Haggling with a photographer

[RobDickinson]

In this case the £25 fee is just to keep out queues of people trying it on.

The money is made on the prints.

And he is betting on you liking the images so much you want to buy prints.

Do you think he's earned rent, covered the cost of gear , pay'd the taxman and bought his family dinner for £25?


He's risking his time and skill against the quality of his work, your effectively given a try before you buy proposal, his prints will be priced so he can eat.

[iiyama]

So you agree to buy the car at sticker price and then negotiate?

[miniman]

iiyama said:

So you agree to buy the car at sticker price and then negotiate?

Which bit of "there was no price agreed upfront" aren't you seeing?

[RobDickinson]

iiyama said:

So you agree to buy the car at sticker price and then negotiate?

To be fair he has got all he agreed too, a £25 session and the chance to see the images.

No agreement to buy prints seems to have been made.

[hornetrider]

RobDickinson said:

To be fair he has got all he agreed too, a £25 session and the chance to see the images.

No agreement to buy prints seems to have been made.

Indeed. At the very least we'll be buying the images which is 250 or 175 if bought with at least one print.

So he's making a minimum of 275 for the hour or so we were there plus another probable hour or so cropping time. Hopefully that will help put food on his table

[JDRoest]

hornetrider said:

So he's making a minimum of 275 for the hour or so we were there plus another probable hour or so cropping time. Hopefully that will help put food on his table

But it's not an hour. You are paying for his time to not have customers as well, you are paying for use of equipment, use of a studio, a bit of know how, and you're also paying for the 3-4 hours that he's not working whilst waiting for paying customers.

Not sure what the score is in the UK, but here, it's the camera shop (and a couple of others) who rent out the studio to other photographers just to make the studio pay it's way. If a photographer had customer after customer lined up, then it would suggest that they wouldn't need to rent out the studio in the first place.

[hornetrider]

JDRoest said:

But it's not an hour. You are paying for his time to not have customers as well, you are paying for use of equipment, use of a studio, a bit of know how, and you're also paying for the 3-4 hours that he's not working whilst waiting for paying customers.

Strange post. Where you there? No? Ok. It was an hour. Less, even. As I said, then there's image editing time on top, perhaps another hour.

~140 per hour seems good to me, before prints. The other stuff you mentioned is the general running costs of any business.

[RobDickinson]

An hour editing means loading the images and throwing a preset at them in lightroom.

Anything more and its several hours for processing.

Though if he has the studio setup properly and captures them well, in controlled conditions, he should be using a good preset.

[Simpo Two]

miniman said:

iiyama said:

So you agree to buy the car at sticker price and then negotiate?

Which bit of "there was no price agreed upfront" aren't you seeing?

hornetrider said:

There is no agreed price beforehand obviously, other than examples of his work are up in the studio with clear pricing labels.

I would take that to mean that if there is a 10x8 print marked at £50, then you would reasonably expect YOUR 10x8 print also to be £50. Does he not have a price list?


You know, this '£ per hour' thing is largely a red herring. PAYE people get 8 hours work a day, every day, 48 weeks a year (and paid to go on holiday and be sick). Self-employed people don't and aren't; unless they get work their salary is £0.00pa, and I suspect that unless a photographer is above averagely good, his customers probably earn more than he does!

[hornetrider]

Simpo Two said:

miniman said:

iiyama said:

So you agree to buy the car at sticker price and then negotiate?

Which bit of "there was no price agreed upfront" aren't you seeing?

hornetrider said:

There is no agreed price beforehand obviously, other than examples of his work are up in the studio with clear pricing labels.

I would take that to mean that if there is a 10x8 print marked at £50, then you would reasonably expect YOUR 10x8 print also to be £50. Does he not have a price list?

And would 20 x those prints be 1000? No negotiation? There's a price list at the Ford dealer too...

Anyhoo this thread seems to be going the way of many on PH these days. Thanks to all who contributed

[JDRoest]

hornetrider said:

JDRoest said:

But it's not an hour. You are paying for his time to not have customers as well, you are paying for use of equipment, use of a studio, a bit of know how, and you're also paying for the 3-4 hours that he's not working whilst waiting for paying customers.

Strange post. Where you there? No? Ok. It was an hour. Less, even. As I said, then there's image editing time on top, perhaps another hour.

~140 per hour seems good to me, before prints. The other stuff you mentioned is the general running costs of any business.

Ok, you're right, this photographer is making £140 an hour, 8 hours a day, and probably works Saturday as well. So what's that then - just under £7k per week, and for that he'd be working Christmas so we're talking £350,000 per annum. His overheads are probably £15-30k, but frankly, when you're pulling £300k pa it's nothing.

[RobDickinson]

I'm sure if you wanted 1000 prints there would be some haggling room as his costs to process/print would be a lot lower per print.