Pricing Question

Shayebryd · December 26, 2009

Hoping you might be able to help me with a situation.

Earlier this summer myself and another photographer agreed to do a bridal shower for free....our only request was travel expenses which were minimal.

A little history about myself and the other photog. I am an amateur and became involved in this for the experience. My friend has done 6 weddings to date approximately.

Upon seeing our work with the shower they asked if we would agree to do the wedding. We agreed on a price and have just completed uploading the wedding pix to our SmugMug sites.

At the time of the shower I was with SmugMugs basic plan, I have since upgraged to Pro.

For the Shower the bride, family , and any guests were able to print or save copies of all the photos I posted at no profit to me (I now realize this was a mistake.....lesson learned)

However, with the wedding photos they are now priced for sale at what we consider extremely reasonable. I just received a letter from the family shocked at the prices as they were expecting the same default prices from the shower.

In an effort to remain professional and not upset anyone I am hoping you might be able to advise on a reasonable and acceptable explanation. As I do understand their shock as we failed to mention the increase in price.

They will be receiving a CD of all the photos, they are welcome to get prints wherever they choose......but to lower the price would mean that if out of 150 that attended the wedding if only half were to order prints.....we would in essence be giving them the service for free.

Here is a link to my site if you would like to check out our prices......which I honestly feel are quite low. Even Walmart charges more.....please tell me what you think.
I have not attached the other photogs site here as I feel that would be at her discretion, though the prices reflected are the same.

Thank you so much for any advice

Ekaj · December 26, 2009

If you market your services for free, of course people will assume you are gouging them when you try to charge them. I assume you had no contract and did not tell the couple you would be charging for the photos? I did not look at your prices but you have to understand people probably expected your pricing to remain the same if you did not tell them before hand. I would restore the prices to zero profit and move on.

Shayebryd · December 26, 2009

Ekaj wrote:

If you market your services for free, of course people will assume you are gouging them when you try to charge them. I assume you had no contract and did not tell the couple you would be charging for the photos? I did not look at your prices but you have to understand people probably expected your pricing to remain the same if you did not tell them before hand. I would restore the prices to zero profit and move on.

Yikes! Well my thought was that it started out being a free service.....but in the end they wanted to hire us as the photographers for the wedding as opposed to the company they were originally planning to hire.

We did have a contract although it does not states anything about purchasing prints from us or prices.

We only offered our service for the wedding, a CD of the pix, and a wedding album.

They are under no obligation to purchase prints thru us...they can take their CD and gets prints at a place of their choice. I feel that offering printing thru us is a convenience not an obligation.

Also, why should I offer to everyone that came to the wedding a free service that the B&G and family paid good money for?

Thank you for your input!!! Any other thoughts??

kyeezie · December 26, 2009

Shayebryd wrote:

Yikes! Well my thought was that it started out being a free service.....but in the end they wanted to hire us as the photographers for the wedding as opposed to the company they were originally planning to hire.

We did have a contract although it does not states anything about purchasing prints from us or prices.

We only offered our service for the wedding, a CD of the pix, and a wedding album.

They are under no obligation to purchase prints thru us...they can take their CD and gets prints at a place of their choice. I feel that offering printing thru us is a convenience not an obligation.

Also, why should I offer to everyone that came to the wedding a free service that the B&G and family paid good money for?

Thank you for your input!!! Any other thoughts??

Hi!! I'm the other photographer. Like she said, we gve them the cd with rights to print. We told them people could by the pictures from the site at a reasonable price. Also, this email was from the mother of the bride, not the bride who signed the contract.

met · December 26, 2009

I think that you are right on in charging more for the prints. Particularly since you are giving them the disc as part of the package and the prints are still priced quite low. I would apologize to her that you failed to mention it to her, that it was a mistake and not your intent to try and cheat them. You could explain to the mother that you have upgraded your Smugmug website from basic to professional since the shower and with that means that the printing was upgraded to a strictly pro photolab. (Hopefully you selected Bay Photo over EZ Prints.) You could kindly direct her to a couple other pro sites to show her exactly how little you are making on the prints. As a compromise if you don't want to argue the point with her, you could offer to make a copy of the disc for her as well as the bride or you could offer her a percentage off (coupon) on her order of prints only while still retaining the full value for guests that might order. Just my $.02.

Shayebryd · December 26, 2009

Thank you!

