Wedding Photo Retake... What do I charge them?

So this married couple I know through a friend of my daughters asked me today if I could redo their wedding photos when the weather gets a little warmer. They had someone else shoot their photos and they look really bad. What do you regularly charge for this? Do you charge them just for portraits or do you charge them for wedding photos? It will probably be just the two of them in their wedding outfits. They have a couple locations they'd like to shoot.

I'm not looking for an actual number but how would you all handle this shoot? I'm thinking just a regular portrait session and hope I can get some more work out of it.

No reason to charge for a full wedding. It would be a much simpler task than working around an event would be.

But the task would be more than a regular portrait shoot. I would consider charging twice the rate or charging for two sessions and just giving them more time to do it right.

I suspect that I'm not going to say anything you haven't already thought of.

If wedding photography is how you pay the bills, the first question is, will you be doing this at a time when you could be billing someone else, or will you be giving up some of your own "free time" to do it? And by "free time" I mean all of the time that you need to spend on things like mowing the lawn, buying groceries, being with your family, walking the dog; all the things that you are going to have to reschedule to do anyway.

Ask yourself how much time and how much driving will it take you to shoot at a "couple locations"? How long will it take to do the post processing? Add all that up and then multiply the hours by the minimum hourly rate you feel your time is worth, and then discount it however much you want; depending upon your relationship with the couple, this will likely be between 0% and 100%! (Been there; done that)

Good luck

Hello! Sorry to hear that your potential client is going through that, I always feel so terrible when I get these types of requests.

Do you have a day after price? If so, I would treat it like one of those photoshoots...if not...

I definitely would NOT treat this like just any other photoshoot. Remember, these are going to be on display for their lifetime and will most likely be on display for generations to come as well...

Do you have an hourly rate for your weddings? I would charge by the hour based off that price. Think you'll spend 3 hours with them, charge them for 3 hours of your Wedding Hourly Rate.

I do not personally have an hourly fee as I only provide full day coverage at this point but I know what my hourly fee would be. I came up with this number by taking my Full Day Wedding Collection price and dividing by 10 (average number of hours I spend covering a wedding). I would also deliver all the culled photographs to the client, fully retouched and edited, in this situation --- just like my weddings.

There are so many other variables to factor in as well though. Will you be delivering the photographs with a print release? Will you be showing proofs that they will be able to order from (that means hardly any editing other than tweaking some sliders), and most importantly in my opinion, what type of experience are they looking for and can you give that to them?

In the sage words of my hombre Jerry Ghoinis, "What's priceless tomorrow should be expensive today..."

Oddly enough I had to do one of these a few years ago and I do feel bad for people who are screwed over by their photographers. I think I just charged them my regular portrait fee. I think I will do the same for this.

As of right now there is one definite spot they want to shoot. I have a couple other ideas I'll talk with them about. They want to shoot at an old Covered bridge which is really nice for portrait shots. Also, there is a small waterfall not to far that I may ask if they want to do a trash the dress shoot there. That would be my first time for one of them. ߘ

We'll see what happens.

I would think of it like a portrait or engagement shoot. Not sure if you charge more per hour just because it is a wedding but I would go with standard hourly/shooting rate plus travel and any costs.

CameraMan wrote in post #17456592
Oddly enough I had to do one of these a few years ago and I do feel bad for people who are screwed over by their photographers. I think I just charged them my regular portrait fee. I think I will do the same for this.

As of right now there is one definite spot they want to shoot. I have a couple other ideas I'll talk with them about. They want to shoot at an old Covered bridge which is really nice for portrait shots. Also, there is a small waterfall not to far that I may ask if they want to do a trash the dress shoot there. That would be my first time for one of them. ߘ

We'll see what happens.

They may want to hold off on the whole "trash the dress" in case they want a third whack at wedding photos . . .