Needing help in pricing

[swinfany]

I've been taking pictures for some time now and is starting to really take off in photography. I'll be doing my first wedding in August followed by two more. I didn't want to charge my first one too much because I'm not comfortable charging them a lot considering its my first one. With my second wedding I'm only charging $50 more because I did their engagement pictures. My parents and my fiancée think I'm charging too cheap and for my third one they want me to bump the price up way more and say I shouldn't be charging less than $500. Considering how much time I spend on them, driving to the weddings, and then also the quality of my pictures. I've been really excited with how involved I've been doing in photography and also how many people have been asking me to do their pictures. I'm just not sure what I should be charging considering I don't have a degree in photography (I'm still in college majoring in special education/ deaf education) and I've only taken one photography class and I'm still gaining experience.

[wri7913]

What do Professional Photographers in your area charge for Weddings? That is the first thing to find out. Find out what your market will bear in terms of pricing both high and low.

Tampa market generally is $800 on the low end and $2500 on the high end. I have a friend who lives in Boston and he tells me $3,000 is on the low end for his market. So you can see there is a lot of differences in terms of pricing and what people would pay for their pictures. When I worked in Rochester, NY photo lab, I saw photographers charging something like $40 - 50 per roll of traditional film. You should be able to shoot at least 14 rolls of film for a wedding. That's 40 * 14 (rolls) = $560. Even if you are shooting digitally, you should be thinking in this term. You want to also add in your "creative fees" + your expenses.

Since you are new to this, one way you could find out what your normal clients will pay is to scale the prices. Create "Packages" and price one around the low end, middle and high end. The low end is no frills package with CD rom of all the images, a proof book and 8x10 of choice. Go all out with the high end then figure out a middle compromise package of the two. You will start to see what your clients will pick for packages and go from there. I've only done a few weddings myself so I'm still learning but this is what I've been doing.

One more thing, don't sell yourself short on your skills. While you may feel like you got technical issues and other things going on in your head from the technical side, don't let your clients know that. Keep it to yourself. They are seeing you do the best you can and you will continue to learn as you shoot more. Be confident in what you are shooting and come up with new ideas on how to shoot weddings.

Also take advantage of something like Photoreflect.com for adding more profit to your wedding shoots. Photoreflect isn't the only one out there but the idea is this.... get business cards made up with your e-commerce site. Pass out the cards at the wedding and make sure people know to go there. This site is where you will put the images online after you are done with the shooting and post production editing. You will bypass the wedding couple to reach the all the wedding attendants. The bride and groom will be busy with their honeymoon and starting their new life. You want to take the responsibility of going through them to get more sales and go directly to the people who attended the wedding. You will get residual sales from this wedding that will go for up to 6 months to a year after its done.

Some suggestions from me to you.

Do a big group shot. Many photogs miss out on this. After the wedding is done and the bride and groom leave the church or ceremony area, gather everyone up and do a group shot. Let everyone know this is going to happen and plan for it with the couple. Get a step ladder or scout out a place for you to stand that is high up over the group. This gets everyone in one shot. Do one formal, then a goofy one! Make it something really fun!

Also do group shots of the bridge and grooms bridal party with the opposite in each (bridal party with the groom as center of attention, groom's party with bride in center, etc). Hope this helps

[Brian Mullins]

Charging just a little, to be honest, is a bad idea. If you charge anything at all you are contractually agreeing to capture their wedding for $$$. Since you are just starting (and by the read of your post), I will assume a couple of things here (and please correct me if I am wrong).

I'll assume:

You have more then one camera body
You have multiple FAST lenses to deal with varied lighting conditions
You have enough memory to take 2500 shots
You have multiples flashes
You have enough batteries to run a car
You have insurance
You have a robust backup HD system at home

If you do not have this bare minimum equipment, then I would STRONG recommend you not charge. The moment you charge for a wedding is the same moment the couple expects you to deliver results. If you don't because of a hardware, workflow or other problem, they can't re-do the wedding.

At the very least:

Have two cameras
Have two lenses
Have two flashes
Have enough batteries to shoot 10 hours
Join the PPA and get E&O insurance.
Have a contract laying our your T&C.

The range for wedding pricing is indeed huge.. I found a claiglist post offering to pay to shoot your wedding. High end wdding photographers go for over $10k in most markets. Median price will depend on your area but, and no offense, without experience I would not charge anything until you get about 2-3 weddings done then charge a decent fee for a new photographer ($1000 for all day and prints).