My first commisioned shoot!

TristanP

Looks like I'll have a shoot in the next week or two of some products for a local company. In addition to being excited and a little nervous, I have some questions. Pricing. Ugh. I'm getting the book Shay praises in the sticky, but I'm also looking for some feedback from you guys. There will be 1-2 dozen metal food service items that they need maybe 50 total shots of for their website, powerpoint presentations, and some brochures. Jpegs or tiffs are fine. I'll be meeting with the owner early next week to scope out the facility and products themselves. Should be fairly simple light tent-type stuff. Is this thing generally done by the piece, the hour, what? TIA and wish me luck.

Catto

Pricing commercial work

TristanP wrote:

...There will be 1-2 dozen metal food service items that they need maybe 50 total shots of for their website, powerpoint presentations, and some brochures...Is this thing generally done by the piece, the hour, what? TIA and wish me luck.

Okay, I'll jump in here - this is usually priced for commercial purposes on the value to the client of the images, which in part is calculated by the number of images, the number of regions (US only, North America, Europe, Worldwide), the length of time (1 year, 2 year, 5 year or in perpetuity), the number of media (print / web / editorial / advertising / TV / Cinema / billboard), and a few other things.

It's a bit of a nebulous calculation at times, yes; and includes other factors like what's your cost of doing business (overheads, salary & expenses divided by number of jobs per year, to put it loosely) vs. what other competitors in your area would do the same work for, or could they in fact do it themselves if pressed. So...there are a lot of factors.

Length of time taken to create the images shouldn't be a major factor - after all, when you get better at this, you'll be quicker; does it make sense that you should then be paid less for your increased skill? Not really...and if you invest in a huge computer system that processes images in 1/4 the time, but cost you a mint, billing by the hour is a problem again.

Set a creative fee for the project that doesn't put you under time pressure to finish it; and a license fee for the usage of the images, which can be billed again when the term of the license period is up. That's a good way to start approaching the project.

Hope that helps,
R

Sam

I recently did a search for product photographers, and found two companies that had a price list for standard products at $70.00 ea for one to $22.00 each for over 100. This was for simple products on a white background. More complex, reflective, tranparent backgrounds, etc was more $.

I believe this included a CD with both low res, web files, and high res files for printing.

Good luck!

Sam

TristanP

Thank you both for the reply. I have some more reading and research to do, but you have both helped.

Sam

Tristan,

Yesterday my next door neighbor wanted me to photograph a rare $40,000 1911 singer 45 cal WW II hand gun. We rented a 750 watt tungsten light with soft box.

One thing I took away from this was to practice as much as possable before going on location. Try to use objects of the same size, color, refectiveness, etc.



I set everything up in my garage and practiced as much as I could, this gave me the camera setting I needed. Method was to take a photo of a practice gun with a gretagmacbeth color card and a gray card, then run to the computer to check it out. This allowed me to get a good set up that I took to the location.

The other thing I did was buy a piece of white translucent plastic and put a small light in the crate under the translucent plastic sheet to help eliminate shadows.

I took everything I used in my garage including the crate, and box I used for a table. That way the height, tripod, camera settings, light was all the same, just tare down and set up on location.

I shot in raw with the first shot including the gretagmacbeth chart, and gray card. After the first raw conversion, I was able to convert the remaining images using the same settings.

It still took me about 2 hours computer time to process 26 images. RAW, levels, sharpening. Save as psd. Then crop convert color profile to sRGB, save as jpg. Burn CD.

I did end up with one surprise. I was set up to photograph the whole gun, and only took my 50 mm lens, but when we were on location he disassembled the gun and wanted the small parts photographed. The 50 wouldn’t focus as close to the small parts as I would have liked, and I didn’t have any other lenses, or extension tubes with me. So again the lesson here is to try to practice with objects as close to the clients as possible, and to take all your gear just in case.

Also if your using a white background with a dark subject, the camera exposure will easily be fooled. I ended up shooting in manual mode to ensure the subject was properly exposed, and didn’t worry about the white background.

Ps: I printed out a 12 X18 photo for my neighbor and he is now convinced I am the Michael Angelo of the photography world.

Sam

TristanP

Sounds like a great learning experience. When I meet with him this week, I'll have a better feel for the actual sizes and makeup of the items and can refine my setup accordingly. After doing some reading, it seems for catalog work that per-piece pricing is the way to go. I just need to refine the parameters now. Can you share any of your shots?

Sam

TristanP wrote:

Sounds like a great learning experience. When I meet with him this week, I'll have a better feel for the actual sizes and makeup of the items and can refine my setup accordingly. After doing some reading, it seems for catalog work that per-piece pricing is the way to go. I just need to refine the parameters now. Can you share any of your shots?

OK here are two shoots for this weekend. The first is a 45 Cal 1911 WW II era hand gun. I have to admit that printed out at 12 X 18 on mat paper it looks great. Color which is very important to collector, is spot on.

C&C welcome:

Sam

Sam

My friend paints bottles and other functional items for the home, and she asked me to take a few photos of her bottle art. I just got done with this 20 minutes ago.

C&C welcome:

Sam

PS: The expensive multi colored backdrop came from an art supply house this afternoon, and cost $2.00.