[Leica] Re: Charging for photos

[lrzeitlin at optonline.net (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

On Oct 30, 2006, at 3:17 PM, Harrison wrote:

> Ted Grant wrote:
>>
>>
>> After the gear one wishes to use and purchase, film, processing and
>> travel costs amount to the biggest expenses, but with digital you can
>> eliminate about $15,000 a year using digital. So the logic is you can
>> easily buy 3 M8's and you laugh all the way to the bank.
>
> One thing that many many people do that is a mistake in billing for
> photo shoots in this digital age is to NOT bill for digital capture.
> Some think, hey I have no film expense so I do not bill for
> that...well....your camera cost substantially more than they used to.
> You have a large investment in computers,  software, hi-speed internet
> and the like.  So be sure to bill a digital processing fee. This  
> covers
> your expenses and time in front of your computer processing the files
> and your expenses in purchasing the digital cameras, computer  
> hardware,
> high speed internet connection, web space to transfer your files  
> and all
> that other stuff.  Remember you now are not just the shooter, but the
> lab and fed-ex also.
>
> Who in the old days would not charge for film, processing, fed-ex  
> fees,
> slide pages, and all the other fees?  No one who wanted to stay in
> business for very long.  The same is true in today's digital world.


Harrison,

Your logic is impeccable, and, I suspect, applicable to many  
photographers.

I have not been a professional photographer for some time but the  
practice of charging film costs for each individual shot is foreign  
to the way I and many of my associates did business. For a number of  
years I maintained a small office/studio on S. Park Avenue in the  
heart of New York's photo district. Most of my sales were to  
specialty publications (travel and marine) and for corporate reports.  
Many of my friends did fashion photography on contract to magazines.  
Virtually all of my sales were for specific projects, not individual  
pictures. I may be just demonstrating my lack of familiarity with the  
current professional climate but the only photographers I know that  
charge by the individual picture are wedding photographers and school  
photographers.

I retired before the digital era but since I converted my personal  
photography to digital, I have spent about $3000 on a 20" iMac, a  
quality digital camera, and image manipulation software. Fortunately  
many of my film lenses could be adapted to fit the digital body. I  
have a lot of other computer equipment but the equipment I cited is  
used almost entirely for photography. So far I have taken about 6000  
digital images. Dividing the number of pictures into the equipment  
cost, each picture cost me about 50 cents. Allowing for my usual  
success rate of one in ten, were I still in business, I could  
justifiably bill a client $5 for each exposure.

But I suspect that if I did that, I would not stay in business for  
very long. My client's accountant would immediately tell him that my  
marginal cost for additional exposures is zero, or very close to it.  
Further, my client, who probably has a P&S digital camera himself,  
knows that one of the primary advantages of digital is elimination of  
film and processing costs.

Better to bill the client on a per diem basis factoring all the costs  
into your daily rate if the pictures are "works for hire"  or on a  
fixed fee project cost. For free lance editorial work, charge for  
each accepted picture. It should make no difference to the client if  
the camera is digital or film.

And the joke about the pizza is unfortunately true.

Larry Z