Pricing on Car Shoots?

i know there are quite a few people into car photography. Im just now feeling comfortable with my shooting to charge. I did a shoot for a close friend as practice of his car, and he loved my shots so much he asked me what I wanted for the a few poster sized prints. So I made some money there.

What im looking to do is figure out how to charge for shooting. Should I charge by the hour to go out and shoot for my client? If i do that, what should i be agreeing to give them in return? I also involved in quite a few car communities. I feel a majority of the people would probably want some kind of digital media just to show off online or add to their personal collection. In the past ive done this at car shows and posted them with my watermark, however then find the watermark being cut off and the photos used with no representation. So i thought maybe doing a cost per photo of lower resolution jpegs that they can use, watermark free. And this way if they wanted to do prints they would have to come to me to actually print them.

My thoughts are kinda jumbled here so to sort of outline, heres what i want peoples opinions on:

- Should i charge by the hour for the shooting process
- If yes to the above, should i include x amount of originals, or should i be charging for the originals in addition
- do you think the lower resolution digital media pricing is a good idea?

really new to the whole "photography as a business" thing so I would really appreciate any input.

Thanks!

-Mike

There is no set way to charge for any services - everyone is different in the way they approach doing business. So much depends on how you want to do business and what the clients expect.

I do lots of work for the motor trade and I charge by the hour. They get all images resized to whatever they need for web use - usually 1024x768 or similar in a 3:2 crop depending on their website.

Because I work on volume each car gets 3,6 or 9 photos depending on the agreeement and each car can be fully photographed in less than 2 minutes - we are not talking creative shots here just plain this is what the car looks like stuff.

This is obviously a different model to the photographer that takes 1 car to 3 seperate locations and spends 5 hours lighting the shoot.

If you are looking at the latter option and want to be creative then pricing is basically what you want it to be. Someone with a $150,000 supercar is likely to pay more than someone with a $20,000 run of the mill vehicle.

Because of this I would not publicise your prices rather I'd look to offer a customised service whereby you give a price only after talking to the client, fully understanding what they want and tailoring a quote to give them what they want.

Question on automobile shoots

thanks for the info guys. I have a good idea now