This week, I had a full-day shoot with Xtracycle, a bicyle manufacturer based in the Bay Area. This was a fairly typical product shoot, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to discuss how my commercial jobs work.
I received a call from the marketing director at Xtracycle a little over a week before the shoot. He had some questions about my work and the studio then wanted to know the price for a 1-day shoot. I asked him how he found me early in the conversation. He Googled studios in Tucson, where I rank very well.
He wanted catalog-style images of his 7-foot bicycles shot on a white Cyclorama. I explained that I create images and price based on usage, so we discussed his web needs and that he would not be putting the images in a print catalog at this time. We discussed his needs and determined that he could have the Post Processing done in-house to save substantially on my fees. I quoted him a discounted price for 200 full-bicycle images and we scheduled a date.
The following day, I forwarded a copy of the contract for him to review and sign.
Later that week, I spent a few hours looking at competitors' websites as well as my client's, reviewing the shortcomings of his existing image set and learning industry standards for his product.
Three days before the shoot, I confirmed with the client that the shoot was on and then secured my assistant and planned my studio prep time and testing.
One day before the shoot, I closed the studio for cleaning and preparation. I cleaned the studio top-to-bottom and organized my equipment. I stocked the icebox.
I tested my lighting concepts by setting up my own bicycle for a shoot and verifying that the studio lighting was exactly what I was envisioning. After finalizing my own lighting preferences, I marked everything with Gaffer'st tape and sanbagged my stands. Then, I painted the Cyclorama.
When I shoot tethered with an AD on site, I customize the white balance and calibrate my laptop monitor so that the image looks spectacular in Camera Control Pro. Once the paint dried, I shot reference photos and fine-tuned my white balance.
Morning of the shoot - I arrived an hour before the shoot and got myself organized and briefed my assistant on the details and explained my lighting approach.
Client arrived at 9:00 am, and client, AD, assistant, and I unload the equipment truck of bicycles and accessories into studio. We discuss the shot list. We position a test bicycle, choosing the lightest color so that we can verify how it looks on white. After review, we decide to make some slight changes - client thought contrast between highlight and shadow of crossbar was a bit high, so I raised the overhead softbox and added some fill card. We retest and are ready for production within 10 minutes of rolling the first bike into the cyc.
The next 8 hours are all about shooting multiple bikes in countless configurations with accessories.
We finish by photographing a dozen or more accessories unmounted. This was done on a tabletop setup on 40x60 foamcore.
I deliver the camera-raw images immediately via a personalized USB Flash drive engraved with my website and phone number.
After the client left, I documented the locations and settings of all of my equipment so I am able to reproduce the exact look for their next model year, then I tore down my lights and painted the Cyclorama.
For this shoot, I used my Nikon D-90 Tripod-mounted with 30lb of sandbags to weigh the setup down. Shooting tethered, the AD was able to approve each image and record filenames to match his spreadsheet. All images were photographed with my 60MM Nikkor lens for its legendary sharpness. Because we were shooting multiple angles, I chose f/16 for all images.
Total time invested in this 1-day commercial photo shoot: 20-24 hours. Any idea what's missing from this time? I didn't do any post processing on the 225 images that I delivered to the client. That can greatly increase the time investment and is entirely invisible to the client. The cleaner you shoot, the less processing, but there will almost always be some -at least a few hours.
What else is missing from this quote -- website updates, maintenance, SEO, direct marketing, networking, social media marketing, etc. etc. Cost of doing business.
That's why I can't simply charge a 'day rate.' It's not fair to me or the client. If I was charging a day rate, would I have spent as much time preparing for the shoot or would I have spent the first two hours of billable time figuring out my lighting? If I worked slower, would the shoot have gone to two days and I would have doubled my money? These are questions i don't even want to think about. I plan, prepare, work efficiently, and provide a great product to my clients. They are paying for my photographs, not my time.