Pricing guideline

Wez

Hey guys, I was offered a job photographing jewellery for a shop in Ballsbridge. Only thing is, I'm not sure exactly how and how much I should be charging.

Basically, I'm gonna be taking some shots atop of some leaves, some rocks and other strange materials. Some, maybe even all might be transfered to a black backdrop in photoshop similar to the following pic to look as if they were floating..



So, as a guidline, how much should I charge, and by peice, or by time? There could be one or two hundred peices, and the time to photoshop some or all of these to a blank background could be time consuming. I could always add on extra for photoshop time.

Anyway, what are peoples oppinions about this?

Cheers!

Borderfox

€50 per hour

Fajitas!

Plus rental costs, inc. a lighting set up.

The shot's are gonna have to be spot on reflection wise.

digitalage

Wez I would charge at least 70euro an hour but that shot you posted would'nt cut it, the reflections are too distracting. You need a light tent to eliminate reflections. I would also buy some cheap black velvet as a backdrop, changing the background to black in photoshop will take for ever if you have a hundred or so shots. Heres two good links on shooting jewellery, you can get these light tents off ebay for a few quid, you will be on right track then, have you got a macro lens.

http://www.tabletopstudio.com/documents/jewelry_photography.htm

http://ny.webphotoschool.com/Shooting_Jewelry_in_a_Tent/index.html

mtracey

70/hr sounds good. This type of photography is usually quite expensive, I'd imagine he/she knows this already.

B0rG

professionally yes.
on amateur level I'd charge about 50 per picture including postprocess.

What media though? print or web?

PaulieC

200 pictures x 50 quid each comes to 10 grand. I only know of one jeweller in Ballsbridge and I doubt if he would be splashing out that kind of cash...Times watches don't have that big a margin...

Fionn

charging by the hour is subjective on how fast and effecient you are at post processing isn't it? like if you had limited knowledge of image manipulation software it'd take you longer and if you had a slow computer that would add to your wait times for screen redraws etc.
charge by photograph might be a better deal say €50 a pic @ 200 = ten grand .... not bad, eh?
would they pay that much?

i think you gotta find out how much they are prepared to pay and then negotiate up to your expectations factoring in your time, materials and skill level. at least thats what i'd do, i think

oh! if you don't want the gig at ten grand - let me know ok?

B0rG

I may have overestimated... in a case of 200 pictures put it for 20 or something. See for yourself.
Web or print is also important. Print requires much better quality, web can be cropped or sharped.
What you need is: tripod, 3 sources of light (el cheapo 3 x 100 watts chinese table lamps could do very well), couple of tutorials on macro shooting to avoid common mistakes, set of black, white and red backgrounds 5x A3 paper pages so you can make a cube without one side. There are also special macro sets on sale.

and loads of time :-)

One last thing: shooting against the black is a lot cheaper that photoshopping the black background. piece of a3 black paper only cost 1 euro or so... You can always ask them for some black/red velvet or velours - or buy it in the shop.

Wez

Cheers for all the advice lads!

I found those links to be a huge help Digitalage, thanks for those!

The thing with pricing is, he's kinda a friend of the family, so he deserves a bit of a discount. I was thinking something like 200 for the whole deal, as this would give me a enough to pay off a few bob I owe, and then have a good night out. Also, seeing as it's my first time doing a paid job it'd allow for a bit of flexibility.

I was intending on sourcing a light box from college on loan, but that fell through, so I might try making one.. I set up a little macro studio using two lamps with adjustable necks and put greaseproof paper over the lamp to diffuse the light. I got nice enough results, but the relections I'm getting are wrecking my head! Gonna try make a light box as you suggested Borg, hopefully that'll do the trick. Also, good idea with the blackbackground! I'll prolly just go down that route..