Portraits: How Much do You Charge?

It's going to be different depending on where you live. I would do some research in your area. Find some local photographers and see what they charge. I used to work in a portrait studio, and they way we charged was that the customer paid a sitting fee (usually around $10-$15) to have their photos taken. Then we'd allow the customer to look at watermarked proofs of all the photos taken, then they could order whichever photos they wanted and the price was based on the size of their prints. Since you're not doing prints it's going to be a little different. But you may want to do something along the lines of charging so much to take the photos, and then so much for the CD/DVD of photos. Also if you plan on editing the photos first, you should take that into consideration when coming up with how much you'll charge. But definitely look at the going rates for photographers in your area! That is the best place to start!

I don't typically do portraits, and as such, when I do I usually don't charge any sort of a sitting fee. I generally do a free shoot and make my money off of the prints. If they'd be willing to do a model release, I'd be willing to discount the prints because I can use the images for stock. $50-250 for a sitting for an hour or two and 5-10 finished images isn't a bad starting point for someone just getting their feet wet. It's all going to depend on what you're giving them for their money. -How long is the shoot? -How many outfits/poses are you going to cover? -Will you need to provide someone to do hair/makeup? Will they? -Is the shoot on location, or do you have/need studio space, or is it at multiple locations? -How many images are they looking for in the end? -What type of control do they want over those images? -Are you offering prints or just giving them the digital files? The cost involves a lot of variables, and should be set depending on what's involved in the shoot and how much control they want over what you produce. You don't want to charge 500 dollars for a single outfit, single pose, at single location, no hair/makeup required, for someone who just wants to be able to order prints, because that's way overpriced. On the other hand, you're selling yourself short if you only get 75 bucks from a shoot that lasts 5 hours, involves a dozen outfit changes, requires you to assign unlimited use to the client. Figure out what your time is worth to you based on the wear on your equipment, the postprocessing time, and the market value of your work. Adjust what you charge based on that hourly rate, estimating how many hours it's going to take you to shoot, then work on the images, and any other little bits of time that may be put into the shoot. You may even want to charge more than that, and include prints of the proofs for free as opposed to just showing the client on the PC (if you're shooting digital and not film)

I think that depends on how much time you spend total. I don't charge by the hour. I don't charge a lot but sometimes people tip me a lot. Since you do photo's for an hour think about how much you want to make per hour. So for example you could say $25 for the pictures and then since you give them a cd of all the prints you are loosing money on the prints so for example $50 for cd and then if retouching takes another hour $25. So you could say $100 for one hour session. Good luck