How to determine what to charge for taking team pictures?

[AmyAgain]

Hello all,

My son's hockey league has asked me to take team pictures. It will only be team shots and not individual. There are only 4-6 teams.

How do I determine how much to charge? Where do I turn for information on this?

Can anyone help me?

Thank you!!!!

[Hellashot]

There is never sources to find prices for any certain market. If there were source to tell you what to charge, that source could be sued for price fixing. You might just want to call photography places and say you're considering team photos and ask how much they'd charge you.

[zacker]

he he he! Yellow Pages, gotta love em!
-zacker-

[blue_max]

Originally Posted by AmyAgain

Hello all,

My son's hockey league has asked me to take team pictures. It will only be team shots and not individual. There are only 4-6 teams.

How do I determine how much to charge? Where do I turn for information on this?

Can anyone help me?

Thank you!!!!

You are shooting digitally I presume, so the only cost (apart from the photographic equipment etc) is your time. The art is to estimate how much time it will take and consider how much to charge per hour. It will take longer than you imagine!

Here in the UK, a fair freelance rate seems to be about £20 per hour ($40ish). That's for graphic design professionals, so will be comparable.

Hope this helps work out a base figure. Submit that and be ready to negotiage slightly for a 'bulk' contract.

It's no more scientific than that. They probably need to assign a budget for the project, so allow a little more for paperwork.

Graham

[defordphoto]

We're talking "little league" type hockey teams here. They have no money and the parents never want to pay more than $5-$10 for an 8x10. You'll never make any money shooting kids sports.

However, it can get you noticed for possible real portraits, so it's not a total lose-lose situation.

Good luck.

[AmyAgain]

It is children's hockey. They are asking me because they see me shooting with "cool" looking equipment at my son's games.

I am shooting digitally. I plan on printing the copies at Costco. I am thinking $10 for an 8x10 should be about right. That is about $8 per pic that I clear. I am not charging a sitting fee.

I am looking at this as an exposure (no pun intended) opporunity.

Just for myself I took pictures of my daughter's soccer team (mine is the bottom right cutie).

[IndyJeff]

One thing you could do is an individual and a team shot and sell a 5x7 team and a 3x5 individual. Most parents want a team and individual, this is known as a memory mate and it usually will run $7-9 total. Your not making much money off that but, if you have an order form showing different size prints, refridgerator magnets, buttons, calendars, mouse pads you will likely get enough orders to cover the cheap cost of the memory mate.

[Joe R]

You are shooting digitally I presume, so the only cost (apart from the photographic equipment etc) is your time.

This type of thinking won't make you any money as a photographer. Your true cost of doing business is much more complex, and it's a valuable excercise to understand how it works:
http://www.nppa.org/professional_dev...practices/cdb/

You might search around the Event forums on robgalbraith.com - there are some experienced "T&I" shooters that post there.

I also highly recommend the book "Pricing Photography," found here with some other print resources:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...219588-1445634

[PhotosGuy]

Did you know that Costco makes 12X18" prints for $3? I'd sell them for $20 on a "take it or leave it" basis & throw in a 4X6" print. If you go the 5X7" route, you're going to be spending time resizing in PS. For only 6 teams though, I guess that wouldn't be too bad.

[marcusg6@bigpond.net.au]

Who say's you can't make money from kids? Ok then make it from their parents. I sell 12" by 18" surf photos for $80 and they sell like crazy if they are good. I get them printed for 12.50 so nice profit. My competition sell them for $140 so I offer a bargain. In a good week I can sell up to 8. There is no price fixing in photography. A photo is worth what ever anybody is willing to pay, like real estate. I have some photos that are NOT for sale but people still make offers.

[Zepher]

We charge $15/unit or 2 units for $25. Our images have the team name, league name, and year on them. I just make my 5x7 and 8x10 templates in Photoshop, process all the images then put all the images on an external drive to take to the lab to have printed. My friend owns the lab and does my printing for $1/unit.
our units are 2 5x7 or 1 8x10. We had more options but these were the sizes that most chose so that is what we offer now.
Most parents chose the 2 5x7 package consisting of a team and individual.
Also, I only took pictures of the individual kids if they purchased an individual picture.
We also only do leagues that have at least 15 teams to make it worthwhile.

here are 2 from earlier this year,

[MTalley]

Every situation is different, but I'm pricing action shots from our local soccer league's games at $8.00 for an 8x10. That includes local tax and a small donation to the soccer league for allowing me to set up on their table.

By the way, here's a photo I took of my son's team. He's the tall one in the blue on the back row.

[Master-9]

http://img302.imageshack.us/img302/9...eam20059qe.jpg

Picture from my childrens track team at their middle school, I charged $8.00 for an 8x10 and $6.00 for 5x7. I sold about 30 8x10s

[AmyAgain]

Awesome shot!! Love the attitude.

[MTalley]

Great shot. I like the attitude, too. Couple of the parents on my son's team commented today that the one thing they like about my group shot over the other photographer's is that mine captures more of the personality of each child. I also liked the way that I arranged the team in a less formal fashion.

I made a few sales today, and a few potential sales (folks wanted to go home and peruse the online gallery when they didn't have to rush off for other things). I had a couple of parents ask if I'd make sure to get some pictures of their kids playing today.

I usually don't promise anything, but tell them I'll try. If their child is one that just stands there and watches the others play, it's hard to get any kind of good shot. Fortunately, the ones I promised to try to get today were pretty much all really good players that got the ball a lot.

Should get some more follow-up sales from those shots. Here's one that I particularly liked. Backlit halo shots on blond players are really nice. I love the effect.