PR Photography Pricing – why “an hour” is free
I Produce & Provide images, and charge a client a Licence Fee to use those images. I don’t charge PR photography by “the hour”, so I can’t give a client a price for “an hour”.
How many images constitute “an hour”? To achieve something creative I might shoot 4 images. To shoot a production-line awards ceremony I might shoot 50/60. There’s a massive difference in the post-production time between those two examples, so why would I charge the same fee?
In reality, what I charge for “an hour” is nothing, zero, because that’s what “an hour” might get for the client. It doesn’t get the client what they want & need, which is IMAGES TO USE.
That’s where I can help, because that’s what I do. Create images for people to use.
So if I don’t charge for “an hour”, how do I charge a fee? The three areas that will affect the fee are:
1) The quantity of images required.
2) The usage that the images will be put to.
3) The time-period that the images will be used for
I can then work out the license fee that allows the client to use those images.
For the client this means that: More Images & More Usage equals higher licence fee, but conversely, Less Images & Less Usage equals lower licence fee.
Seems fair to me.
In order for me to quote the licence fee I will need to discuss with the client their usage needs. We already know that essentially it’s Public Relations, but is it media release, internal magazine use, website use? One of the above? All of the above? Anything else?
Once I have this information, and how many images are required, I can quote the fee. The fee will include everything that is necessary to Produce & Provide the images to use.
Corporate clients generally need to allocate a budget for photo-commissions, so they generally prefer to be given a single figure for that commission, rather than having to “second guess” the final price from a shopping list.
Worse still, the client may discover that having agreed a fee that meets their budget for “an hour”, that the fee doesn’t include using the images for some of the needs that they have.
With the one-fee licensing system that I use, if the budget doesn’t meet the fee, the two areas that can be adjusted are the quantity of images or the usage of the images.
