Question and or Advice on Pricing?

tjbel05 · October 15, 2007

I am looking for advice or suggestions please. My daughters gymnastics academy is having a Santa Clause breakfast for the little kids. They are having breakfast, crafts and Santa. The cost to the parents will be $25, and this includes a 4x6 photo with Santa. I have been asked If I would like to do the shoot, and what would I charge. I can also set up my computer and printer and sell additonal prints If I would like.
This will be limited to 100 kids and four hours. Pricing suggestions please? What would you charge for the shoot? By the hour or by the child? Thanks in advance.

dangin · October 15, 2007

i've only done one of these in the past. i took the images and my wife collected the money and printed the images. i had the easy job... my poor wife got bombarded with parents that griped about having to wait in line, having to wait for the prints, blah blah blah. we only charged $5 for a dye-sub printed 4x6 (nicer than an inkjet print) and a holiday-themed photo frame with envelope. then i'm fighting with the parents that want to take their own picture of their kid with santa which holds up the line even further.

all i'll say is, never again. i told the organizer that i wouldn't be back the next year. you're better off standing up there with a polaroid instamatic.

SloYerRoll · October 15, 2007

Pricing looks good. Have you thought about...
Things to think about

First off, you want to be very clear as to what you are going to do. Stating what you WON'T DO is just as, if not more important than the former.
Make sure you have this in writing signed by your event coordinator as well. It doesn't need to be full of legalese, it just needs to plainly state what your doing. A little liabilitly waiver clause in there wouldn't hurt either...
Do you KNOW that a certain % of parents are supposed to buy shots? Sometimes you can invest hours and do all kinds of things then walk away w/ 25 bucks and take substatial losses. If your taking it as a way to practice in this environment and are willing to take a loss regardless. Full speed ahead then..
Dan makes a great point about parents shooting (amongst others). In this environment. NO pictures should be allowed around you. Set up light stands, put the b/g facing the tables so parents can't zoom in. Whatever you have to do. Putting this in writing is good, but parents don't care what you signed in a contract w/ the eent coordinator.

Just some things to think about.

That being said...
These kinds of setups are infamous for setting up photogs for failure. So I'm gonna ramble a bit about workflow.

Your timeline is pretty tight to deliver.
Shooting 100 kids that quickly can be cake if all goes well. It's post that will eat your time (image ingestion, post to printer and printing).

This would be my recommended workflow for this: (I haven't done this type setup, but it's pretty straight forward in regards to workflow)

Have an competant assistant that you know to help on this. Go through the workflow w/ them unless you want to answer questions in the middle of shooting. UGH...
bring your printer, laptop, multiple memory cards, camera gear (duh on the last one:D )
Ask for parental voulenteers for crowd control. You can get some nightmare voulenteers sometimes. But this is rare and the chance that you get good assistants will greatly outweigh the chance of a voulenteerzilla. (Not to mention you now have an 2nd or 3rd assistant for free) Also, After they proove themselves to be helpful. Give them their kids shots for free. Your creating karma, they will work much more enthusiastically (even to the end where a seasoned vet can get frazzled by kids), and it's getting the word out about how great a photog you are.
Grab kids "table by table" so no kids are standing in line too long.
shoot kids in sets. After about 25 kids, give the memory card to your assistant and have them ingest, check for quality, make easy adjustments, then print.
at the same time you'll have mem card #2 in your camera shooting the next batch. (try not to use the same memory card over again in case of digital disasters. Hard drives fail, laptops catch on fire... Just be safe and get a few extra memory cards. You'll need them for the future if you do this w/ any frequency and they are pretty cheap. (you can shoot tethered as well
When your done shooting and prints are still going. Hand out bizcards and network like a mad hatter.

Expect about an hour after the kids are done for printing to wrap up unless you have a really nice, fast printer. I think dye-sub is definately the way to go on this. Most dye-subs give a water proof coat on the last pass and make the pictures really last. Parents will buy from you again if they see the prints lasted and had good color.

All that said. Keep a cool head NO MATTER WHAT. Sometimes kids can be really bad and parents can be worse. Some think since they are giving you money, they are your boss. Take comments w/ a grain of salt if you know your work is good.

Good luck. Please post after to let us know how it went.

-Jon

Question and or Advice on Pricing?

Comments