Here’s the proof for the slideshow. Have fun!

Tim Horton’s 2008 – Slideshow Proof from Geordan Saunders on Vimeo.

It’s all timing.

Step One – Determine Dates

What are the absolute dates involved? Let’s say you’ve booked a wedding, which tends to have all the same dates.

Date One – Meeting with Bride and Groom – June 25th, 2009

Date Two – Engagement Portraits – July 18th, 2009

Date Three – Rehearsal Dinner – October 19th, 2009

Date Four – Wedding Day – October 20th, 2009

Date Five – Photo/Product Delivery – November 20th, 2009

Step Two – What needs to get done before these dates?

Now you have to start making lists of what you need to get done to get to these dates. This will require you to make a list of achievements, or a timeline leading up to each date. For example:

Four weeks before meeting: Confirm date, time, and location of meeting with client

Two weeks before meeting: Send contract to client for pre-meeting perusal

One week before meeting: Contact client with “courtesy call” to make sure date for meeting is still firm

Three days before meeting: Proofread and finalize contract, make necessary changes

Two days before meeting: Send any revisions to contract to client

One day before meeting: Determine how to get to meeting place, print directions or program GPS

Day of meeting: Be 20 minutes early for meeting! If at coffee shop, surprise client by buying a few donuts, cookies or other treats and having them ready when they arrive.

These should all be entered into your calendar/daybook/blackberry/ical, etc; if you have the option of automatic reminders, use them. This will ensure you don’t miss a critical deadline. As you approach the day of the wedding, dates and events will be hard to change or miss – for example, things like rental booking deadlines, printing dates for product (ie: custom folders), or venue preview tour dates will make your life very difficult if you miss them. I promise.

Step Three – Live up to your commitments

Now that you have these timelines laid out, don’t ignore them. You’ve put them in there for a reason. Especially if you have 3, 4 or a dozen jobs on the go at once, this is the only reliable way to make sure everything gets done on time.  Don’t chalk it all up to “being an organized person” – it will not work. “Organized people” know where they left their socks, but “business people” have calendars.

So now you’ve priced your gig, confirmed it with your client and set your dates. All that’s left is to talk about meeting expectations, and I will work on that soon – promise.

Hope someone’s taking things away from this… please comment and let me know!

Quoting for a job is a lot more than just throwing a price in the air. The three parts to a proper, complete and professional quote – the pricing breakdown, the timeline, and the expectations.

Pricing Breakdown

When pricing a job, you need to take into account three things: your incurred costs, your fixed costs and your labour. Your incurred costs are things you may have to rent/buy/borrow/steal to achieve the job. For example, you may need to rent a second camera for a shoot, which will cost you $200; as well, you may need to buy more paper for your portable printer for $75.  So we now know that it will cost you $275 to shoot this event. This will clearly be recouped in your payment – you can either be very generous and only charge the client your cost, or you can mark it up. For example, you may run on a 25% markup, meaning you will bill the client $275 x 1.25, or $343.75. In my case, I would likely round that down to $340. Most of us bill for travel time as well – this year my travel rate is $0.50/km.

Now you have to consider your fixed costs. In relation to us as photographers, this usually comes into play as item value depreciation. After all, every time you use your gear, it’s worth less on the resale market than before. As such, we build this depreciation into our invoices. The easiest way of figuring this out is the following: determine how many working hours you plan to do in a year. For example, if you plan on doing two gigs per month at an average of 6 hours per gig, that’s 144 hours of use a year. Now you need to set yearly depreciation. In my case, I use 40% a year for this figure. Now, what is your gear currently worth? Let’s say you have $5,000 worth of equipment. Now, determine what 40% of the current value is - in this case, it’s 5000 x 0.4 = $2000. Now, divide $2000 by 144 working hours (2000/144) for a final value of $13.88 – I would just use $13. 

Last, consider labour cost. This is what you want to walk away with at the end of the day. What is your time worth? My billing is $100/hour. If you’re young, new, or very inexperienced, consider billing a lot less – somewhere in the neighbourhood of $40-$50 an hour. This determines your hourly site fee as the main photographer. Personally, my hourly is higher as I include editing and post-production within that site fee – some other photographers bill a lower hourly but charge extra for an editing time.

Consider whether you are bringing an assistant or two and include their labour as well. Let’s assume we’re paying our assistant $15/hour.

Now, let’s add this up. Let’s assume we are quoting for an 8 hour event, with all of the rentals and costs discussed earlier. We are traveling 20km each way to get there, and our assistant will be joining us for the entire event as well. So what will it cost?

