Bid for Service : Phographing new city hospital?

Good morning all,

I have recently received a request for a bid to perform photography services for my town's new multi-million dollar Hospital. They are requesting all in all a total of 170 images, ranging from mainly interior shots to 10 exterior shots. The pictures will be used anywhere from low-resolution websites to high res applications in brochures, newspapers, posters, tradeshows backdrops, etc.

They will receive a disk of high-resolution images fully edited with no watermarks, etc. The clinic will retain the copyright to all of the images taken under the contract.

I do my photography business on the side of my regular 7-5 day job as a network administrator, but my business is competing head to head nicely compared to the competition that has been in town for years. I believe this to be a great chance to get my name out to the part of the community that has yet to use my services, but I also do not want to undercut myself, or competing firms. In the same light, I do not want to overcut them and lose the bid due to this reason.

I have thought about comparing my prices to a full days of service that I get paid for a wedding, which my package price w/ CD involved is $2,800.

Thoughts / comments?

Thanks so much in advance!

I'd prefer to see, "The clinic will retain two year unlimited rights to use all of the images taken under the contract. I retain the ©."

Did you ask the question, "What's your budget for this work?"

$2,800 might be in line with your location, whatever it is, but you've pulled it out of the air? Be prepared to figure out the details - days shooting; hours processing; hours hand-holding the client...

Just looking at your gear list I would budget to hire a TSE lens

PhotosGuy wrote in post #9024036
I'd prefer to see, "The clinic will retain two year unlimited rights to use all of the images taken under the contract. I retain the ©." ...

I will definitely make sure I retain the copyright, and that they will have unlimited use granted to them. The terms of the length of this copyright will not be up for discussion I have been told, so I will have to abide by their requests on this. (gotta love it)

PhotosGuy wrote in post #9024036
Did you ask the question, "What's your budget for this work?" $2,800 might be in line with your location, whatever it is, but you've pulled it out of the air? Be prepared to figure out the details - days shooting; hours processing; hours hand-holding the client...

I have not asked this, I did not know if it was appropriate to ask this or not. I figured if they were going the competitive bid route, they would weigh quality and bid amount against savings / etc for the best bid.

Is it a normal practice if a business is asking for bids to request a budget information? The reason I ask, is I'm guessing they're taking the bid amount as leverage for who will be chosen, so if we're asking what they're willing / wanting to pay it would in a way defeat the purpose would it not?

I'm very curious, not shooting down...this is my first rodeo with prices that aren't fixed as opposed to my wedding prices

Thanks!

troutfisher wrote in post #9024102
Just looking at your gear list I would budget to hire a TSE lens

TSE lens, I have never really used a tilt shift lens. Would it be ideal for such an event? just curious if anyone has used this for commercial / landscape/location photography

Definitely get a TS lens for the work!!! Anything else will be disappointing for the interiors, seriously! Judging by your gear list you have no lens that would be good for architectural work, especially interiors. You need something wider than 50mm, and preferably a TS lens!

As for asking, I wouldn't really. It is a bid, they probably make it open for bids and don't pick a photographer themselves because they want to see numerour offers and take the most attractive one to them.

Charge what you think your time and skills are worth, don't charge what you think is just right to not over- or undercut.

Chances are that there will always be the one's that are more expensive than you, and always some that will do it for next to nothing. Figure out a good price and be ready to justify why you charge it.

As with anything in life, you win some (bids) and you loose some. There's no formula written in stone.

I would need a shot list to even start to bid this. 170 architectural images is a massive amount of work. I would bet that the 170 images would be spread out with some being architectural, some staff, some procedures, etc. Of course until you have a shot list there is no way to determine how long shooting this is going to take. My advice - Get more information.

Floriantrojer.com wrote in post #9024608
Definitely get a TS lens for the work!!! Anything else will be disappointing for the interiors, seriously! Judging by your gear list you have no lens that would be good for architectural work, especially interiors. You need something wider than 50mm, and preferably a TS lens!

As for asking, I wouldn't really. It is a bid, they probably make it open for bids and don't pick a photographer themselves because they want to see numerour offers and take the most attractive one to them.

Charge what you think your time and skills are worth, don't charge what you think is just right to not over- or undercut.

Chances are that there will always be the one's that are more expensive than you, and always some that will do it for next to nothing. Figure out a good price and be ready to justify why you charge it.

As with anything in life, you win some (bids) and you loose some. There's no formula written in stone.

Some great advice, thank you very much! Really opened my eyes on a few things.

Park Street wrote in post #9024993
I would need a shot list to even start to bid this. 170 architectural images is a massive amount of work. I would bet that the 170 images would be spread out with some being architectural, some staff, some procedures, etc. Of course until you have a shot list there is no way to determine how long shooting this is going to take. My advice - Get more information.

I did not include the shot list in the OP....

Here is the shot list they gave me:

Location # of photos
Exterior 8
Cafateria 5
Admissions 5
Respiratory 10
Emergency Dept 20
Pharmacy 5
2nd Floor General 20
Labor & Delivery 15
Administration 5
Board Room 2
Gift Shop 5
Radiology 20
Surgery 20
Laboratory 10
ICU 10
Business Office 10


Thanks everyone so much, the input is greatly appreciated!

Floriantrojer.com wrote in post #9024608
Definitely get a TS lens for the work!!! Anything else will be disappointing for the interiors, seriously! Judging by your gear list you have no lens that would be good for architectural work, especially interiors. You need something wider than 50mm, and preferably a TS lens!

As for asking, I wouldn't really. It is a bid, they probably make it open for bids and don't pick a photographer themselves because they want to see numerour offers and take the most attractive one to them.

Charge what you think your time and skills are worth, don't charge what you think is just right to not over- or undercut.

