Sitting Fees

form wrote in post #5493811
My primary photography rate is this: I charge $75/hour for my time and include 4 enhanced photos per hour, plus all of the originals on CD. I'm always thinking about remodeling that plan, but it's the one that I sell. To pack up and go mobile, I add $0.50 per mile one-way to my hourly rate - portrait shoots only.

I have offered a $25 sitting fee option with the requirement that someone purchase a minimum print package of $29. I have yet to have a single person follow through with even booking a session for this, so it's not on my website anymore.

Most of the shoots I do don't involve any prints, a stark contrast to my beginnings a few years ago, when my money was made exclusively on the prints.

I've made more on hourly rates, especially with general event coverage. Portrait shoots haven't made me as much as events, but then I'm not charging very high dollar for portrait sessions and so event sessions, which take longer, are worth more to me because they're often 2-3 hours, as opposed to the 1 hour portrait sessions I get.

I also used to offer a number of prints with my rate, but it seemed like more people wanted the bare bones "CD only," so I also took that out.

I'm always looking for a better type of offering that will still make me money, and this thread has been quite helpful. Rebates and all that seem like an interesting angle.

I agree about not offering unlimited sessions; an offer of "one/two sessions of so many hours per month for one year" might be an idea.

Wow, that's exceptionally low end. Giving away the files means you can't sell prints from them. A professional portrait photographer would expect to make sales of between $500 and $5000 from a portrait session.

I'm not of that caliber and I don't pretend to be. Check my web portfolio and see if you agree. Again, 99% of my clients don't want prints. Most don't even remember that they have free retouching available as included in their shoot. Maybe it's a Vegas thing?

You're not terrible. I think given your current rates you're paying to take peoples photos, when you count equipment, time, and overheads.

tim wrote in post #5494626
You're not terrible. I think given your current rates you're paying to take peoples photos, when you count equipment, time, and overheads.

Thanks, I don't think I'm terrible either, but I'm far from the level of high quality professional.

I'm not really paying much anymore because I have virtually no overhead now except gas and CDs. My original purchase of a dSLR camera was never intended to make profit, so anything made back is great. I have made almost as much as I've spent on camera equipment. My lighting equipment has paid for itself; only the Sigma 10-20mm hasn't earned enough money to pay for itself. And the big fat roll of thunder grey paper I bought for a maternity shoot that didn't pan out...but that paper will be used sometime.

I don't see how I can increase my rates without a moral issue. Time-wise, for a 1-hour job I end up making about $35/hour including travel and setup time, which is slightly more than I make doing minor web work and similar graphic work. If I get a 2 hour job, my relative hourly goes up to about $50/hour. If 3 hours, about $55/hour. For a 4 hour job, I charge $250, and so it drops back down to about $50/hour. Still, for me, that's not bad. And it's not about the hourly rate so much as having the hours of work period, for me.

If I had more photography work it might actually be enough to live on! In the end, I can't really justify charging more than I do for what I do.

You know what's especially scary: I have been thinking about investing in all the equipment I wish I had, and then going out and marketing myself as a real pro photographer. Isn't that disturbing? Much more stable and a better idea, I think, would be to keep on the route I'm headed, gathering things up piece by piece and avoiding debt. Don't you agree? Still, if I bought a 40D and a 70-200mm f/2.8L IS, I might be able to handle more wedding-style work than I currently can with just one body and no telephoto lens. In theory, that $2500 might be made up in about 3-4 jobs.

With an attitude like that you're destined to stay a low budget photographer. They don't even compared with professional fees. Professionals charge a bunch of money for good reasons.

What would I have to do to get out of the low budget level? I really don't know. I'm open to ideas.

My family has always been blue collar, mother used to do what she could and my father chose a service profession. I don't really know any other "level" of living or skill. So, that's why I'm where I am now, in the low range. But I'm a perfectionist, and I really don't like being low grade. Therefore, I'm open to ideas, as much as I can be.

Work on improving, of course, especially posing and lighting - that's not a comment specific to you, it's a general comment, since your gallery is WAY to slow for me to spend much time look at it. Once you're happy with your skill and experience multiply your prices by ten.

The less people pay the more they expect, lower budget clients are far more demanding than higher budget clients.

I've never had any complaints about my work, except one individual who didn't like the "wide angle effect" on the front of his business. It's hard for me to believe that people who pay more expect less, based on my own experience, but I suppose I'll have to get more information about that.

