Product photography prices

I've been approached by a very well known international wheel company to do some product photography and I wanted to get some help with pricing.

Basically each wheel would be shot on a black and white background, the client would be receiveing a total of 20 post processed images from each photoshoot. The images will be used in print and web presentations.

Any help with pricing options would be greatly appreciated

Rich

Where and how are the images being used?


Catalog and advertising options would require different licensing and therefore different pricing.

I'm guessing your client is expecting you to take the images and just hand over "all rights" so they can use the images whenever and however they want.

Realistically, to hand over all rights to the client I would charge between one thousand and fifteen hundred per image. My guess is the client would faint if you gave them pricing like that, but the unrealized income the company could generate from your images being used in any and all future advertising or catalogs is the important factor.

The client will say, "oh come on, how hard can it be to take 20 pictures" and that is not the point, the point is that company could generate hundreds of thousands of dollars over a 5 year span with these product images, and for them to pay fifty or one hundred dollars each or in total is just a crime.

Also depends on what they want for post processing. I shot wheels once for a client and they wanted the wheels cut out also - that took longer than the set up and shooting. So price accordingly.

Generally, it depends what they'll use it for & what rights you're willing to give them.

Tools you can use — pricing guides and back-office software. Editorial Photography Estimator; FotoQuote; Robin Road Software; HindSight Ltd.; NPPA Independent Photographer’s Toolkit; PhotoByte; Books.
http://www.asmp.org/co​mmerce/estimator.php

The traditional way of billing this sort of project would be:

1. A shoot fee, often based on a day rate and your best estimate of the time involved, plus any expenses incurred, and sometimes post-processing at about half your hourly rate for shooting. This includes providing proofs of the images to the client, for them to make their selections.

2. Licensing fees for the images they select to use, based upon the exact details of the usage.

There are a number of factors to consider in each case. In addition to what's been recommended... I don't know if its been updated lately, but the book "Pricing Photography" gives good guidelines for licensing fees, language for written agreements, generic forms you can adapt for your purposes, etc.

There are some other pricing models being used today... Just be careful not to give away your work too cheaply. A lot of people seriously underestimate what they should charge for commercial work. For example, your day rate should be calculated using a cost-of-doing business analysis, with reasonable profits added on top.