Best Business Practices for Photographers [25]
For generators, a national company such as Sunbelt Rentals will rent to you a powerful generator that delivers 5,600 watts, a peak capability of 44 amps, and a continuous load of 22 amps for $50 a day on average, with a $20 delivery and a $20 pickup charge within 10 miles of their location. You can offer the same generator capabilities from one bought from a national home-products warehouse, plus the power calming cords for $800, for the same price that you were paying to rent it from the rental company. After a few rentals and uses yourself, again it can turn a profit (as with everything else), not to mention get you back up and operating during a lengthy power outage. Few things are worse than being on deadline without power, especially when your client is four states (or a world) away and is not experiencing a power failure, nor seeing your local problems on their news, and thus he or she can't understand why you can't deliver as promised. Further, when you can offer to a client the capability of being up and running during the aftermath of a disaster, you can become a valuable resource to them, either as their onsite photographer or as a logistical command post for the crews they send in. If your local community won't be hiring you anytime soon because of their own loss of business situation, you will need to be able to make your services available in other ways to those coming in from the outside.
Chapter 3 Planning and Logistics: Why a Thirty-Minute Shoot Can Take Three Days to Plan
An oft-heard refrain from the unknowing client is, "Why is it so much? It's only a(n)…
…30-minute press conference."
…portrait that will take 10 minutes."
…hour-long reception."
…shoot where we need one good photograph."
… and the list goes on.
There is an old story about a customer with an ill-performing car who comes into a mechanic's shop for a repair. The mechanic, after less than five minutes of looking at the car, reports to the owner that the fee will be $250. The customer is relieved that it's not higher and approves the estimate. The mechanic returns five minutes later to report that the car is now repaired and ready to go. The once-happy customer now feels swindled and begins to object. "You took less than 10 minutes total to look at and fix my car, and you want $250? That's outrageous!" To which the mechanic responds, "You're not paying me for my time; you're paying me to know which screw to turn and how much to turn it."
Planning and preparation are cornerstones of success. The Roman philosopher Seneca once said, "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." I have often found myself in circumstances in which we were told it would be an indoor portrait, and perhaps it was raining lightly that morning as my assistant and I left for the assignment. We arrive, and sure—we could make a nice image of the subject in a boardroom or his office. As we're carting the equipment into the building, I notice the rain has stopped. When we get upstairs, I propose to the subject that we take the portrait outside. He is amenable, plus it gets him out of the office for awhile. We head back outside, where we load the power packs back into the car and pull out a softbox, a scrim, and the battery packs that I packed as well, but which remained in the car.
We set up the softbox and the scrim and make a few tests to ensure we're a stop or so above ambient, out comes the subject, and 10 minutes later we're done and the subject is happy. The client will be too, because they commented that they wanted something outdoors if possible, but they understood it might not be possible. As we're breaking down, the assistant has, on more than one occasion, remarked, "You were lucky that you were able to make an outdoor portrait." My stock answer is "Yup," but had I not been prepared with the battery packs, we would have missed the opportunity and not been as "lucky."
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