Hey all, I want to begin this with admitting my fault in not starting with an offer. The reason I didn’t send one in is because my customer had already worked with a few different photographers and the project is part of a networking exchange. My bad. So I went there and took pictures for a bit more than two hours. My own expectations of quality make me edit every set of pictures by hand, so no presets. That makes another two hours in editing. Now I’m based in Europe and I calculated my prices based on my cost, my taxes, my expected wage, available hours deducted by holiday and sick time and an overall paid workload of 40% of those hours. That makes me start my prices at 130 per hour of photography and 70 per post processing hour. Of course there is deductions for longer bookings, and networking opportunities etc. Overall I gave my customer the price of a bit more than 300 euros for the job. Sadly my customer wasn’t to happy and very confused as her recent partners oy charged her 100 or got invited for dinner. The customer also wanted to edit the pictures themselves. Again I’m at fault for not following proper procedure here. My questions are the following. Was the price unreasonable? Do you not edit your pictures the way I do and do you only use presets? What would you recommend to do in that situation. Thanks!
The price isn’t at all unreasonable, but failing to even discuss pricing and scope of work before a shoot is imho deeply unprofessional to the point you should probably just offer to accept whatever they had in mind as payment.
Nobody should ever be surprised by the final bill, it doesn’t matter if it’s higher or lower than expected, they should know in advance what the amount is and have the opportunity to transparently approve or decline anything that changes it, also in advance. If it’s hours-based, there should be pre-established approval thresholds where it’s confirmed clearly at each stage.
Surprise bills are simply an unacceptable business practice, again IMHO