How to present photos & how much to charge!

Hello awesome people!

I recently shot a bridal shower for one of my sisters friends, at first I quoted her a price of $150-175 depending on how many photos I took and how much editing I had to do. I ended up taking a ton of photos (she printed off a long list of all the photos she wanted and I got every single one with the exception of one or two because of things that didn't work out which was out of my hands) so now I'm wondering if $175 isn't enough, I would like to charge her $200 but I'm worried about changing the price on her. The price I gave her was just a loose estimate and we hadn't agreed on anything, but I don't want to raise the price too much and have her think I'm just trying to squeeze more money out of her. She did have me as a guest as well, I had a seat at the table my sister and her friends were at and I got a meal, however I was there from 10:35-3:30, I stayed after all the guests left to take pictures of her and her bridesmaids/fiance/par​ents. I have also spent quite a bit of time doing corrections and basic editing on the photos, I'm not done yet but in total so far I must have spent about 8 hours editing. So what do you guys think, should I charge her $200?

Part 2 of this long post is, how would you guys present the photos? I was going to give them to her on a CD with a JPG folder and a PNG folder in case she wants to print them. Is that good? Please leave any suggestions down below!

Thank you so so much! xoxo

The average person knows nothing of printing - in fact its a total mystery to some photographers too. If you want you can consider charging the middle range of your estimation and then charging extra for professional prints in a frame. This also gets around the issue of different sizes of print as well (raised later in the post)

If you are dead set on a CD only then I would at least ensure that you have two versions of each photo on there; one print ready with a notepad file on the folder that clearly lists the website(s) and sizes that the photos are suitable for printing from*. The other size being suitable for facebook/web display (because if you don't do it they will and the resizing wll be done by facebook and look horrid).


*yes this only works for printing to one single size; if they want larger they'd have to go through you - smaller or cropped would be the same - the other option is providing multiple resizings but that is overkill and will just confuse a client as to why there are 10001 different versions of the same photo.

You can't change the price after the fact. Well, not if you value the relationship anyway. $25 hopefully won't break your bank account, but it very well might break your relationship and reputation.

Consider that $25 to be the price of a good lesson on pricing your work too low for the amount of effort you're putting in.


As for presentation:
Provide a disc with two copies of each photo: One at social-media-sharing size with your logo unobtrusive in the lower corner, (I prefer 1024px on the long edge), a second at a reasonably high resolution for printing (I provide 3600px on the long edge). Politely request that if she's sharing them all over social media, that you've already prepared them for that use, please use the ones that have your logo on them.

nathancarter wrote in post #17536024
You can't change the price after the fact. Well, not if you value the relationship anyway. $25 hopefully won't break your bank account, but it very well might break your relationship and reputation.

Consider that $25 to be the price of a good lesson on pricing your work too low for the amount of effort you're putting in.


As for presentation:
Provide a disc with two copies of each photo: One at social-media-sharing size with your logo unobtrusive in the lower corner, (I prefer 1024px on the long edge), a second at a reasonably high resolution for printing (I provide 3600px on the long edge). Politely request that if she's sharing them all over social media, that you've already prepared them for that use, please use the ones that have your logo on them.

That's absolutely correct. Companies I've worked for have to bid for jobs and unfortunately sometimes a bid gets messed up for whatever reason and ends up being too low. The choice is between doing a job for a loss or royally pissing off a customer, the correct (and ethical) choice has always been to eat the extra cost and leave the customer happy.

nathancarter wrote in post #17536024
You can't change the price after the fact. Well, not if you value the relationship anyway. $25 hopefully won't break your bank account, but it very well might break your relationship and reputation.

Consider that $25 to be the price of a good lesson on pricing your work too low for the amount of effort you're putting in.

This. For the sake of $25, it's really a complete no-win for you. Even if she pays she may decide she hates you and tell everyone she knows what a jerk you are, rather than tell everyone how happy she is with the photos. Seeing as how you have no contract with her, she may also just decide to tell you to take a hike and pay you nothing.

Either way I suspect it will cost you much more than $25 in the long run if you try to raise the price on her.

How would you feel if you went to the store for a television, picked on out based on the price you saw on the wall, got to the register and then they told you it would be a hundred extra plus tax? You quoted a price and this is what she should pay you. If she asked for more images than you had originally discussed, then the ime to discuss the price was right then, when she handed you the list of the extra work. It would have been very easy then to say 'we talked about x number of photos and I quoted $175. now you are asking for 50% more, so I would need to charge extra for the extra work.' then let her decide if the extra work is worth the cost.

I'd write it off as a $25 business lesson...the importance of contracts, setting expectations, planning, etc!

But yeah, I wouldn't attempt to hit her up for more cash. When you give me a price (even if its an estimate), you better have a really good reason to raise the price after that, and to be honest, editing taking longer than you though, taking more photos than you thought you would, etc. Those alll sound like your problem, and not her problem. I'd be pretty bummed out if you revised your price on those grounds. If you guys had agreed to a price for x hours and then you had to stay longer, then yeah...you'd have a leg to stand on, but even then, that additional charge should have been communicated prior, not after the fact.

sounds like the 25 extra dollars is the difference between 13 and 15 dollars an hour. Maybe less since you are not finished yet. Essentially irrelevant.

we have all learned business lessons from making mistakes, no big deal. One lesson outside of quoting right the first time, is that you can't make a living in photography selling your services between 13 and 15 bucks an hour. You probably spent a couple of hours before the shoot organizing, that drops your effective hourly rate down to 11 bucks an hour and 13 if you did raise the price.

Maybe when you provide her the disk, give her a price list for prints. Make sure you can provide high quality, archival prints and can explain the difference between what she will get at the drugstore or walmart. This should give you an opportunity to make a little extra money and you can probably get a couple of prints for your portfolio on the cheap.

Also, if you provide high quality JPG there is no need to provide PNG.