How much would you charge? PLS respond!
By Mare73
@Mare73 (1335)
United States
April 18, 2008 8:31am CST
Ok so as some of you may or may not know, my dream is to become a photographer. I'm SLOWLY getting there. This Sunday, I'm doing my first wedding and I'm doing this for free...hence the word "first wedding". I don't have any extra lenses, etc...I just have what my Nikon D40 came with which is the 18 55mm lens.
Ok, so I was asked to photograph a wedding on May 24th. Now this wedding is going to be in Niagara Falls, American side. Which is an hour and 1/2 from me...The lady (it's her son getting hiched...) said if I wanted to come up the night before, they'd pay for my hotel. Nice gesture...Anyways, the reception is going to be in our home town...at 5pm.
Oh and I'm going to start taking photography classes May 5th so I'll have some knowledge heehee.
OK how much would you charge? Keep in mind the follwing - please when answering:
1. It's my 2nd wedding.
2. I'm taking classes.
3. They're paying for the hotel.
4. I'm traveling there doing the ceremony then the reception here.
5. Ummm that's it.
Ok. THANKS.
4 responses
@sedel1027 (17846)
• Cupertino, California
18 Apr 08
Depends, are you just taking the pictures?
If so, I would charge $400 + travel (you should have a contract with that in it BTW...I think the going rate is .41/mile).
If not, I would calculate how much it is going to cost you to actually develop the photos and add 5% to it.
Our "professional" photographer - ie had been doing it for 20+ years - would have charged us $1500 to just take the pictures, an additional $300 to get them developed (thankfully we got it free b/c he was a friend of the family, the hobby photographer did a better job anyways lol)
@sedel1027 (17846)
• Cupertino, California
18 Apr 08
I think your options are good, but you still should charge mileage. You can do the copyright watermark in Photoshop (which I am assuming you are going to use to fix any problems in the pictures)
@athinapie (1150)
• Philippines
18 Apr 08
i think around four hundred dollars would be reasonable. but if it's not enough 450 should do it. you're still starting right? so i guess this is already a good price. and along the way you can charge much more than this amount. patience and perseverance is the key
@shewolf52002 (1214)
• United States
19 Apr 08
I would ask the obvious question, are you good? I would evaluate my skills from the first wedding as I considered the cost of the second. If you are still learning things or there are techniques you do not know ect.. or if you can not offer same package composition as an esablished photographer then you will need to adjust accordingly. Remember the thing you want most right now is a Great reputation! Of course cover your expenses and a little more but get your name out there. Im no expert so I hope that ramble made some sense? lol Good luck to you!!!
@weiyi5151 (119)
• China
18 Apr 08
hehe,keep on body.we should try our best to attain our goal.eventhough we probably failed. but it really worh us do that.
by the way ,i decide to buy a DC.. how about your DC??Nikon D40?
good luck to you.
