Best Business Practices for Photographers [123]
In the instance where the bid is for a government agency, and you are bidding directly to the government, they are obligated to tell you who the other bidders were and what the bottom-line figure was.
Whether a bid or an estimate, shoots are not always "grab the camera and strobe and go" or "grab the camera, laptop, and lighting kit and go" types of shoots. In many instances, preproduction days, post-production (or set-strike) days, tech-scouting days, casting days, and so on are a critical part of the assignment.
For pre-production days, you may be pulling together a specialized set of equipment; making all sorts of travel arrangements; getting permits, building props, or sets; meeting with clients face to face or on multiple conference calls; and so on. The list really does go on and on. During this time, you cannot be out shooting and doing other things, so it is fair and reasonable to charge the client a fee for this.
If you are doing a three-day shoot, accomplishing three setups a day, and you have calculated that your creative fee for this is $5,400, then it stands to reason that you are billing $1,800 per day. Note: Day rates imply that you are an eight-hour-a-day person, and whatever can be accomplished in eight hours is what you can/will do. If, in your own professional estimation, you can do two setups in a day because one shot is in an indoor warehouse on one side of a client's plant and the other is across the plant, then you would outline a fee of $1,800 for two setups. If, however, you are working on one floor of an office building, then perhaps you could accomplish five setups in a day…still $1,800. You might think to yourself, "I want $1,800 a day for this annual report shoot"—that's not a problem. However, using the words "day rate" as shorthand to discuss this with your client is, as previously mentioned, a bad idea. So, if you are looking to earn $1,800 for a single day's photography (whether two setups or five setups), billing a pre-production rate at 50 percent of that figure is fair and reasonable. So, too, do I bill at 50 percent for all travel days.
Post-production days are slightly different. If you own a studio, and it takes two days to break down and remove an elaborate set, your studio is not available to you for other shoots, so 100 percent of that same $1,800 is reasonable. However, if you are spending a day meeting with the client to review images, return props/equipment, and so on, then a figure of 50 percent might be more reasonable. That said, an even more cost-saving approach would be for you to pay an assistant to do that work, if possible.
A tech scouting day is another billable day, again between 50 and 100 percent of a creative fee charge for the day. Suppose you have a location scouted by an assistant who has gone to a half-dozen locations, and you have narrowed it down to two. You and the client visit the location at the exact time of day when the shoot will take place to ascertain light/shadow issues and perhaps the ability to access the location at that time—or whether nearby restroom facilities might be closed because it is after 5 p.m. for your sunset shot, and the store is closed. This tech scout would reveal that you need to contact the shop owner and offer him or her several hundred dollars to stay open just for you, since you need restrooms and a place to pull electricity from. It also allows you to see whether things