Always explain them your price per item and total estimate for the project. And in case it’s a company make sure the person agreeing to the price is the one who can order a payment.
this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
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Your pricing sounds fine, their expectations of what a photographer costs not so much. It sounds like they only worked with amateurs before and are clueless about prices. 100€ or a dinner, lolz
If people are willing to pay your prices, they're not unreasonable.
Some people will only pay bargain basement prices; others will pay top dollar (or £ or EUR) for a high quality product or service.
The only thing you did wrong here is not being transparent with them about your pricing at the outset.
Just because people pay it doesn’t mean it’s not unreasonable. People are desperate and will pay whatever they have to if they need it. However, this doesn’t apply as much to photography. Still 8k for a 30 min session is wildly unreasonable even if a billionaire forks it over.
Everything that I would recommend to prevent such a situation should have been done before the actual shooting. The first things to clarify before setting a date is a) What does the client want exactly? (Does she want the photos edited or does she want to edit them himself?) and b) What is the client willing to pay for the service she wants?
Do you know what photographers she worked with before? If yes, call them and ask about what they've billed her. And then go from there.
Do you have a website where clients will find your pricing structure?
In the end, you have two possibilities:
- Tell her, that this is your usual pricing for this kind of project and that you expect her to pay the bill in full (she might not want to work with you again, obviously, and also get legal advice).
- Call the client and thell her that you are sorry for the inconvenience. This is your standard pricing, but you are willing to give her a discount. How much of a discount depends on your negotiating skills. ;) Maybe only send her the unedited pictures and remove the editing costs from your bill?
I think your prices aren't unreasonable, but I expect people who have nothing to do with photography be shocked about how expensive it can be. And I guess there are a lot of photographers who are cheaper.
I will (usually) edit the pictures myself, but in the end I will do what my clients order. And clarify their order before the shooting, not afterwards. ;)
Was the price unreasonable?
No. But the client never agreed to it either.
Do you not edit your pictures the way I do and do you only use presets?
No.
What would you recommend to do in that situation
Accept the price the client had in mind.
And in the future, make sure you are on the same page and in agreement on the price before you perform work for free.
Surely if the client made the booking without checking terms themselves they are implicitly agreeing to the businesses standard rates/terms etc.
Arguably yes. And certainly the client is partially at fault too for not getting on the same page about that beforehand.
But the client would argue that their perception of the business standard would be the lower pricing they got from these other photographers in that circle. And many jurisdictions have laws and judges that tend to side with consumer protection. In California, for example, many businesses are really careful to present the customer with a written quote of pricing, and to get a signature on that before doing anything. Caveat emptor is a thing too, but when it comes to a "they should have known better" situation, often it's the business that's primarily on the hook for having the responsibility of knowing better. Otherwise you open things up to predatory situations where a business charges what they want, hoping the client never asks first, and claims the client agreed to whatever their charge was going to be. It's a lot easier for a court to just require that the business be upfront on pricing, and the business is screwed if they aren't (an easy, objective, hard line decision); as opposed to having to research and evaluate if whatever surprise pricing was reasonable or not (a subjective decision with a lot of gray area).
If this happens a lot you could put your prices on your portfolio site under "book me" or how you want to call it. Dont forget to put a small asterix with the variable prices like transportation costs per mile or km. For every hour spend photographing I spend an hour in post processing so I put those together for the ease of the client.
A tip I have gotten before is to be more transparent by showing every cost in your bill. F.e. maintenance costs, subscription costs, etc. They might be more understanding.
Never put your pricing down if you ever plan on making serious bucks. Client who will make $100k off of your work will be charged 10x more than a client who'd make $1000.
If you're shooting professionally there should always be a contractual agreement outlining what you and your client expects and how much it is going to cost them.
If you are not doing this you are not professional and leave yourself open to all sorts of trouble.
Even if you are shooting for free, you should still have a contractual agreement.
Pricing sounds fine but don’t shy away from presets because you think it’s better, it’s not. Make your own preset from one edit, sync it across the entire project and then adjust. You’ll save hours and technically get paid more.
I actually use Ai now and it’s saved me so much time and stress. I just go in and play with masks and a bit of exposure and I’m done.
What AI tools do you use?
Never, ever, start a job without agreeing terms. If they agree, great. If they don’t, also great - you avoided a situation like this.
We are always too scared to address prices and terms and it shouldn’t be that way. It’s always good to get things clear from the start, then it can all go smoothly, or you can agree to negotiate, or you can agree that you aren’t a good fit for their needs.
Always, always, always, get agreement on the rates , times, deliverables, what’s acceptable and what’s not before you do any job.
Chalk this up and accept the €100. But not the dinner, that’s just condescending and insulting for them even to offer. Photographers are doing a job, not begging for food.
If she’s offering dinner in lieu of payment, it feels like she was expecting it as a favour and not paid work at all
That was my take, too, a:
"I gave my neighbour's nephew's girlfriend's cousin £100 and some soupe au poulet, but they weren't available this time..."
Sort of vibe.
