Hey there I'm new to food and beverage photography but I have a potential national campaign on my hands and don't know how or what to base my services off of pricing wise. Me being new to this I don't know if I charge per hour, per photo, or per shoot, or if there is a formula to it all. I don't want to come across rude and ask for something out of bounds ... Thank you guys for your time and reading this. If there is any links or articles that you know of to point me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated ...Thank you again and wish me luck!!
I haven't shot any national campaigns, so take my input with a grain of salt. From what I've seen, large shoots are typically billed as a creative fee per photo plus expenses. So you'd itemize your expenses and bill for that, then charge an additional fee for each photo to cover your salary. You might also charge licensing fees on top of that, or roll that in with the creative fees.
Hopefully someone with more experience can weigh in here, and best of luck to you!
It's extremely hard to give you solid price information here without much more info. The first step it to ask a few key questions:
1) How long will it take to complete the project?
2) What styling, equipment and studio rentals, staff, travel, and other misc expenses will be required to execute the shoot?
3) What is the use of the images(territory/length/media buy $$$)? Do you want restricted or unrestriced license?
4) What is your budget?
Most pro food photographers will charge $800-1500 a day plus expenses. Licensing can vary from $1000-5000.
Another strategy when you have very little experience with a style or market is to partner with another established pro photographer for this project. Ask for a 20% commission on the job and learn how it is really done.
Teri Campbell goes into this subject in his book. http://www.teristudios.com
Also, ASMP has excellent tools available
You should go right now and download http://blinkbid.com/ . You can easily build a bid with all of your expenses plus your per image rate to send to your client and you can search what the commercial market rate is for your area based on usage.
*I would encourage you NOT to work on a day rate but to sit down with your client and build a shot list and focus on shooting that shot list and charge a per image rate for that. A lot of times the client knows what they want but have a hard time getting it out. You will spend the majority of the day shooting what you think looks great but it might not be what they are looking for and frustrations will build. It is a real pain. If you work through that frustration off set and get to know your clients needs and they get to know their own needs then on shoot day you can work on the already decided shots and everyone is happy and they feel as though they got exactly what they paid for.
Hypothetical situation example: Cracker Barrel needs images for their stupid wooden menu things on the table that always fall over into your biscuits and gravy.
You: How many food images?
Art Director: Probably like 20.
You: What will be their usage?
Art Director: We are going to use them in ads for those amazing menu boards for the tables to trick people into a impulse purchase of apple pie and Ice cream after they have already eaten 7 other individually plated menu items?
You: Well I know those menu boards only hold 3 menus will the rest be used in the future or for social media:
Art Director: No I just thought we would shoot a bunch of stuff and I would pick three that I like.
......Do you see what I am getting at?
This is consistently how every beginning conversation with most commercial clients goes. UNLESS they are like Cracker Barrel and use imagery a lot and have done this many times which they have. In that case they will already have a shot list before they call you.
I hope this helps.
-Nathan
http://www.nathanpedigophotography.com/