[Leica] Re: Charging for photos

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)]

Lawrence Zeitlin
Subject: [Leica] Re: Charging for photos
> > 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.<<<<<

Hi Larry,
The way we worked even in the late 50's and 60's was basically..

Day Rate,
Film cost, including contact sheets,
Travel costs
Mileage
Per print ordered cost
A different day rate charge if shooting colour than shooting B&W. Why? I 
don't have a clue it was just the way it was. Not long after I got rolling 
on my own I stopped doing it as I couldn't see any difference shooting one 
over the other. Because I worked just as hard for a successful shoot 
regardless of film type.

Day rates varied depending on who one was shooting for and all exposed 
material stayed with the shooter. However some clients paid more per day and 
got all the exposed material.

As Harrison says, today if one is shooting digital and using a computer 
there's a  time charge or computer time or whatever a photographer calls it 
for all the post processing. It isn't one picture at a time from an 
assignment, it has far more to do with charging for time and costs.

The bottom line many freelancers don't understand is............ we sell 
time! Not individual pictures.
If I'm being paid $2000.00 a day to shoot an assignments, the number of 
exposures made isn't relevant as the client has "bought my time and years of 
experience for a successful shoot." How many frames depends on the 
assignment, what's happening and how well the client has the shoot arranged. 
If they blow it and "hire me for the day" and I only take one frame due to 
their inability to put the elements together they are billed the full day 
rate!

No different than a lawyer or other consulting professionals.

Now if I should sell a print from my filed material for an advertising 
campaign then the importance of the campaign and budget dictates the selling 
price. As in one occasion $14,000.00 US  for one B&W photo because it was 
paramount to the complete campaign. The central photo so to speak and 
everything was built around the one photograph.

A single photo through the stock agency I'm with was sold in Germany for 
$54,000.00 of which I received 50% and the agency the other 50%. That was 
the good old days pre-digital.

Stock today is an entirely different world as everyone with a digital camera 
considers themselves "King of the Castle Photographer!" But work for nickels 
and dimes just to get their pictures published.

There are several photographers at the agency who switched to digital and in 
the first year of shooting saved $25,000 dollars in what would be 
film/processing costs! And that saving continues to grow as long as one is 
shooting stock with a big agency while using digital.

 A freelancer runs about shooting all kinds of things then tries to sell 
them later only to find another photographer beat them with a better picture 
earlier. Eventually they die from lack of sales.

However in the digital era of assigned work our time is still required for 
all the post processing, so rather than charging for film as before, we 
charge for computer time or die from lack of income derived from the 
assignment.

Besides if  we don't do this extra service the client will still have to pay 
a computer-art person to do what we do. So obviously we might as well be 
paid because it's our photography, our time and effort. Better us than some 
jock computer hack.

Sorry this is becoming way too long for a posting. However I hope it 
explains life in the fast lane of being an independent photographer today. 
And I've surely only touched on the subject.
ted