INCIDENTAL COSTS

Rentals and Supplies: $340

Travel: $20 (40k x $0.50)

FIXED COSTS

Equipment Rate (depreciation): $104 (8 hours x $13/hr)

LABOUR COST

Main photographer site fee: $800 (8 hours x $100/hr)

Assistant photographer site fee:  $120 (8 hours x $15/hr)

TOTAL COST OF JOB: $1384.00

… to be continued…

5D Mark 2 in the wild

Told you they were arriving. Would I lie to you guys?

And what of those who didn’t preorder it? Well… I’m sure you’ll have lots of time to save up after Christmas (think March or April) before you have to part with the scratch to meet the ever-climbing pricetag. Did I mention our dismal Canadian dollar has added $500 to this puppy before it ever left the gate? Start saving your pennies and cutting your Starbucks intake.

A quick and dirty portrait setup

Above you can see the following: A key light on camera left (Elinchrom 600RX monolight with Elinchrom 32″x40″ softbox), a fill light on camera right (Elinchrom 300RX monolight with D-Lite 24″x24″ softbox), a background light (Elinchrom 300RX monolight with 60 degree reflector and 30 degree grid) and finally a hair/rim light (Elinchrom 600RX with 60 degree reflector and 20 degree grid.)

The results are…

Portrait taken with above setup

As you can see, the key creates a nice shaping light, the fill opens up any shadows, the rim creates definition from the background and the background light adds dramatic gradiation to the white paper. All of this makes up a classic, well-lit portrait that works for many situations. Later, I will discuss exactly how and why this setup works the way it does.

Coloured gels will burn if you leave your modeling light on. Not so – Lee, Rosco, Apollo, etc all make their coloured gel sheets for use on lamps that can easily be 500 or 1000 watts. I promise you that your 100 or 200w modeling light on your flash won’t hurt your gels!

You want to buy a “SHIM-meh-ruh” softbox. It’s not “SHIM-meh-ruh.” It’s “Kye-MARE-uh” – kye as in “kite.” A chimera is a mythical beast with a lion’s head, goat’s body and dragon’s tail. I guarantee photographers will look at you funny for saying it correctly, but I promise you it’s correct! Fight the good fight!

You need to iron or steam your muslin before shooting. No way! The main reason we use muslins instead of paper is that we want a nice texture to the background. Shoot agains a flat muslin, and you might as well have splotchy backdrop paper up. Try leaving the wrinkles in and playing with your background light – you’ll get very interesting results. Just, for the sake of all that is holy, don’t fold your muslins… just because wrinkles are interesting doesn’t mean a 18″ grid of fold lines in the background looks good!

There you go. Some more pearls of wisdom, hopefully clearing up a few misconceptions. More to come – promise.

I will readily admit to everyone here the same thing I tell my clients – I learned the most valuable skills I have through trial and error.
Let me repeat that for the skeptical: trial and error. Though I’m lucky enough to have studied lighting design for four years in university (hi, Sholem) and had more than my fair share of photography experience, you really learn the most by working through it. It doesn’t matter how many times you read “a greater depth of field is achieved by setting…” or “… applying this filter to your mask will…”; most (I omit “all” for fear of drawing ire of the few textbook-born-Davincis out there) of us will really learn these skills by attempting to use them.

Yes, you will fail. You’re going to screw it up, blow it, and realize you have no real idea how to fix the mess you just made. But you will learn your most valuable lesson from your failed attempts!

Hower, I must put forth the following rules of caution:

1) Do not ever, ever, ever attempt “something new” when a paying job depends on it (this is especially true for newbies)

2) Never promise a client (or even a friend!) a skill or ability you don’t yet have, assuming you’ll “figure it out on the fly” – Murphy’s Law dictates you will pay dearly for your hubris!

3) Don’t get so frustrated by failure you give up – you’re wasting your valuable time at that point, investing hours into something with no follow through!

Here’s an exercise for everyone – make a list of 3 skills you want to acquire/improve in your field, and make concrete plans to do it: Example:

Problem: “I want a better understanding of how to light a portrait!”

Solution: “My sister-in-law Jenny is going to come over Sunday afternoon so I can practice moving my lights around.”

Problem: “I wish I understood how to retouch in Photoshop better!”

Solution: “I’m going to spend some time on the retouching forums Tuesday evening, then on Wednesday afternoon I will attempt to touch up the portraits of Jenny I took.”

… etc. You get the point! One of my favourite quotes, and one I will always tell a client, is “activity drives revenue.” While this sounds very business-oriented, you can always apply it to your situation: the very act of attempting something will eventually pay off.  Keep that phrase in the back of your mind, and pull it out whenever you need a proverbial kick in the rear.

Everyone tells me I should write a book. Maybe I’m missing something, and they’re right….