Pricing a large family shoot

[Jeffrey Douglas]

How would you guys go about pricing a large family shoot. Basically it's the grandmothers 80th BD with about 20 -25 family members each getting in a shot with the grandmother.

I estimate the time to probably be around 2 hours from start to finish. It is set to be at an outside location to be determined.

Any help appreciated. I don't really see this as a family shoot, but more as an event shoot.

The way I see it is either:

I can charge for my time and let everyone order afterwards from an online gallery.

Or I can charge for a given number of prepaid packages of prints.

Please let me know what you think. I've done events and small families but not a family shoot like this before.

 

[Tom Bennett]

I charge a straight price or by the hour. either way double the time spent to get the process time covered. example 1 hour shoot takes 2 hours total to complete. you think 2 hours. figure 3 and charge for 6. large groups shoot up to 12 frames so you can make corrections if needed. just did a family thing of 32 people. I took 12 shoots of the group changed out 3 sets of eyes, two heads, and three children to get everyone looking good

believe it or not one lady had her eyes closed in all 12 shots. she got her sisters eyes

 

[Sam Carleton]

Saturday I took a break from working on my event photography software, Photo Parata, to shoot a family of 11 people. I had a grandpa, and the 3 families of his three kids.

I have a stock sitting fee for family photo sessions that I charge. Then what I did is take what each family wanted and worked that into one of my packages, ignoring the number of images they wanted and came up with an individual family price and a grand total.

Then I took each family's total and calculated the percentage of the total.

Finally I worked ALL the images into one huge package and then broke out how much each family would pay based on the percentage I determined earlier.

How I normally do packages is this: I have a predefined set of prints, but I assign units to them. 4 4x5, 2 5x7, or 1 8x10 in one unit, 4 units for a 11x14, 7 units for 16x20. My largest package has 21 units and they can add unlimited units on after that for a given price. What I did was combine all their orders into this one jumbo order.

We emailed them the total yesterday and as far as I know, we are still waiting on a reply

Hope this helps!!!!

Sam
developer of Photo Parata the event presentation software
http://www.PhotoParata.com

 

[Jeffrey Douglas]

Sam,
I honestly have no idea what you just said. It sounds great though.

Saturday I took a break from working on my event photography software, Photo Parata, to shoot a family of 11 people. I had a grandpa, and the 3 families of his three kids.

I have a stock sitting fee for family photo sessions that I charge. Then what I did is take what each family wanted and worked that into one of my packages, ignoring the number of images they wanted and came up with an individual family price and a grand total.

Then I took each family's total and calculated the percentage of the total.

Finally I worked ALL the images into one huge package and then broke out how much each family would pay based on the percentage I determined earlier.

How I normally do packages is this: I have a predefined set of prints, but I assign units to them. 4 4x5, 2 5x7, or 1 8x10 in one unit, 4 units for a 11x14, 7 units for 16x20. My largest package has 21 units and they can add unlimited units on after that for a given price. What I did was combine all their orders into this one jumbo order.

We emailed them the total yesterday and as far as I know, we are still waiting on a reply

Hope this helps!!!!

Sam
developer of Photo Parata the event presentation software
http://www.PhotoParata.com

 

[PenguinPhotoCo]

What kind of money do you need (or want) to make for your time?

I want $100 an hour for my time. So a 2 hour shoot with 2 hours PP and perhaps an hour travel/talking would have me starting around $500.

Now I'd like more of course, but I certainly don't want less.

So if you charge say $250 sitting fee that gets things to the proof stage, you have to hope for $250 in sales. For portrait sessions that's not unreasonable, but of these 25 shots with granny how many will buy one?

Perhaps you should consider a $500 fee, with a 4x5 for each person included. That way everyone gets a print of them and the guest of honor and you can hopefully sell larger group shots sub group shots beyond that.

Just a thought. I'm not into the selling of files and CDs but that's always an option.

 

[Sam Carleton]

Jeff,

Drop me a line via my web site: http://www.miltonstreet.com/contact.php and I would be happy to send you my price list, it might make things a lot more clear.

Sam

Saturday I took a break from working on my event photography software, Photo Parata, to shoot a family of 11 people. I had a grandpa, and the 3 families of his three kids.

I have a stock sitting fee for family photo sessions that I charge. Then what I did is take what each family wanted and worked that into one of my packages, ignoring the number of images they wanted and came up with an individual family price and a grand total.

Then I took each family's total and calculated the percentage of the total.

Finally I worked ALL the images into one huge package and then broke out how much each family would pay based on the percentage I determined earlier.

How I normally do packages is this: I have a predefined set of prints, but I assign units to them. 4 4x5, 2 5x7, or 1 8x10 in one unit, 4 units for a 11x14, 7 units for 16x20. My largest package has 21 units and they can add unlimited units on after that for a given price. What I did was combine all their orders into this one jumbo order.

We emailed them the total yesterday and as far as I know, we are still waiting on a reply

Hope this helps!!!!

Sam
developer of Photo Parata the event presentation software
http://www.PhotoParata.com

--
Sam
developer of Photo Parata the event presentation software
http://www.PhotoParata.com

 

[Jeffrey Douglas]

Sam,

Message sent via your site.

Thanks for taking the time.

I do appreciate it.

Jeffrey

 

[Jeffrey Douglas]

What kind of money do you need (or want) to make for your time?

I want $100 an hour for my time. So a 2 hour shoot with 2 hours PP and perhaps an hour travel/talking would have me starting around $500.

Now I'd like more of course, but I certainly don't want less.

So if you charge say $250 sitting fee that gets things to the proof stage, you have to hope for $250 in sales. For portrait sessions that's not unreasonable, but of these 25 shots with granny how many will buy one?

Perhaps you should consider a $500 fee, with a 4x5 for each person included. That way everyone gets a print of them and the guest of honor and you can hopefully sell larger group shots sub group shots beyond that.

Just a thought. I'm not into the selling of files and CDs but that's always an option.