A potential commercial client e-mailed to say they needed “a few product shots” and they’d do all the post-production work on the images. Their budget for “a four hour photo shoot” was quite small but it could be doable if there was only a few products and the production value was kept low (no assistant, no big lights).
I called the company to get more information.
Yes they wanted a few product shots. In fact, they wanted all of their products photographed with full studio lighting. Since some products were big and heavy, the lighting would have to be moved from location to location within the building (i.e. at least one assistant would be needed).
They went on to say that it would probably take longer than the four hours stated in their initial e-mail because the company also wanted some business portraits, a few exterior pictures of its building and several photos of its employees at work.
They also needed me to do “some” of the post production work. Plus, since the company was behind schedule, it needed the job done and pictures delivered within one week.
And the original low budget remained the same.
I turned the job down.
The person said that two other photographers also turned down the job. Gee, I wonder why.
Here’s the deal:
Every business in the world works the same way: customer pays more and gets more; customer pays less and gets less. If a customer was to pay less to get more, the business wouldn’t survive.
One reason why professional photographers use a contract is to detail what photography will be produced on a job. This is to prevent mission creep from happening.
