Tuesday, February 2, 2010

How much should a shoot cost?


That's sort of like asking "How much should I spend on a new car"?

It depends on what you plan on doing with it. Do you just need basic transportation, do you want a well designed, comfortable, beautiful vehicle, or maybe a truck to carry a bunch of stuff?

Same deal with photography.

Do you just want a project documented? Or, do you want images that will have the quality worthy of publication? In this industry (I'm specifically talking about architectural photography at the moment), I believe you should worry more about value instead of price. Here at Moss Photography, our prices run the gamut from $500/day to well over $1500/day. And usually, on top of that, you'll need to add assistant(s), travel expenses, post production, pre-production, meals, and delivery.

Sure, Aunt Sue, Uncle Henry, your neighbor Bob, or even your sales manager's husband (true story) all have digital cameras. Some of their cameras are even quite good. And hey, with Photoshop you can probably get usable images from them, if they know what they're doing. However, are usable images really the only thing you want?

I like to look at it this way...

Here in Denver, each Saturday, we have a Real Estate section The Denver Post where many homebuilders run ads. In looking through the ads, the ones where the sales mangers husband is the photographer really stand out. And not in a good way. There are other builders using similar quality, but I'll use this builder's ads as an example.

Scenario: Harry and Hannah Homeowner are moving to Denver, have $350,000 to spend, and a week to find a nice home. They start looking through the paper in their hotel room Saturday morning and decide which ones they want to walk through. Will they choose a home in an ad that is well lit, open and inviting, and show the quality of the house? Or will they choose to look at a home the looks like its falling over, has dark rooms in the background, blown out windows, and poor lighting? Subconsciously, they are probably judging the quality of the home by the quality of the photography. Why would a builder put up a quality product, yet not show quality photos of it. Are they trying to hide something?



I guess what I'm saying is this: Good photography probably will not sell your home for you.
All it can do (usually) is get people to your model. However, bad photography can easily lose a sale for you. Cheaper isn't better.

Its not about cost, its about value.

~V~

Next blog: What is the right equipment?