Category Archives: Pricing

How to Price Assignments: Price High and Give Your Clients an Experience

By DSLRBlog Editors | Published December 20, 2009

Unlike my usual posts, this is an off-the-cuff post spurred by a recent experience with some clients. We did a shoot with a young lady, an equestrian, along with her horse. We worked hard to make it not just a photo shoot, but an experience. They loved it, and loved the photos, and never blinked about the price. In interacting with the clients afterward, I realized what a unique and special experience it was for them.

Pricing is often one of the hardest areas of the business for photographers. New photographers are sensitive about their lack of experience, afraid they don’t merit a large fee and can’t compete with more established professionals. But even for established professionals, a certain sense of guilt is common when it comes to talking price. Many professionals are almost apologetic when quoting a price, and are much to willing to come down. Continue reading »

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My good news is Strobists Dilemma

By DSLRBlog Editors | Published August 17, 2006

What a coincidence. On the same day I give away a photograph for free to be used by British Airways inflight magazine I read this from Strobist

Try to resist the cheap thrill of being paid (very little) for a photo. The true expense of that action is that you ultimately deprive someone who has devoted their life to shooting professionally much of a chance of financial survival. If you are good enough to work for pay, you are good enough to work harder and raise the standards of the profession, not devalue them.

On the one hand I can totally get your point David, I really do. And you know, I do feel a little guilt for giving my photograph away (thanks for ruining a great moment in my photography career! heh).

Having pondered on it for a little while though here are my thoughts

  • If I say “no” someone else will say “yes”.
  • The only person I would be depriving is me and sorry but depriving me hurts a lot more than depriving you from where I am standing.
  • How the heck am I supposed to build a portfolio if I have to charge what you consider fair rates to people who consider those rates anything but.
  • The people who want cheap or free will not pay more than that.
  • What makes the photography industry any different?

My last point needs some clarification. Consider web sites. A company comes to me and says “I want a web site to sell my widgets”. I say “That will be $£xx,xxx.99″. They say “Whoah, my neighbour’s nephew’s friend’s sister can do it for $£x”. I say “Go get them to do it then and come back to me when they make a hash of it”.

If an industry gets commoditised it is because that industry is doing a poor job of selling itself. What is the difference between me building a website and the 12 year old kid with a copy of Dreamweaver? Oh, probably more than a million pounds in profit on the clients bottom line, and I can prove it, but I am not going to do it at the kids rates. You have to decide what the difference is between your photograph and some kids $1 stock photo. If there is no difference who’s fault is that? Not the kid and not the customer, that’s for sure.

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Photographers’ Money Woes

By DamianM | Published July 7, 2006

Chris wrote in a post of his how Carl Purcell had one of his photos appear on an American stamp and how he must feel since it was a stock photo and he basically got nothing out of it. Well spare a thought for Kelly Fajack. Here he finds people violating his copyright and making money from one of his photos, literally!

The central African nation of Burundi have used one of his photos without his permission for their 10,000 Burundi franc note. The photo was not in the public domain; it was just used on Mr Purcell’s personal website.

Quite rightly he is suing the Burundi government, but to sue a government is quite tricky. Good look with that Carl, I hope you get a fair and just outcome.

Read more about it here.

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Zooomr To Take On Stock Photography Giants?

By DSLRBlog Editors | Published June 29, 2006

For quite a while I have thought that Flickr should allow sales of photographs by its users. Flickr as a stock photography library is something I have discussed here before and it seems that since Thomas Hawk joined Zooomr they have been looking at it as a business model…

Here is a titbit from Thomas Hawk’s blog

One of the things we want to do at Zooomr is to help the pro/am photographer monetize their photostream within the photosharing space

Out of everything else going for Zooomr that could be one reason to switch. Zooomr doesn’t offer me anything to set my world alight so I would much prefer Flickr to offer this but if they don’t then Zooomr might be worth a try.

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