Re: First Paying Gig - How much should I charge?

How I wish there would be groupies. If I were a good looking 25 year old,
there no doubtedly would be but I'm a fat bald 45 year old so, I guess I'm
SOL! LOL!

It's a 45 minute trip over there and I carry a bag with an f/1.4 50mm, f/2.8
17-55mm, f/2.8 10.5mm fish-eye, and a shoulder soft case with an f/2.8
70-200mm. I use all four lenses during each set and, so far, have managed
with just the one bag and the lens case for the 200.

I called one of the photographers that does work for him whose pix were on
his site to see what he charges. That may have been a bad professional move
now that I come to think of it. The guy is 800 miles away so, he's not
competition, but it may not have looked very good.

"Steve B" <SurDO2Diver@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:d29Zh.9495$Fk2.7380@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"JimO" <joneill517XXX@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ad7Zh.6589$j63.36@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
There is a small concert promoter who is doing battle of the bands
concerts
throughout the US with finals in Denver. I walked into one of his shows
just to get some pictures and, after sending him some at his request, he
liked them and wants to hire me for another Texas show. It is for two
nights from 7PM to 1AM. I estimate around 3000 to 4000 exposures all
together. Each band will get about 25 exposures or so on a CD. There are
16
bands all together. I just walked in there to get some pictures for my
local photograpy club contests and never expected to get hired. I have
no
earthly idea what to charge. This guy is probably not going to pay
professional rates (or maybe he does... I don't know - just my hunch).
What
would be a fair price to charge him that he won't blow me off?

thanks,
Jiim

Will there be any groupies?

This may sound like a fun night out, but to me it sounds like about four
or five days of work. Going through thousands, making 16 finished CDs
with 25 pics each. No matter how you to, there will be cropping,
resizing, cloning, retouching, etc.

What are you worth?

Fifty bucks times 40 hours comes out to $2,000.

Will you have a bar tab? Will it be cash? Will he take taxes out of
this? Will it go on a 1099 form, and you have to cough up the taxes at the
end of the year? Are you going to need an assistant to help you change
cameras, lenses, memory cards? Or just to keep an eye on the rest of the
gear while you're taking pictures? How much will you have to pay that
person?

And again, will there be groupies?

It's not a simple couple of nights of four hours work. Travel time, motel
costs, food costs, etc, etc, etc.

Steve



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