Photography rates for an amateur?
Our take
Hello! Longtime lover of photography, but have been getting more into it recently.
In a great turn of events, I landed a gig making content for my buddy’s landscaping company. Have had 2 shoots so far, and a 3rd coming up next week. I was planning to work for free for a while just to have the chance to build up my portfolio, but he paid me $50 for each of the first two shoots (he called it gas money).
Him and his team really liked my work after the first shoot, and he told me that he wants to talk compensation as they would like to continue bringing me on. We settled on talking about real compensation for the 3rd shoot, but I have no idea what a fair price would be.
On top of photography, I’m taking a decent amount of video during these shoots. I’m still working on the edits, but the idea is to make some reels and social media content. We’re discussing me potentially taking the company’s social media account, and having more of a hand in the marketing side of things.
I shoot mostly on a Nikon D3400 that I got a couple years ago for art photography. Also picked up a Sony ZV1 recently that I’m using mostly for video. Don’t have any professional photography/videography/marketing experience though! Although I have thought A LOT about content creation/marketing and I have a lot of ideas.
Anyway, this is obviously going beyond the scope of what just a photographer would do! But I’m curious to get any advice/recommendations. I’m thinking of flat rates for half-day/full-day shoots, and maybe establishing expectations for a minimum number of photos and videos. As I said, I am an amateur working for my friend, so I want my prices to reflect that. But this is also a decent amount of work I’m taking on, and I don’t want to low-ball myself.
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