Putting photos on a cd.....

QueenBrownShuga · #1 03-02-2007, 11:23 PM

I photographed a birthday party and I didn't charge the mother for personal reasons. I printed some of the pictures for her because I wanted to, still no charge. Now she wants all of the pictures on a cd and asked how much I will charge her? There are 96 pictures and I have no clue what to charge her. I want to charge her appropriately because I know she wants to make prints and give them away with no copyright restrictions. Can someone help me figure out what to charge her? If it were you what would you charge?
Also what kind of contract should I put together?

skydog · #2 03-03-2007, 01:34 PM

You say you didn't charge for the birthday party due to personal reasons. I'm sure the "personal reasons" still exist, so this needs to be considered when you determine a charge. It appears you shot the birthday party at no charge and without any prior understanding. If someone was going to shoot a party for me and they told me they weren't going to charge me, I would think they were doing it for free if there was no up front understanding. If you indeed want to charge her, I'd come up with an hourly rate and charge her for the time it took you to take the photos. I would give provide her the photos "as is" without any retouching. It this person is a friend or someone you will relate with in the future I'd give them the photos as a "birthday" present. Next time discuss charges before the shoot and get at least a 50% deposit.

QueenBrownShuga · #3 03-03-2007, 02:11 PM

What happened was, her son has a few disabilities and social services allowed her to have the b-day party. The party was about 3.5 hours. She couldn't afford to pay me to shoot the party, but I did it because I knew how important is was for her to capture these moments since she only saw her son twice a week. I made prints for her and all was good. I haven't spoke to her since the party and the party was July last year. She e-mailed me yesterday and asked me how much I would charge her for a cd with the pictures on it.

Photo678 · #4 03-03-2007, 04:35 PM

point is...you did the shooting for free.....provided her prints for free...you can't go back and charge her for those things now...all you can really charge for is the time it takes you to burn the cd.....make it $50 call it a day.

QueenBrownShuga · #5 03-03-2007, 06:16 PM

The point is, I didn't tell her I would charge for anything, but she wants to pay me for the cd. She asked me. Can someone help me that's not going to continue to dissect my situation and answer the question as it was asked:
What should I charge someone who wants photos on a cd? Period. If no one can answer me point blank then I can accept that.

videosean · #6 03-03-2007, 07:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by QueenBrownShuga

The point is, I didn't tell her I would charge for anything, but she wants to pay me for the cd. She asked me. Can someone help me that's not going to continue to dissect my situation and answer the question as it was asked:
What should I charge someone who wants photos on a cd? Period. If no one can answer me point blank then I can accept that.

Are you a pro photographer?
http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1B2...=Google+Search
A simple google search will help you to find out what other pros charge for this sort of thing if you want to take that route.

How long will it take you to burn a CD? Are you going to be making custom covers and/or art for the disc? Does the disc have an image gallery on it so they could view the images in the same way on any computer without having to have 'brand x' image viewer installed on every machine they put the CD into to have the same viewing experience each time? Why do they want a CD - for viewing/archiving only - for making prints from? These are all things I would take into consideration for coming up with a price. If they are going to be making prints up to 4x6 or 8x10 than I think you could get away with the images on the CD being 1600x1200 pixels... I'm assuming here that the images are all much larger as shot and would be sized down to this size... sizing them down isn't always a bad thing and if it makes for faster image viewing on their end it's a good thing IMO. That size gives them enough resolution to make desktop wallpaper from as well as 300 ppi at 4x6 and 150 ppi at 8x10/12 - unless there's a lot of tiny details the prints won't suffer from lack of detail IMO.

If I were to take a memory card to a local photo lab and have them burn a CD from it, it would come with a printed thumbnail sheet (with filenames) of every file on the disc and an image gallery viewing application on the disc. It would cost me $6.95 and take 30 minutes at most but the images on the CD wouldn't be at their full resolution due to the way their system works.

There are so many variables but ultimately it's all up to you since you have a personal relationship with this person which is probably more important than money. I don't think anyone was trying to give you a hard time with their responses. I don't know if you've done any kind of retouching to the images. I don't know how much it cost you make prints. Maybe you should just do it for free (as a birthday present was mentioned earlier) or something you know for sure won't be hard for her to afford or whatever. If you're angry about doing more and more work for free then take it as a learning experience and move on. I'm not saying that's what's happening here but I'm one of those people who has a hard time saying no sometimes and as a result I've put myself into situations I think are kind of similar to this one before. I always stay true to what I originally told them, but that's me, and I'm always broke.

smak · #7 03-03-2007, 08:18 PM

Charge her $15 or $25. A CD costs almost nothing and there's your time - Half hour.

QueenBrownShuga · #8 03-03-2007, 11:41 PM

Thanks guys/gals for your help. I do appreciate it.

Be blessed