Please, what would some of you that do this kind of event work have charged for what I did here? It will be good information for me as I am going to do some advertising for similar work. I was there shooting a little over 3 hours and I carefully optimized 205 photographs. Thanks for any comments.
My experience in the NYC market is that many event pros charge $150-$350/hour of coverage,
depending on job specifics, how busy they are, how much experience they have, how good they are at marketing, and who they know.
Curious, in that $150-$350 hr range, is it including culling, editing a certain minimum qty or just handing over files ? Also, who are the clientele paying the low vs the high range ?
See
bold type above.
The range I described above is
among event shooters, not for a given shooter. Newbies shooting JPEGs generally charge less than experienced pros processing RAW, handling more complex jobs and providing more/better service to better-funded clients.
All of my colleagues - a dozen or so experienced event shooters - process RAW to deliver top quality. Now that cost of film is no longer a factor, I know of no event shooter who specifies a minimum or maximum quantity. We all shoot until 1) we know we have enough to make the client happy, and 2) the event is over. Better-paying clients are generally institutions of some kind - corporations, nonprofits, education and arts institutions. Smaller-scale clients such as private individuals, alumni groups, local clubs, and small businesses often have tighter budgets.
There is a hierarchy of cost/quality within the NYC market. You don't always get what you pay for, but you never get what you don't pay for. A small-scale event with a tight budget might take a chance with a new shooter who has basic gear, a decent portfolio, a recommendation or two, and the right price. If the client is not picky, or lucks out with an underpriced talent, they might stick with that shooter. OTOH, I lost a long-term client to a lower-priced competitor once. The day after their first event, my inside guy at the client's office emailed me, "Oh man, they were so bad. You would have done so much better." But, the boss there was driven by the bottom line, and although she had high standards, it took her three years to finally admit the cost savings weren't worth the downgrade.
The ones I feel bad for are the new shooters who stumble into working for an agency that pays them $75/hour or even less, and the clients who get inexperienced shooters foisted on them for top dollar, thanks to the agency's glitzy marketing.
Some of my work is through an agency, but it's a good one that pays pretty well and has a roster of really good talent. The pay is less than my independent rate, but someone else does all the front-end and back-end work, so it works out well for me. Incidentally, I've really enjoyed working with some of the agency's other shooters - sometimes on teams of two or three. I've made friends and learned from them, and we hire each other when we need help on our own jobs. Got one of those tomorrow, a nonprofit's big annual fundraising gala, several hundred fancy-dressed folks in a giant ballroom that'll need two of us to cover it properly.
To bring the conversation full-circle, I'll be using two speedlights on stands in the balcony to front-light the stage and back-light the audience. I'll set 'em on TTL and have Godox V1/Flashpoint Zoom Li-on X flashes on two cameras. I know, setting output manually is more reliable, but I really hate to not be ready when available lighting changes or I turn from the stage to the audience, especially since I'd have to adjust settings on two (sometimes three) cameras, so I rely on Av mode, Minimum Shutter with Auto ISO, and TTL with EC adjustment to adapt. It works remarkably well.
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Event professional for 20+ years, travel & landscape enthusiast for 30+.
http://jacquescornell.photography
http://happening.photos
