How do you price a food photography work

[littlecook]

I am a chef and a food photographer... I have been doing some work that have been published in a magazine for whom I work volunteer.
Recently I have been asked to provide a service for some chefs and they expect a quote for me to do the photos for a portfolio.
Can anyone please advise how I should price a photo and if is there any way I should be looking at when I'm pricing it.

[zona5101]

I would price it by the hour including set up time and post production time. You would have to see what others are charging in your area for hourly work. At a minimum I would think you'd want as much as you get for chef'in.

[olgabe]

As a reference - I do marketing for a large international restaurant chain, and frequently comission food photographers for various promotions. Pricing dropped a lot in the last few years, because of greater availability of good quality photographers shooting digital. On the high end I pay about 8-10K for a full day in a studio which generally produces 12-18 images shot with medium format digital camera; that includes photographer, assistant doing processing real time, food stylist + assistant, and prop stylist. And food If I don't need medium format (i.e. I won't be using the images for billboards), I go with a more affordable pro - usually comes down to 2.5K per day, 10-15 images depending on complexity, usually just the photograper and the food stylist, and the images are not available until a few days after the shoot. This may be done in a studio or set up in our test kitchen. All of this includes unlimited international usage rights - essentialy, it is 'work for hire'.

It sounds like it's a lot less than what it used to be because occasionally I run into older images in our library that have royalty restrictions on it and that have been purchased at 5-7K per shot (and yet require additional royalties after the first 5 years of use!). Today, I won't even consider hiring a pro that wants royalties simply because the tracking of rights and usage is such a pain and such a waste of resources.

Hope this gives you an idea.