Chances are that there will always be the one's that are more expensive than you, and always some that will do it for next to nothing. Figure out a good price and be ready to justify why you charge it.

As with anything in life, you win some (bids) and you loose some. There's no formula written in stone.

also, I do have a 24-70mm f/2.8L , so on FF that will give me a little more on the wide end, but I will look into the TS lenses.

Any suggestions

twistedinsight wrote in post #9025737
Some great advice, thank you very much! Really opened my eyes on a few things.



I did not include the shot list in the OP....

Here is the shot list they gave me:

Location # of photos
Exterior 8
Cafateria 5
Admissions 5
Respiratory 10
Emergency Dept 20
Pharmacy 5
2nd Floor General 20
Labor & Delivery 15
Administration 5
Board Room 2
Gift Shop 5
Radiology 20
Surgery 20
Laboratory 10
ICU 10
Business Office 10


Thanks everyone so much, the input is greatly appreciated!

Ok. My next question would be are there to be people in these shots? If so are the shots to be journalistic or staged?

I would be that they are basing this list on someone coming in and taking snapshots not staging the shots. What could they possibly use ten staged shots in their business office for?

I would research the competition in your area. Archtectural photography companies that do large scale building dont just run out malequipt. I watched a firm shoot a simple parking structure for the local trasit company. They had loads of gear and lighting. They used reflectors 20 ft square to get the lighting just right. Their strobes were not the little AB's used in studios they were monsters that lit entire floors.

SF

twistedinsight wrote in post #9024516
I have not asked this, I did not know if it was appropriate to ask this or not.

TSE lens, I have never really used a tilt shift lens. Would it be ideal for such an event? just curious if anyone has used this for commercial / landscape/location photography

I think you mis-understood Frank's rhetorical question. Asking the hospital what there budget is won't be the best move. It is a question you should ask yourself. WHAT IS YOUR BUDGET, not what is their budget? Their budget is probably the lowest bidder.

TS-E lenses are ideal for this type of job. They will help you control the perspective more. You can keep your vertical lines vertical. While you can spend time in photoshop to correct this, you'll get much better resolution to do it in camera with the proper lens.

Depending on the creativity they are looking for in the images this could be as many as 5 or even more days of shooting.

If they had come to me for the job I would be expecting they wanted well thought composition and creative images as well as the standard depending on the subject and would probably charge between $10k-$20k once I looked into the details and figured out what would all go into the images.

Sorry to judge but unless they are just looking for a cheap option for some quick photos I don't think you could handle a job like this at the higher standards or photography.

A few bad things could happen. One you charge a low fee that you feel falls in line with how you would produce the job and the quality you would provide and they do hire you then get pissed when you don't provide what someone else would have charged $20k for. Another could be you bid higher and more in line with professional production levels and then they get really pissed when you don't provide what they expected.

Maybe you will get lucky though and bid directly in line with what they want to spend and provide them exactly the quality the had expected.

Hey everyone,

Again thanks for your input. My town is very small, population of about 11,000. As far as high end, commercial architectural photography, we do not have this available anywhere close. The only place I can think of that might be available would be Shreveport (2 hours) or Dallas (4 hours away), which would definitely be a possibility but I believe they're keeping this local.

Either way, I am trying to just get a basis for what I should charge for a project such as this. It is known that in this town that I specialize in Wedding/Portrait/Event photography, and after seeing my website that does not have many if any examples of this type photography, I was contacted with their interest.

I know my output will not be that of one considered the higher in standards of commercial photography, but I am confident that I will definitely give them a Unique viewpoint, that can be considered extremely commercial, yet unique/artistic. I was just curious of how I should go about pricing that will 1) be worth it in the end for me and 2) weigh the possibility of using this as an outreach to the community and get my name out more.

I hope I am not coming across as being defensive, b/c i am not and respect all of your suggestions and input. It really means a lot, and it really has and will help out in my decision.

I'm mainly in a pinch b/c tho in Dallas where someone may not bat an eyelash at spending $12,000 on wedding photography and a hospital might could care less about dropping $20-30k on a project such as this, I live in a town where it's unheard of to charge $3,000 for a wedding and everything is so much smaller scale, which is my reason for asking opinions on this.

Again, i really appreciate it,and any further information I'm incredibly thankful for!

Thanks again everyone!

Yes, but the prices in town don't matter. The prices of the building, equipment etc are what matters. Do you honestly think that the Xray, cat scan and heart monitors were cheaper cause you live in a small burg.

They want you to shoot because they know that you will give up all rights, charge a lot less than a photographer with a larger business.

For what you are doing I would be charging 1500 per day AND usage fees for each type of image. Trust me they know this and 2800 is way way too low for a CD full of image that you have no control over how they are used.

This is at least a 10k gig...

To further discuss that pricing issue, I feel it is not right to say this is a $5k or $50k job.

Every one has different needs. What are yours?!

You may need a lot less than another photographer in terms of overhead. What's your cost of doing business?

While for a high-end photographer this may be a $15k (ballpark figure) job, for you it may be a $5k job. It is up to the hospital to decide which one the take.

The $15K guy may get the job because of 500 light stands he will bring and the price may convince the hospital he'll do a great job. But maybe they'll see that one is not worth 10K more over you, who may do an almost equally good job. YOU JUST CAN'T KNOW.

If you'd be happy doing the project for 3K or 5K, go and charge that! It's you who will eventually have 5K or NOT have 5K because you charged more even though you didn't feel you should.

There is a photographer on another message board who sold two photos to a large hotel chain for 9,000 Dollars, for about 400 prints to be made and hung in their buildings, the company pays for printing, etc.

Another photographer may well say the price is way too low if you narrow it down to cost per print, but he's in the end.....NOT the one who just made 9 grand selling two pics, and keeping his rights too.

---


Long story short: If it works for you, go for it.