Hey there all- I just did a session for a salon where we assembly-lined a bunch of girls in different hairstyles through my Killer Bees portable studio and I had the feeling that the fee I quoted them per copyright release of each photo: $50 per head- they felt to be a bit steep. Could be my insecurity of my work too.

They also would be thinking about large-scale canvas bits of the stuff about the salon and AsukaBook Albums- made custom for the salon with the girls that work there starring and modeling the haircuts in the album for cut ideas.

So, my question is: My sitting fee is $45, my per-head fee is $50 at around 20 girls. That's $1,045. Does that sound totally unreasonable? It does to me. Sounds way too high.

Has anyone else done anything like this? What have you charged?

GIRLFRIEND....

CHARGE CHARGE CHARGE! (I've been under DJ's mentorship, can you tell? ). Your time is money and especially if you're going to give your "digital negs" away...hike 'em up! And...how many hours were you there? I don't think that you charged too much! There's no such thing!

Great job on booking this!!!

KK


PS...I have something like this coming up for me as well. A famous hairstylist in Baton Rouge contacted me (I did his younger sister's wedding). He's doing like a Paul Mitchell Int'l competition and needs like 16-20 different shots of hairstyles. This might be the same competition as your salon hired you for maybe? Anyhow...the average hairstyles cost his clients like $300 per cut and style. So I CCC'd! Trust me...I used to be really insecure about telling them what I charged. "Um...yeah...does 2000 sound fair? Um..Tell me what you think...because if that's too much then I can redo and customize something to your budget perhaps???", in a squeamish way. But now???..HELL NO......since I've joined DJ's OSP...I dont' have any pansy talk. I'm all about being assertive, being firm...and sticking to my guns!

Yeah, I guess I shouldn't have any qualms charging because I do get everything back faster than anything else and I am pretty more creative than any of the photogs in the area.

My weak point is my crap equip.

I just uttered the price and felt my stomach drop when I saw their face. I thought, "Great, they are totally going to laugh me off the face of the salon."

But they didn't. And they trusted my artistic eye. It felt really, really good for once. I'll post some head shots when I get them finished.

One reason I constatntly raise my prices is to motivate me to get my business up to par with my new price. A few weeks back I riased my prices up to $3500 and an hourafter I did that I was like, "wait...that's wy to high!" (though it was only $500 more than I had been charging.) However, it did make me say to myself, "Ok, now that I'm charging that much, I better be giving that much!" Not just in material things the client "gets." But in my customer service. In the website that I have. In the speed that I get back to clients when they contact me. In the equipment that I have. All of that.

Use this experience to raise your own bar. You'll be thinking they got a good deal for what I'm doing for them! And next year when you get asked to do the same thing, you'll probably charge them even more!

Okay, here is one from the shoot. They didn't all turn out this good. I even did some with the hair in color and the skin in BW *horror* I swear they don't look like clown wigs. I like this one the best though:

Hi Grace,
Nice to met you! Im here in KCMO.
I wanted to post the other day and say hi.
I'm looking forward to more of your headshots for the hair salon.
Recently a local hair salon has asked me to do a business image.
Im still searching for clever ideas and poses. : )

Well best wishes and post more of them pics.

L.

Let me know if you want to know that technique up there. I custom wrote some scripts and meshed two diff. raw exposures of the same file to get that value range. It took me about twelve hours yesterday to do eighty files in three variations- the BW techniques took the longest and I am the most proud of them.

It's pretty time intensive, but like I saw a quote on OSP the other say,
"I don't want people to say that I'm average!"

Nice font, and picture!

Aha! I know you like the font!