Do you charge separately for shooting & processing?

[saroy]

I had my first real "assignment" last week -- shot some photos for a local dance studio. I charged them by the hour and was paid for one hour. They ended up requesting about 20 photos to be post-processed, and they'll pay the cost of prints.

The request for 20 photos was slightly more than I'd expected and will take me more processing time than I'd planned for. I'm satisfied with the way this particular assignment has proceeded and have no problem doing the photos, however many they want, because that was the deal we had.

But I was thinking about the possibility of future assignments like this and wondered if you guys who do this on a more regular basis include any sort of limit/restriction/number on the photos you shoot? If you charge by the hour, is that for however many of the resulting photos they want, or do you say, one hour is $XXX and will get you X photos?

[shutterflypro]

If they are going to buy prints you should have the cost of the processing time built into the cost of the prints. If you are going to provide them with digital images or other media then your processing costs should be built into those licensing prices.

In the end don't charge for the time outright but build it into other areas.

[Erin Kathleen]

All of my packages include a sitting fee as well as a certain number of prints. Not totally understanding sales tax here in Texas, apparently services are not subject to sales tax unless those services result in a sale at which point both are subject to sales tax. Rather than trying to explain to my clients why I am having to back-charge sales tax, I just make them packages and will (when I get around to figuring the whole thing out) charge sales tax on the whole package.

[zepp]

Sarah,

Though this is not directly related to your situation, you might benefit from it.

http://www.editorialphoto.com/outrea..._manifesto.asp

Frank

[saroy]

At this point I am unsure of how many prints they'll want. Some images are for prints, some are for web. I hadn't thought about web usage/license fees -- I guess that is where I'll recoup the processing time, as shutterflypro suggested.

Now that I've thought about it a little more it doesn't seem like a big problem -- just lack of planning on my part this time.