# Commercial Photography Pricing help



## sanelsonphoto (Dec 2, 2013)

Hello, all. Quick question for you.
A family friend of mine would like to hire me to take pictures for his website (he just started a new candle business). What should I charge him? He's looking for about 20 pictures of the candles. 

Thanks in advance for the help.


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## pixmedic (Dec 2, 2013)

seriously though....I have no idea. sorry.  :mrgreen:


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## Designer (Dec 2, 2013)

How "good" of a friend?
How good are you?

If you can make the candles look like a million dollars, then charge him a million dollars.  

If you make the candles look like $3, then perhaps you shouldn't charge him at all.


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## KmH (Dec 2, 2013)

The way commercial photography is priced is that you charge for your time and talent (creative fee), plus a fee to cover commercial usage of the images you have made (use licensing, which can be thought of as a copyright rental charge).

So the time to set up the lighting and make the necessary adjustments as you photograph 20 candles might be 6 hours. Say you make 5 images of each candle.
After the shoot you then go through the 100 photos to pick the best 1 from each set of 5 that you then edit to make the candle look as appealing to a consumer as possible.
As a rule of thumb, pre and post production usually take 3 times longer than actually making the photos.
So 6 + 18 = 24 hours to do the job. 

If a commercial photographer's standard hourly rate is $100 an hour the creative fee would be $2400. ($1200 @ $50.00/hr, $600 @ $25/hr, $240 @ $10/hr)

Next is use licensing.
The size an image will be used on a web site in part determines the use licensing fee.

Online usage @ up to an image size of 400 x 400 px would run about $35 per image for 3 months of use. For 20 images that works out to $700 every 3 months.
A use license could be written for a longer term, and for being willing to commit to a longer term a discount could be given to the business using your copyrighted images.

So instead of $2100 for a year worth of use of the 20 images, say you give a 25% discount and only charge $1575.
Creative fee. Time, talent, editing - $2400
Use licensing, 20 images, for 1 yea r- $1575
Total - $3975 

You might find some of the information here helpful: Tutorials & Forms | American Society of Media Photographers

This may also be enlightening - Case Study: Producing A Successful Estimate | DigitalPhotoPro.com


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## ronlane (Dec 2, 2013)

What Keith said. Or just sign a contract for a lifetime supply of candles


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