Need Advice about Portraits!

[littlemissprint]

Hey all!

A friend and old coworker of mine asked me if I am interested in doing some portraits for a client of his that has a pretty small budget (I don’t know exactly how small) I've never charged for any photography work at all – and have only a little experience doing portraits… So I have NO CLUE what to quote him for this!

I was hoping you guys might be able to give me some advice on this.
It would be 4 portraits and possibly one group shot of the 4 people. (Business/professional look & feel)

My two questions are this:
I have ZERO experience using artificial lighting/strobes. What would be a recommended VERY basic & inexpensive setup to use? Something I could rent and figure out how to work with pretty easily/fast.

If I were to scrap artificial lighting altogether and just use a natural light studio and some reflectors (what I'm used to)… What would be a good range to quote in?

Thank you guys a ton! =)

[tomdrink]

Originally Posted by littlemissprint

I have ZERO experience using artificial lighting/strobes. What would be a recommended VERY basic & inexpensive setup to use? Something I could rent and figure out how to work with pretty easily/fast.
Thank you guys a ton! =)

Check out the Stobist blog: Strobist: Lighting 101


It should help get some basic knowledge of limited, inexpensive (relatively), off camera lighting.
Good Luck!
TomD

[jstevensphoto]

I recently did anniversary portraits for a couple who wanted outdoor shots in a park. I just used two hot-shoe flashes with Gary Fong diffusers and two cheap, light-weight stands. I triggered the main flash off my Nikon camera using CLS, but you could use cheap triggers. The other flash was an optical slave I got from Alzo Digital for $79. The whole thing cost under $200. I set the Nikon sb600 on TTL and just guessed on the manual slave.

[Tom]

I'd probably tell them that you don't have experience with that type of thing, then find a photographer in your area that does and recommend them. Studio set ups aren't especially intuitive and I sure wouldn't want to learn on a paying customer. That's asking for trouble.