Why Hire a Professional?
In this digital age where everyone has digital cameras, scanners and home “photo printers”, when people upload their photos to a local drug store website and pick them up a few hours later, we hear this all the time – how in the world do Photographers charge $55 for an 8×10 when they cost just $1.50 to print at the drug store? Here’s why:
For a two hour portrait session:
-one hour of travel to and from the session
-two hours, or more, of shooting
-30 minutes of setup, preparation, talking to the client etc.
-30 minutes to load the photos onto a computer (2-6Gb data)
-30 minutes to back up the files on an external drive
-3 to 4 hours of Photoshop time including cropping, contrast, color, sharpening, saving a copy for print and a copy for the internet and backing up the edited photographs
-2 to 3 hours to talk to the client, answer questions, receive their order and payment, order their prints, receive and verify prints, package prints, schedule shipment and drop off prints.
You can see how a two-hour session easily turns into more than 10 hours of work from start to finish. So, when you see a Photographer charging a $125 session fee for a two-hour photo shoot you are not paying them $65/hour.
Now for the expertise involved in photographing your session:
Shooting professional photography is a skill, acquired through years of experience. Even though a quality camera now costs under $2,000, taking professional portraits involves much more than a nice camera.
Most Professional Photographers take years to go from buying their first decent camera to making money with their photography. In Addition to learning how to use the camera itself, there is a mountain of other equipment involved, as well as numerous software programs used to edit images and run a website.
And let’s not forget that you actually have to have people skills, be able to communicate, make people comfortable in front of the camera – and posing people to make them look their best in a photograph is a skill all by itself!
Thank you for taking the time to read this essay. If you would like to read more, please visit the original Article at:
www.caughtonfilmphoto.com/costofphotography.html