Now studios are giving it away

I know we always hear about the "craiglist guys" selling pictures for nothing, but now studios are too. We just had a family portrait done for $79 including a CD with print right. The photographer had a full studio in nice part of town. They had 2 or 3 5Dmk2 and all the f2.8 L zooms. They used top end Elinchrom Studio gear. The work was pretty good, too.

So I really don't get how someone covers studio rent and $25k worth of gear payments when they only charge $79 for a 1 hour session. As I said, this inlcuded the print rights and digital images on CD. They also did not try to sell us prints, but merely mentioned they can print them for us (at only $4 for an 8x10). My wife booked the session and I was almost ashamed to pay so little. Crazy, huh?

tkbslc wrote in post #11282181
I know we always hear about the "craiglist guys" selling pictures for nothing, but now studios are too. We just had a family portrait done for $79 including a CD with print right. The photographer had a full studio in nice part of town. They had 2 or 3 5Dmk2 and all the f2.8 L zooms. They used top end Elinchrom Studio gear. The work was pretty good, too.

So I really don't get how someone covers studio rent and $25k worth of gear payments when they only charge $79 for a 1 hour session. As I said, this inlcuded the print rights and digital images on CD. They also did not try to sell us prints, but merely mentioned they can print them for us (at only $4 for an 8x10). My wife booked the session and I was almost ashamed to pay so little. Crazy, huh?

While you were there, you should have put dibs on any of his equipment that you'd like to have at a bargain price.

It sounds like his intention is to make more money on the upsell but he's just not very good at that part of it.

Or he's new, just conned a bank for a fat loan, and reality hasn't set in yet.

Impressive....was this an established business that's been around a while? It seems that for $79, it would be very difficult to make any money at all after all the bills are paid. On the other hand, maybe this photog has a killer business plan and s/he is doing good for themselves

He will be a GWC soon....Guy Without Camera.....if he keeps that up!!!

besides image rights it doesnt seem too low.. i have a few things that i do that i dont charge much for to basically get people in the door / make new connections... then i have the stuff that i support myself self on ... example few months back i shot a friend of a friends 21st bday party... for $50.00 bucks with a photobooth set up... two weeks ago i just shot a 3k wedding of a girl i met at that party.. there... is a reason for everything... you dont get all them L's by charging 79.00 bucks a session if thats not all you do..

He could be smart as a fox. Take a loss now, while getting some positive word of mouth advertising. Later, increase prices and or package deals as the customers come in from their friends telling others what a good experience they had with him.

So if he has people lined up for 1 hour shoots at $79/hour...that's not too shabby is it. Who says he does any post processing. Maybe has good control of his in-camera jpeg, down loads them right to a CD and he is done. Probably gets a lot of people coming back to him for prints which he just sends to a lab and pockets the 100%+ markup. Maybe he just has things figured out.

I didn't claim to have access to their books, but $80 an hour at full booking doesn't seem like it would go very far once you have to cover rent, props, camera gear, advertising, insurance, taxes, and then still have money to take home.

Not even pusing for an upsell, they've not even covering the cost of one employee per hour, and $4.00 for an 8x10 barely covers the cost of the print and the employee's time to put it in an envelope.

cdifoto wrote in post #11282272
It sounds like his intention is to make more money on the upsell but he's just not very good at that part of it.

Bingo!

He's trying to compete with the Mall Studios that offer a $69 portrait session.

But what he apparently doesn't understand is that the Mall Studios are masters at upselling, and they average over $400 off each customer who comes in asking about the $69 special!

The guy's business model sounds like a bankruptcy looking for a place to happen.

Sad thing is, so often it's the talented photogs who are the poorest at the business end of things, so they don't last long.

From the sounds of it, he used to chrage what he's worth, owns every thing at least on the gear side... Now he's painted into a corner with the economy, and soccer moms shooting, and this is "his" way of still working... Is it the right thing to do? I dunno... But if you gotta put food on the table, 79 bucks is better then zero. We can all sit here and crit his way, and he's taking the risk of being that $80 give it away guy, but it is a dog eat dog world and he's wearing mikebone underwear...

What's funny is we would have gladly paid at least double and even bought a few prints. But if they aren't going to ask me to, why would I? Heck if they are still around we will probably use them next year. I may even sell my studio gear (ok not really) as it almost costs me more to take my own kids portraits.

Seriously, anyone who's saying that this sort of pricing is in any way sustainable obviously isn't trying to make a living off this themselves and has no idea about the business of photography.

If you start charging $79 and people tell their friends about their session they are also going to tell their friends they paid $79 for it, then when you bump to price to $150 people are going to be put out. The only way to make any money with rock bottom prices is with super high volume, but the admin that going along with high volume is going to make it impossible for one person to shoot and do the admin, then once you've got staff on your books you're even further away from making a profit.

Assuming they guy has zero PP and the full extent of his time is the 1 hour shoot and taking a 2 minute phone call to book in the session it's basically the same as being a hairdresser, except hairdressers have the same clients coming back every 6-8 weeks whereas photographers probably wait years between return visits.

Who knows, maybe times are tough and some biz is better than nothing if you and your staff is going to show up every day and sit there.

There is a studio in my town that offers studio and outdoor senior pictures, 2 hour shoot, clothing changes, 20 retouches, a print package, and a cd with all the full res images from the session for 79 bucks. Crazy.