That is along the same lines as we were thinking. Maybe offering 50% off the posted price for a limited time as a compromise. Hopefully everyone would be happy with no hard feelings!!

Art Scott · December 26, 2009

ask the m.o.b. if she is willing to work for free.....maybe then she will understand....that you cannot just give everything away for free and never shoot a totally free gig again

....i know you charged for the wedding....maybe what was charged was too low also.........

Sam · December 26, 2009

Oh boy where to start? First I like your images, hard to believe this is your first wedding. The bride will be happy.

From a photography standpoint I think you you are doing very well, and I am positive you will be doing even better in the future.

Now as far as the business end......wow! your not even close. (I do understand what your were trying to do, and what you did isn't a crime, but you need to get your busness practices up to your photography.)

First, you do need to inform clients of all the details and costs up front. You can only have one wedding photographer. One person, business responsible for the event. You can have as many second, third shooters and assistants as you like or can budget for.

That said, what ever arrangement you two have between your selves is fine.

You really should only have one web site offering the images for sale.

As for pricing, that gets a little more complicated. You need to decide how much you want to do the wedding, and provide all the items they requested. How you break down the charges is up to you. As an example you could charge a relatively higher rate upfront and provide the prints at cost. Or you could charge a lower upfront rate and a higher per print cost.

I can see you have talent and have put some effort into learning and improving your photography skills.

You need to put that same effort into the business end.

Good luck,

Sam

Shayebryd · December 26, 2009

Thank you Art.......agreed...lesson very well learned!

Thank you Sam, truly, a very generous compliment, thank you!

I know I have much to learn in all aspects.....I appreciate this board so much in helping me to grow and gain new understanding in doing what I love.

philx123 · December 27, 2009

Shayebryd wrote:

Thank you Art.......agreed...lesson very well learned!

Thank you Sam, truly, a very generous compliment, thank you!

I know I have much to learn in all aspects.....I appreciate this board so much in helping me to grow and gain new understanding in doing what I love.

I'm no expert in the business field of things - I tend to go with what I feel is right, not what I know to be a sound business model, but I would never offer to do the day for free and then make money on the prints. Your prices seem very reasonable to me, but can you make that much? I got precious few extra prints ordered from other family members etc, and if that was how I was making money, then I wouldn;t make much.
I just charge three set prices, cheap, medium and expensive, and the final product reflects what they pay.
Ironically, though, I find that clients who get the deal of the century (as a couple of weddings I've done have been), and fully realise the fact at the time, they sometimes carry on as if they are paying top prices, and have the same expectations of the product they receive.
I will often stay right till the end of a wedding to get the party shots, and that will sometimes mean a 16+ hour day. I've often not been fed, nor given a drink. Mostly I'm asked to do reportage style weddings. No group shots, nothing posed, then of course, the big day comes and I'm asked to do group shots and posed shots of family members, grroms, bride and bridesmaids. Don;t get me wrong, I don;t mind, and can think on my feet, and take precautions to scout out a suitable location beforehand, but it does irk me that no one else contracted to do the wedding is subject to such last minute changes ("can we actually have the pink flowers instead of the white?" "Can you just pop back to your kitchen and rustle up some salmon instead of the canopes?"
I don;t mind, but have in the past had to point out that you are not an endless well of hours on which they can drawer. You do it politely, and rustle no feathers, because word of mouth is important, but there has to come a cut off point.
I have found the more professional you are with them, the more they understand that you are a professional with a business to run. If you go in being vague about and a tad passive, you run the risk of being walked all over.
Whether that's of any help to you, I don;t know. Just an observation, I suppose.

femsista · December 27, 2009

First off, I agree that it is hard to believe this is your first wedding. Those shots had definite vision in them. Beautiful photos for a "learning experience". :-)

I personally don't do weddings (although I am considering a friend's wedding). It appears it was an oversight in not mentioning the prices increasing, however, if the arrangement was to provide the CD of images--not specifically prints--then you were not really contracted to provide the prints at a certain price.

I agree that by offering them some references to top quality printing services, you are showing that you understand their need for affordable prints and are willing to help them find high quality ones.

In a perfect world, we would hope that the guests would come and order from you at your very affordable prices. But reality is, the B and G can upload their photos from the CD to any gallery and family can order from there as well at cheaper prices.

So I guess from the photographer's point of view I am not sure what the MOB is actually upset about since they are getting unlimited access to the photos. MOB just has to ask the B and G to borrow the CD for the weekend,

.