The funny thing is, almost all the flash websites load slower than mine from beginning to end, and they respond horribly on my old computer, besides making you wait for all the animations between clicks. Oh well.

I don't do sitting fees. I also am a location photographer. Not charging a sitting fee makes you make sure your images are good or you get no money from the sale of reprints...I don't charge sitting fees for portraits nor fees for events. I make the money on the reprints. I know one photographer who charges $40.00 fee for studio work and $125.00 per hour on location work.

$250 sitting fee

includes $75 in prints and CD of session. Typically they buy around $150 in prints.

Anything less is not worth the time. If they want mall prices then they can go to the mall. I try to offer unique images in fun locations and some people will pay for that...some wont.

There's no doubt that if I charged as much as most of you, I'd actually be able to afford to buy new equipment. I wish my work was good enough to charge your rates.

I am still fairly new at the business side of all this and one thing a teacher told me in school was to not undersell yourself.

Well, I am still working a regular job to pay the bills but hoping to increase my photography business to the point where I don't have to. My advertising efforts are paying off and I am being contacted more, but so far no definite contracts to shoot.

The problem with pricing is that where I live there is an enormous amount of competition. Ranging from very high priced, long established private studios, mall type studios where $12.00 gets a whole bunch of photos to struggling just graduated students (myself included, with 4 really good photo schools within the area) to people who have money to spend on equipment but not the knowledge to carry it off.

Everyone and their brother who has a point and shoot camera seems to be offering their services at a ridiculously low price, and people in this area seem to go for cheap over quality.

Originally I had a setting fee of $100. No takers. I dropped the fee to $65.00. Still no takers. I am mobile only so any lower I might as well be working for free.

So, in combination with recent, mostly free advertising I have dropped the sitting fee completely. I have bundled packages with the lowest fee being $125 for 1 hour shooting. I also have dropped the printing and gone to offering CDs of the images. It seems more people want CDs than prints. Of course if they want prints I will be more than happy to charge them for that.

Not sure if this is going to work out but for now that is what I am doing. You can check out more on the rate on my web site.

Any comments or suggestions welcomed!

I'm on the other side of the water from you, Amy, in Chesapeake. My sitting fee is $75 and $25 goes back to prints. If their location of choice is in your direction, the fee goes up to $100. Gas is too high for me to drive to NN/Williamsburg without upping my prices.

We are a fairly new business - only a year old. Still getting it all together I guess. Feel free to PM me and I'll give you my email address if you want to talk further.

form wrote in post #5493811
My primary photography rate is this: I charge $75/hour for my time and include 4 enhanced photos per hour, plus all of the originals on CD. I'm always thinking about remodeling that plan, but it's the one that I sell. To pack up and go mobile, I add $0.50 per mile one-way to my hourly rate - portrait shoots only.

I have offered a $25 sitting fee option with the requirement that someone purchase a minimum print package of $29. I have yet to have a single person follow through with even booking a session for this, so it's not on my website anymore.

Most of the shoots I do don't involve any prints, a stark contrast to my beginnings a few years ago, when my money was made exclusively on the prints.

I've made more on hourly rates, especially with general event coverage. Portrait shoots haven't made me as much as events, but then I'm not charging very high dollar for portrait sessions and so event sessions, which take longer, are worth more to me because they're often 2-3 hours, as opposed to the 1 hour portrait sessions I get.

I also used to offer a number of prints with my rate, but it seemed like more people wanted the bare bones "CD only," so I also took that out.

I'm always looking for a better type of offering that will still make me money, and this thread has been quite helpful. Rebates and all that seem like an interesting angle.

I agree about not offering unlimited sessions; an offer of "one/two sessions of so many hours per month for one year" might be an idea.

Aren't you concerned that they can just make as many prints as they want with the cd? Or did you figure you wouldn't be making $75 off prints anyway and so you just went with the cd?

I need to add that it probably depends on the area you are in. Here the higher the sitting fee the more you'll sit around doing nothing..why should someone pay $125 sitting fee for in studio portraits when 2 miles away Walmart and Target will do them much cheaper..so I do the best of both worlds. I can do them inside or on location for no fee. Gas is so high, so is food, etc..people are looking for a bargain and I'm not too greedy to not give them one.