Pricing a large family shoot

How would you guys go about pricing a large family shoot. Basically it's the grandmothers 80th BD with about 20 -25 family members each getting in a shot with the grandmother.

I estimate the time to probably be around 2 hours from start to finish. It is set to be at an outside location to be determined.

Any help appreciated. I don't really see this as a family shoot, but more as an event shoot.

The way I see it is either:

I can charge for my time and let everyone order afterwards from an online gallery.

Or I can charge for a given number of prepaid packages of prints.

Please let me know what you think. I've done events and small families but not a family shoot like this before.

I see that you live in Desoto, I moved to Texas two years ago
and the one thing I came to realize is that the Texans n my area
are poor. They just don't have money to spend. I cant tell you how
jobs I have shot and the people can't order one picture.
I shot a large family last week, ten kids and the parents , two
hours of my time and I was lucky to get $150.00 and that was
with a cd so they could buy 29 cent prints from CVS. That my friend
is Texas.

I'd make print/gallery/CD/t-shirts/whatever else pricing a priority because if your images are good you'll make money hand over fist from that quarter. Charge enough up front to just cover your costs (travel time, petrol, shooting time, processing time).

Fenster wrote in post #8606408
I'd make print/gallery/CD/t-shirts/whatever else pricing a priority because if your images are good you'll make money hand over fist from that quarter. Charge enough up front to just cover your costs (travel time, petrol, shooting time, processing time).

+1. I would charge next to nothing for the shoot itself, but make them available online. I'd sell individual prints at a fair markup, print them yourself, and post them out. Lots of people love getting nice prints and not having to go anywhere to get them printed. Have a few print packages, a cd package, etc. In this case, you'd make more that way, and get people to your site(assuming you have a Point-Of-Sale facility on your website). You should also have some business cards specifically made (or flyers if you're on a budget) with your site address, when they'll be available, and a few example prices.

I would never do a CD of straight images for a group like that, but would offer as many different products as possible, including a slide show. But no CD of straight images.

Be sure to do a number of different family groupings--nuclear family A with grandma, nuclear family B with grandma, kids of family A with grandma, kids of family B with grandma, daughters of grandma with grandma, grandchildren of grandma with grandma, sons of grandma with grandma, sisters of grandma with grandma, et cetera.

Ralph Merlino wrote in post #8606399
I see that you live in Desoto, I moved to Texas two years ago
and the one thing I came to realize is that the Texans n my area
are poor. They just don't have money to spend. I cant tell you how
jobs I have shot and the people can't order one picture.
I shot a large family last week, ten kids and the parents , two
hours of my time and I was lucky to get $150.00 and that was
with a cd so they could buy 29 cent prints from CVS. That my friend
is Texas.

Man, that's a pretty narrow view of Texas. Just like anywhere there's areas where people have money and then there's areas that people don't.