Baptism advice?

Nimai

Three girls are being baptized this Sunday, and one parent has asked me if I would photograph the ceremony. I'm excited about the opportunity, but I have no idea how much to charge them! I've been selling prints of school events though smugmug, and it is resulting in more requests like this. I'm not a photographer by profession, and I have no idea how to charge for engagements like this. I will take some family pictures before hand, and of course, the baptism itself. I'll be shooting RAW with a Canon 30D, and I'll be spending a good bit of time later, in post processing. I plan on giving each parent a CD so that they can make prints at whatever sizes they want.
Can anyone give me any insights into what would be a fair price for this?

Thank you.

johng

Two thoughts come to mind:

1. I typically don't sell image files at all. Here's why: let's say you have a customer like my father (this is true here) - when I give him photos, he'll print them out on his color printer at work - not a photo printer, just a color printer on regular printer paper. Now, imagine what the quality of that photo looks like compared to the photo from a decent print lab. Now, those are family photos, so I don't care. But, if you are picking up business, do you really want your name associated with the hack job someone does with your image? Just a thought. I realize there are plenty of people who sell photo CDs - it's just a reason I choose not to. But for my sports shots (that's the type of phootography I sell) I would never give a customer (other than my newspaper) an image file.

2. This is purely business - it's not family or friends, so I would submit you need to be respectful of photographers that are trying to make a living and feed their families by doing the type of work you're going to do here. With that in mind, you need to charge a reasonable market rate. If you severely undercut the market value because it isn't your job - in the long run that type of thing ends up costing photographers their business and means to feed their family. Again, if it were family or friends that would be different. But it's not, so I suggest checking your local market to see what other photographers would charge. Of course you will charge less because you don't have the same experience but by the same token I would submit you shouldn't be charging $50 and giving away the pictures if the going rate for such a thing would be $200 and that only included a cetain number of prints.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

Nimai

Thanks, johng. Very rational responses here, on both points.
I will certainly at least offer to get the prints for them.
I hadn't thought that rates would be different region to region, but that makes sense. I'll see if I can contact a local photographers and inquire.

Thank you.