How much are you making, really? Are you making money the way you want to?
Take a given job, track the hours on the shoot, track the file processing hours, and the hours organizing the work and burning DVDs and delivering the job. Divide by your creative fee. That day rate is looking a lot slimmer now, isn't it?
I got on this kick when a video producer suggested keeping track of editing hours to understand what we should charge for video production. Processing a digital shoot is not a lot less onerous.
My sense is that the one-off magazine portrait gigs are my most efficient money making enterprise. I often shoot, process and deliver the same day, and with the trade pubs the fee is half decent. They don't come along as often as I'd like.
The big travel, multi-day college shoots are my main income, and the invoice for a 3 or 4 day shoot can start looking scary big. But these are such high volume shoots that the processing time often exceeds the time I spend on location. My “hourly gross” looks a lot less impressive than the fee would suggest.
The worst return is with weddings. There is so much post-production effort required to deliver a wedding job that I can't charge enough to keep the return up with my other assignment work. I seem to have hit a market ceiling with my wedding rates—I raised them this year, and the bookings fell off. Then again, wedding photography is a lot of shooters' Plan B right now, so it's a buyer's market.
There are other values besides money to decide how to spend a life. I made a decision to not go into high fee, big production advertising photography. I like working light, without a crew, because connection with my subject trumps anything else for me. I have the most fun on the college shoots, and I like going deep into a single project. The short half day assignments don't bring nearly as much to the table in terms of connection and relationship. Weddings are great because the emotional dynamics are so intense, and I love the pre-ceremony prep and tension as much as anything else I shoot. If I never had to go to a reception I would be a happy wedding photographer specialist.
I made a decision decades ago that my livelihood and my passion would have to be the same thing. I've nuanced it down to a very satisfying balance now.
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