Anatomy of a Photo Shoot

Many clients and amateur photographers sometimes ask, why do you charge what you do? The answer can be found by breaking down the time involved in creating a successful photo shoot. I’ll go through a typical project life cycle to answer this question. It is all based on how many projects or jobs can be done in a given year along with the license for use. I’m not going to be talking about actual dollars here but to give you an idea why professional assignment photography costs what it does is simple math.

When a client requests a bid on a job I ask to meet with them and go over the scope of the job. In the meeting I need to find out what they are using the photos for and how many they will actually use. You can read about why I only talk about working on the views that will actually be used in my post Quantity vs. Quality. If the project is strictly for marketing one or two views are usually sufficient. If they need photos for design competition also they might need up to 10 different views. I try to get the client to decide on the views in the first meeting or the scouting walk through. This first meeting usually takes two or three hours so it burns up half a day. The scouting walk through, if it is local, takes another half a day or more. After many phone calls to the owner, the building manager, other participating parties and the client, and the shooting days are decided on, I do my paperwork and send in my bid. By this time I’ve spent another half to whole day.

Now I can start lining up my assistants, stylist and models if any people are to be used in views. No property looks the way you would want for a photo shoot so I use a stylist whenever possible to help smooth things out as far as getting the shots in order esthetically. I like to bring the stylist to the site if possible to go over what I am planning to shoot so we can discus how we will set things up and what props we might need to buy or rent. I let the stylist run around getting the props as well. I use one or two assistants to help haul and set up lighting and run extension cords. Depending on the size and complexity of each view anywhere from a dozen to a hundred lights might be needed. Each light needs to be placed and shaped strategically on the subject and placed out of view. This gets rid of shadows and highlights with no texture or detail and creates interest by using patterns of light to transform the space into a compelling scene. This is more physical work and needs manpower. All of this planning burns up another day.

So far I have spent two and a half to three days making progress toward a 3-day shoot. I will spent 3 days shooting the project. If this were the old film days after the shoot I would simply drop the 4x5 transparencies off at the lab and loose a nights sleep while I wait to see if everything came out the way I wanted. I always shot two sheets of film for every scene to have a backup set in case I need to push or pull the development times. When I picked them up I delivered them and I was done. Now, with digital photography I will end up spending at least as many days in post production on the computer as I spent on location shooting. Since I spent 3 days shooting I will spend another 3 or more days in front of the computer editing. This is what makes digital photography more time consuming and more costly than film. I will also spend about a half day on finishing paper work and registering my photos on the E copyright website. Once I’ve finished this I have spent a total of 9 to 10 days on the job. They aren’t usually consecutive days but they add up to about two weeks.

I hope this sheds some light as to why assignment photography costs what it does. Two weeks of work is necessary to do a good job for a client to present them with compelling photography to help their work stand out from their competition. Industry statistics show commercial photographers spend about one third of their time marketing themselves to get work. This leaves time for shooting 16 to 20 projects in a year. If you have an artists rep to get your work for you could shoot 8 to 10 more projects. The rep usually takes 20% though. Photographers must run a business first to be able sustain a living. If you use simple math it’s not hard to figure out what needs to be charged.

Please feel free to contact me or comment below.

Until next time...

Cobb Lane

I recently had the pleasure of shooting a project for Robert Thompson Architecture. Robert renovated this old carriage house for his own office. One section is used for meetings and receptions. I photographed this section after it was set up for a wedding reception for the following night. I had a lot of fun working on this with Robert because there is a very nice Tavern and Ale house named The J Clyde across the narrow cobble road. I had my wife and some friends sit at a table while I ran around setting up lighting to photograph the night shots. They watched out for my camera and computer while enjoying great burgers and high gravity beer. I shot them on two separate nights so we had twice the fun.

Check it out:

I talked my wife into posing in this view of Robert's reception area.

The arches between the architectural office and the reception area create a nice pattern.

The open space of the original carriage house makes a nice room for meetings or small receptions.

Our Friend Sally possed in  this evening shot. The board room can also be seen in this view.

The bricks of the original building are all that could be salvaged. Robert used a lot of reclaimed wood in the renovation including oak beams for support and pecky cypress for the ceiling. He also used reclaimed brick on the two story addition. Overall the building looks original on the outside. Let me know what you think of Robert's renovation.

Till next time...

Poll

In the interest of art, I always wonder if others see things the way I do.

•       Which photograph do you like better?
•       Which one do you think is more valuable for marketing?
•      Why?

1. Day Shot

2. Night Shot

Please leave your answers in the comment box or e-mail me at sc@sherwoodcox.com. I’ll post the results in a couple of weeks.

Till next time…

Quantity or Quality

When an architect or contractor hires an architectural photographer, he is licensing photos for the purpose of either generating new work or possibly for entering design contests. Whatever the purpose, the end goal is to present the project in the best possible light using photography. Ever since the digital revolution in camera technology began, there has been an increasing trend for photographers to offer more photos-and in less time. Is quantity better than quality? Definitely not!

I have heard young marketing professionals, who are all very bright and well educated, say something to the effect of, “…just give me 40 or 50 shots and we will pick the ones we want".  This sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Give them a choice.  

The ASMP has been suggesting to it’s members to provide better photography by putting more value into fewer images with the intent of separating themselves from the crowd. In doing this the buyer can see the difference in what he is paying for and will be happy with his investment. I believe in this thinking and use this philosophy to create better, more valuable images. If I go out and take forty or fifty shots of a project, I wont be able to invest proper time into any one of them – my images will become nothing more than a mediocre collection of snap shots.

A professional photographer can be a much more valuable member of your marketing team than merely a content provider. A good architectural photographer can help you decide which views of a given project are the best choices for your marketing and design efforts. That way proper time can be spent on each shot to ensure the most unique styling and lighting is employed. The number of final views that will be used should be decided on with the photographer in the initial planning process. It’s in this collaboration that the most stunning and compelling visual stories can be told. While some more complex projects may require many final shots, most don’t require more than 8 to 10 views at most for design competitions. Only one or two are usually used in marketing.

In promoting their plans, it is customary for an architect to prepare a perspective of a project. This same view - or a portion of it - can sometimes be turned into what I call a “money shot”, if it is practical to shoot from the same viewpoint. This isn’t necessarily the only view that is worth putting time and effort into but it is usually a good place to start looking.

In the following example, the first image shows the prospective artists rendering, by Michael Cherepak, of the front of a student housing project at Auburn University. The second is a shot I took myself, inspired by the rendering.

Stephen Allen, my contact with Williams Blackstock Architects on this project, suggested this view because he liked the rendering. I liked the view and opted to shoot it. 

Above is a rendering of the cafeteria (left) and athletic complex (right).

 When I was shooting this same scene, the athletic complex to the right in the rendering, was fenced off and under construction so I was limited to what I could include in the shot. Also, I could not get to the point of view of the artist (without standing in the middle of another building), but did find a very nice perspective, as you have seen in a previous blog post.

This final example is a daytime shot of the exterior of a building.

As you can see the long single-story building in the day shot is lost with the sky and high-rise in the background. This causes confusion as to which building the photographer is trying to showcase.

Using a different viewpoint, shooting at dusk and placing about fifty lights inside and out, I created a more visually stunning photo.

The following three photos help to tell the story of this very nice renovation.

I hope I have been able to show that carefully considering a limited number of views-and putting your full time and effort into those specific views can be much more valuable than a multitude of “snap shots”.

I want to thank Michael Cherepak for his generosity in allowing me to use his renderings in this blog.

Remember, all photos and art in this blog are copyrighted material.

Till next time…