Best Business Practices for Photographers [51]
Again, we are discussing here the establishment of photographer's fees and not usage or licensing fees—those are discussed in other chapters. Further, these are not fees for post-production work that you are doing on digital images. That, too, is discussed in another chapter. How you go about establishing your photographer's fees is something that you do internally and then present to the client. You can speak in general terms about the factors, but do not go into details. It is okay to discuss internally and conclude within your own mind or with a business partner, "My base rate for my time is $70 an hour, then I factored in my own uniqueness, which doubles that rate, and my rate for the creativity needed triples that rate, so my rate per hour is $350, so my fee for the day—since I will essentially be committed to you for eight hours and thus not able to bill myself out to another client—is $2,800," but this information is not something that should be shared externally with any clients. You must, however, be comfortable with establishing and in general terms justifying your rate to your client. Whether you should include the usage/licensing fees in your photographer's fees is another issue that is discussed in Chapter 7.
Now, what are the factors involved in establishing the fees for your photographic services?
The Time Factor
This is an easy one. How long is the entire project going to take you? This is not just the time actually taking the photos, but also in preparing the photos. In addition, an important question is, "How much time do I have to take the photo?" If the answer to that question is 30 seconds, then the reality is that the time allowed is so short that you must be extremely skilled, with a well-oiled team to make sure you actually get a usable image. This happens a lot when you are doing portraits of VIPs. Sometimes, in a large production for a publication, a celebrity, for example, knows he or she is with you for four hours, including wardrobe changes and so on. However, even then you will have the celebrity in front of the camera for a limited amount of time.
In some instances, time is the most significant factor. For a conference or a wedding, where you are shooting for anywhere from four to ten hours or more, this would be the most likely time when you could provide a client with your hourly rate. However, it is extremely important to note that for a wedding/rite-of-passage photographer, that hourly rate should be something like, "The package price is $3,000 and includes five hours of coverage. Each additional hour is at a rate of $200." Thus, each hour of your time in the initial package is worth $200 ($200×5=$1,000), and the remaining $2,000 is your fee for the album/prints, your time consulting with the bride before/after the event, a profit for your business, and so on.
Further, because Saturdays are your most valuable days, you could offer 100 percent of your rate for all Saturday weddings, 85 percent of your rate for Sunday weddings, and 75 percent of your rate for weekday weddings. In addition, you could also offer peak wedding season rates and off-peak wedding season rates. For example, peak wedding season is May/June and September/October. For weddings in the other months, you could offer 10 percent off your rates during those months. Thus, if your peak Saturday season rate is $6,500 for a wedding in, say, May, your rate for an off-peak weekday wedding in February would be 25 percent less ($1,625) because it is a weekday and an additional 10 percent off ($650) because it is off-peak. So, the February wedding would