100 per hr. They were fine with it. Depending on the total hours, i'm not likly to bill them full # of hrs as i've had to redo a couple shots and it's

probably taking me longer than a seasoned pro. I do have another job that pays the bills but somewhat flexible schedule.

 

The second company, who is a friend of mine, wants to know how i would charge for travel time, since some of the work is up to 2.5hr away. I also told him it would be $100 per hour including time in post.

 

Am i way off base with pricing or should i consider other pricing structure.

 

any thoughts are welcome.

thanks

Owen

Hi Owen,

 

That's somewhat of a regional question, but when I did architectural photography in the northeastern U.S. I charged $150. I only did that for single family dwellings. Commercial properties were a different matter, where I charged either a half or full day rate (and did not charge for processing).

 

In what little experience I had, I found there were two types of architectural photography out there. First there was single family home shoots for real estate agents and the occasional developer. You would think a $500,000 home seller would want good photographs, but they weren't often willing to spend $150. They wanted to spend $50, because the real estate agents were having to pay for that out of their commission. The other type is a high-end magazine-ready style artistic shoot, which in my area can get anywhere from $1000 to $2000 per shoot. This is not as often for selling a house as it is for architectural publications and things like that.

 

Ultimately you will have to find out what your own market can bear. But, $100 per hour doesn't seem like much to me (who is in the northeastern U.S.)

This is not real-estate photography which is bottom of the barrel in my opinion. The architects have money to spend for good photography providing you have what it takes to deliver such images. If you do have the talent and the goods then $100 per hour is robbery. Do you know how many usable images I can produce in an hour? Do you think I would sell 4 to 5 images for $100? I don't think so. You need to have a combination of an hourly rate with a per image purchased price. The $100 per hour is ok as long as you are selling them an additional per image price for each image they want to use. Don't short change yourself or our industry.

thanks Michael- what is your website.

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