My advice to you which many have already mentioned would be this: You seem to have the skill under your belt. Like me, the business aspect of it is what you would want to continue to tweak. I tend to be a pushover which I know is my weakness because I know word of mouth is my best advertisement and I want to over provide for my customers. I am learning from this as I progress.

If I have learned anything, make sure your prices and packages are clear from the get go. If for some reason you neglect a detail, be ready to offer a perk, but don't give the house away.

The biggest thing I think new photographers (myself included) do in error is forget to value our work, not only artistically, but the time it takes to do a shoot and then get in there and post edit. When places like Walmart charge .19 cents for a 4x6 it is hard to get the world to understand the value of an original professional 4x6 at $5-10.

So take the time to figure out how much you charge yourself an hour to work. Then use that to build your rates. Make sure you include a profit for yourself--after all this is a job and a business. Walmart doesn't sell stuff at cost, so why would we?

Good luck to you! I enjoyed looking through the photos!

Shayebryd · December 27, 2009

philx123 wrote:

I'm no expert in the business field of things - I tend to go with what I feel is right, not what I know to be a sound business model, but I would never offer to do the day for free and then make money on the prints. Your prices seem very reasonable to me, but can you make that much? I got precious few extra prints ordered from other family members etc, and if that was how I was making money, then I wouldn;t make much.
I just charge three set prices, cheap, medium and expensive, and the final product reflects what they pay.
Ironically, though, I find that clients who get the deal of the century (as a couple of weddings I've done have been), and fully realise the fact at the time, they sometimes carry on as if they are paying top prices, and have the same expectations of the product they receive.
I will often stay right till the end of a wedding to get the party shots, and that will sometimes mean a 16+ hour day. I've often not been fed, nor given a drink. Mostly I'm asked to do reportage style weddings. No group shots, nothing posed, then of course, the big day comes and I'm asked to do group shots and posed shots of family members, grroms, bride and bridesmaids. Don;t get me wrong, I don;t mind, and can think on my feet, and take precautions to scout out a suitable location beforehand, but it does irk me that no one else contracted to do the wedding is subject to such last minute changes ("can we actually have the pink flowers instead of the white?" "Can you just pop back to your kitchen and rustle up some salmon instead of the canopes?"
I don;t mind, but have in the past had to point out that you are not an endless well of hours on which they can drawer. You do it politely, and rustle no feathers, because word of mouth is important, but there has to come a cut off point.
I have found the more professional you are with them, the more they understand that you are a professional with a business to run. If you go in being vague about and a tad passive, you run the risk of being walked all over.
Whether that's of any help to you, I don;t know. Just an observation, I suppose.

Thank you...very good points!

Shayebryd · December 27, 2009

Thank you very much femsista!

In the end we have decided to keep the prices as quoted.....just as you state, they will have their disc soon and no doubt upload for others to obtain copies at will.

And yes.....I do need to work on the business end and evaluate my worth and set prices accordingly.....my next step will be reviewing much information on this board to help me work my way through this process.

Thank you so much for the kind words.....and thank you to all for your help and advice!!!!

Art Scott · December 28, 2009

Shayebryd wrote:

And yes.....I do need to work on the business end and evaluate my worth and set prices accordingly.....my next step will be reviewing much information on this board to help me work my way through this process.

I was undercutting 99% of the local photogs when I started out and I caught wind of being called a shyster and other unmentionable names on a public forum.....so I did some reconnaissance work....I called every photog and asked what they charge....I even went to a couple of studios and told them my daughter was getting married and I was helping out with getting prices for various services, since I worked 2nd shift....2 small white lies.....and then I priced about 5% lower....before hand I was about 75% lower and it wasn't getting me work only bad mouthed.......:D:D:D
just a thought ..............

Shayebryd · December 29, 2009

Art Scott wrote:

I was undercutting 99% of the local photogs when I started out and I caught wind of being called a shyster and other unmentionable names on a public forum.....so I did some reconnaissance work....I called every photog and asked what they charge....I even went to a couple of studios and told them my daughter was getting married and I was helping out with getting prices for various services, since I worked 2nd shift....2 small white lies.....and then I priced about 5% lower....before hand I was about 75% lower and it wasn't getting me work only bad mouthed.......:D:D:D
just a thought ..............

Interesting......thanks....valuable information!

Pricing Question

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