The Photography Industry today has many creative budding photographers, in more number than it has ever been! Photographers often do shoots for free or on a barter basis in order to build a portfolio, which is fine up to an extent. But as you move ahead in your journey, working with well-established brands and model, I strongly suggest you to not do it for some coupons, a lunch or free. Everyone has bills to pay. Somebody is losing a chance because you accepted to do it for no costs at all. This influences the brands and makes them look out for free shoots instead, compromising with the best quality in the market. The best practice is to research and set prices for your Photography and following are some things that you should keep in mind:
Charges
Dig a little deep, go through other photographer’s portfolios, websites and the charges displayed on them. Compare it with your skill set and gear when deciding upon a charge rate. It can be either on the based on the number of pictures, hours or per day basis.
Get everything in writing
When working with a brand or model for a shoot, make sure that things are duly agreed upon before the shoots begin. For example, what gear you’ll be using, the duration of the shoot, location, days after which you’ll send the edited pictures, charges etc. Have them all in writing, do not JUST DO NOT do all this over a phone call because then you’ll have no proof later if the brand doesn’t pay you the amount you talked about before.
Get ideas from the client
After all the things are set and ready to go, don’t just show up at the shoot location and then think about what kind of shots you would take. Before the shoot day, talk to your client and know what type of pictures are they looking forward to, ask them to send you reference shots from Instagram, Pinterest or anywhere that they like. This is beneficial to both the parties because the pictures that you shoot might be good in your perspective but not in the client’s perspective. So, its always better to know what they actually want in the photographs.
Extra Tip!
Sending heavy pictures can be a bit of task through Email or Google drive links. Instead, use WeTransfer. WeTransfer is file sharing at its simplest. It works as if your e-mail account can support those large file sizes — you type in your e-mail address and the recipient’s e-mail address, add a message, attach the file, and send. That’s it. For the basic (and free) WeTransfer service, you don’t need to set up an account. You can transfer files as large as 2GB, which should be enough capacity to send a bunch of high-resolution photos, a few decent-sized videos, just about anything. The recipient gets an e-mail with a link to download the file, and — voila! — you just sent a huge file that otherwise would have choked your e-mail service provider.
