How much to charge for shooting fish store's inventory?

I'am no way a professional but do love to take pictures of aquarium fishes and has been offered by my favorite petstore to take picture of their stock for their website. They offered $15 an hour.


I was thinking maybe charge a base amount and for however many pictures they wanna use? I don't want to overcharge them (great group of people running place) but at same time don't want to undersell myself.


Let me know if you'll need me to provide any other infos.

Thanks in advance

$15 an hour seems way low considering the work involved. $15 per image selected still seems low. But pricing varies depending where you are located.

The store wants to hire you like they hire everyone else to do a job. If it were a low skilled job, and all equipment supplied, that would be reasonable. However if the job requires specific skills, you have these skills, and you're supplying the equipment then $15 would be low.

On the other hand, they may be happy enough with snaps from a P&S camera, and it may be sufficient for their needs. You have to show you can do a lot better, and they have to see a use for the images, before you can get paid more.

Do one to demonstrate what you can do, then set your price. They'll pay it, or not.

I'll do it for $15 an hour..... but the rights to use the images will be a lot more!

Try to negotiate a better rate by all means but they are obviously after a work for hire agreement and so to hit them with licensing fees etc. will, I/m sure just cause them to go elsewhere to someone who will do what they want.

I agree that the rate is low but you are not a professional and you would be doing something that you enjoy doing and making a few bucks on the side as well.

I don't think that you are doing a pro out of the job as I doon't for one minute believe that they would pay pro-rates.

For low-end work for hire my bottom rates equate to about $50 per hour and for that they get a low-res unprocessed cd at the end of the day - post processing is extra on any images they want work done on.

If your happy with $15 per hour and you get the chance to do what you love - lets face it you'd probably do it for free because of the access you will be getting to different fish - where's the harm.

Figure in a box of clothespins for your nose if they sell fish to eat.

I'd probably explain that I don't prefer to charge per hour because I like to take as much time as I need to get them the perfect photos. Than I'd calculate how many hours I'll actually need, multiply it by $15, and than double the result and offer it to the client

that way they think you're doing them a favor, and you get paid double while doing them a favor.

I wouldn't push it further, because they obviously think you're worth $15, and won't really go that much higher

I also think you should take into account thats its a petstore! Is it a big commerical store or just a small retailer? And how many hours will it take to do all this?

I dont think you should bother talking about licensing because they probably wont even consider you for much more than what they offered.

If its something you enjoy doing and wont take too long and you have nothing on at the same time, just do it. Plus its tax free

Does that $15/hour include paying for time for processing as well - you know the stuff they don't see you doing
say 4 hours shooting and maybe another 2 hours in pp
Or are they just paying for your time instore - something to think about