I am a full time Photogrpher from Italy, your prices are not too high and are actually affordable.
I charge 240€ per hour of Shooting (editing included), i usually decrease it, when they book me for longer, or don't charge every hour since i like to take my time to make the pictures as good as possible. I often also make offers which with a fixed price, for example ( i shoot picture of product A, B, C and will deliver at least 3 picture per product for X€) like this i can decide by myself how long i take for finjsbing the pictures and clients know the exact amont that i will charge already.
If you want to make a living you need to charge these prices and most of the full time photographer charge somewhere around this amount. Same as you say, about 40% of the money will be expenses and you would not always have Work. You also need to upgrade equiptment regularly to stay up to date, which cost a lot of money too and they pay for your experience which a hobby Photographer that charge less might not have.
In your situation, i would try to explain that to them. See how they react, if they try to make a big deal out of it, i would let it go and take it as a lesson for future clients. Be carefull to keep a good reputation and always give them your rates first or make an offer.
Main question: business or private client?
If it's a business client: their problem for not checking prices and simply hiring someone.
If it's a private client: a bit more complicated if nowhere on your website are any information regarding your prices and you didn't give any indication on how much it would be.
Thank you all for your insights and advice! I explained the pricing structure and of course it was my mistake not to be transparent about it before the shoot. We'll find a solution that is fair for both parties. I'll remember it as a learning.
Always remember - if YOU don't prioritize YOUR salary, no one else will.
dont you send a booking form and a contract before shooting anything i find your price extremely low provide you are delivering top notch content i charge 75 per picture the booking fee alone is 150 usd per session
I will follow this thread, as someone who is EU based but not quite at the level to start charging for photoshoots - I'd love to check your portfolio, work so I can get an idea of what level of quality we're talking about here.
I am just not confident enough to ask someone to pay...
so you did a job without first informing them of the cost...? well that wasn't right, on both ends. but it does put you in a really hard bargening position
Not unreasonable price wise but working a job without an agreement is.
Side note, there is nothing wrong about presets and this idea that not using them is better is just wrong.
As a professional you should be striving to be as efficient as possible and presets allow that.
You took a job without even discussing pricing? What were you thinking?
the one thing I don't understand when pros calculate their price, that they consider their cost in that way. The approach would lead a slower pro or a pro which made worse decision in buying gear, being more expensive. Why should a customer pay for that? I would look at what I think the product it worth, not how much it took the photog to make it. If I knew it cost the pro almost nothing* but provides me with a product which is valuable for me, I would happily pay.
that * of course would be customer's perception, "what? He came here for only so long?", not thinking about the time, effort and cost to become so good.
Empathy will go along way in this situation. You are both at fault but the client is the customer, so as a business person you need to decide how you handle that.
Enter a negotiation with your client, accept that you should've agreed terms and offer them a discount based on that, its very important you be respectful and don't get entrenched in negativity.
Simply accept you should've agreed terms before the work started and because of that oversight offer them a discount and go from there.
If the client is disrespectful to you, drop em and move on , but drop them respectfully.
You need to have a quote, scope, and contract in place before you start any work.
You don’t work hourly. Stop that.
You need to wrap it into a project. Hourly pricing will always give you headaches and is the worst way to present pricing to customers.
If something takes longer than you anticipated, eat the cost and reprice it in the future or learn why it took longer and fix.
This way, as you get better and more efficient you gain time and your value stays the same.
It's important to know what the customer wants in writing since what they want might change when it's time to pay up.
Agree with a bunch of comments but did not see the question about handing over unedited pics. Is this a common thing? I would not hand over any raw images though.....
Normal price, just never work again without communicating the costs beforehand.
We edit by hand. Never presets. (Presets are always just a starting point anyway, so why bother)
I would offer a good discount because it's your fault that the price wasn't communicated. Also, you obviously didn't work with a written offer or contract. Live and learn.
You mention a networking exchange. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but, it isn't a bartering agreement - nor is it a social call. Obviously not a gift, nor was it a situation where you were offered a % of their profits.
Sure, shame on you both for not establishing expectations. Kudos to you for recognizing a learning experience for what it is.
In this situation I'd probably acknowledge that expectations were not defined (ie; budgets or costs), and offer a 12% discount -or- the option to decline your product entirely without any questions asked or hard feelings.
When my neighbor gives me a ride down the street to pick up my car at the mechanic, I slip them a $20. When another friend took down a very small pine tree, I paid for their chainsaw - and then some. I want people to be fully compensated for the things they do for me.
The price isn’t at all unreasonable, but failing to even discuss pricing and scope of work before a shoot is imho deeply unprofessional to the point you should probably just offer to accept whatever they had in mind as payment.
Nobody should ever be surprised by the final bill, it doesn’t matter if it’s higher or lower than expected, they should know in advance what the amount is and have the opportunity to transparently approve or decline anything that changes it, also in advance. If it’s hours-based, there should be pre-established approval thresholds where it’s confirmed clearly at each stage.
Surprise bills are simply an unacceptable business practice, again IMHO