What to charge (jewelry photos).

I have some people that want me to take pictures of about 100 items of jewlery (necklaces, earrings, rings, etc) and really have no idea what I should charge. I'd be doing all the post work on the images and giving them a cd of the images to use. My first thought was to do a per item fee, like $3-$5 item (includes all post work).

Why not charge a set amount per hour?

My first thoughts would be, how much experience have you had as a jewelry photographer? As you probably realize is that photographing jewelry properly is the most challenging of all product and table top work.

What type of lighting and camera will you be using? Do you have a jewelry light table/tent/diffuser? 100 pieces is a lot of items to work on and what is your deadline? How are you going to display or set up the products. The setup, especially group shots can be time consuming and you may have depth of field issues and color and focusing problems. All these things have to be taken in consideration before you get started. Proofs to the client for approval take time and you will have some redos, that's a given.

Be sure to get an up front 50% deposit, a written contract of the terms and any other specifics from your clients. You are talking about a fairly large job and at $3-5 per image plus post, that is a very low rate for the amount of work expected.

Honestly anything below $1000 is not even worth doing, IMHO, I know because I have been shooting jewelry since 2000 and it is a hard job to get it right. Think about what is expected of you from the client and then go from there. What about usage rights of your images? Good luck, keep us posted

katt

Jewlery isn't as easy as you might think, & $5 without post work isn't near enough.
Some things to think about:

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=61210 One of the most often asked questions & 4 pages of comments!

Is the Company/Designer/Store an established business? How expensive are the pieces? What will they be using the images for? The $3-$5 per piece is such an amatuerish price that they will probably laugh out loud. If you have experience shooting jewelry that you know that it is very difficult and time consuming. The Atlanta labs charge a minimum of $90. per hour for post production so that gives you a starting point. The shooting fee cannot be determined until you find out the answers to the first questions.

Digital Rebel w/50mm 1.8, using my AB400 and JTL 160w/s strobes firing into a diy light tent with white plexiglass bottom and i'm going to take some more samples with plain white paper (I tried my hot lights with this and like using the stobes better). Basicly i'm shooting 1 item at a time. I dont they they can justify $1k on photos.

The images will be used on their e-bay store and in a catalog they are making. Price ranges on the items range from $25-$250 that i've seen on their store. Well, one of the main reasons for low price is yes, first real time shooting jewelry and it was someone I know (worked with for 5 years). I havn't told them a price yet but i'm supposed to start shooting this sunday.

This was my test shot today right after I got the 50mm lens (dont know why I didnt get it before) and before I had to goto work. All I had a chance to do was fix the white background. I was using my Sigma 24-70 to test with and on some of the tests I was putting black paper out side of the frame to help define the chain more. I know it's alot of work i'll be up for and they seem happy with the test images i've sent them so far (eventhough i'm not happy with some of them).

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Hi again. You have a pretty good shot there of the necklace. on my Mac, I am seeing a reddish color cast on the silver type chain. Check your white balance. Composition is ok. What f stop are you using, stop down to the max I hope, f22-32. Clarity, focus and sharpness needs to improve. jewelry has to pop, whether on web or print. Study some of the top fashion mags like Vogue, Vanity, etc.

You are on your way, but for the price the jewelry is being sold for, you need to charge much higher fees. For $3-5 per image, someone from the street can come in with their cell phone camera and crank out that easy, but it will not be very appealing.

It is good you are getting experience, and I think you have a real knack to shoot jewelry. It takes the patience of Job to get it lookin' good, so keep at it! katt

That was f/18. I've had a few people tell me about the red in the chain, and have no idea where it's coming from. The person i'm shooting for is going to help arrange the items (she showed me some fashion mags to give me some ideas).

When I stopped my Sigma 24-70 down to f/25 - f/32 the images looked really bad. I did some more shots with the 50mm shooting around f/11 and they were good. I also dropped out the JTL and only using my AB400 along with some reflectors and I think I got rid of the weird red in the chain. I noticed my JTL's flash duration was way longer then the AB was.

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