Dear Richard
Why are we in Trouble? Please explain.
Cost are rising for just about everything. Why shouldn't the cost of talent rise also?
Thankfully I am not in the business of competing with people who do not rate their time and talent. However, from the days when I did I can see the basic problem.
1/ The FEE should be enough to cover the talent of the photographer. Rattle gets more for conducting the Berlin Symphony Orchestra than any leader of a string quartet. They are not only paying for the size of the orchestra but the number of bums on seats. Photographers working on 'big eyeball' campaigns should get paid accordingly because often there is more that can go wrong and greater responsibility. This has produced a system which has existed for years where the most talented rise to the top and get paid the most.
2/ Photographers not working on 'big eyeball' campaigns should get paid 'compensation' for helping out stingy clients;-) Or more seriously all photographers should charge fees in relation to the value to the client AND by comparison to other equally rare professions.
3/ Expenses should be charged on the cost of buying in those services plus a modest, declared, percentage. 10 or 15%.
Take an example. Photographer is asked to shoot a job 48 hours before heading for Outer Mongolia for three months. He/she shoots the job at a fee his talent demands and hands the files to a "Bureau". The bureau does everything that the photographer expects to charge for 'post processing'. The photographer sends the client a bill for the bureau's work plus 15% for handling the job. If the photographer hadn't been away he would probably have done the work himself and hopefully have charged the same as the external bureau. I don't know what the current charges are for bureau services but I was paying �50 per hour in 1993 in Cornwall. It is probably over �100 now. This means that the going rate for digital post-processing is about �750 per day. (It strikes me that this is the mean level figure for the guy who asked about consulting. Business consultants in other fields start at �1,000 per day.) Simply put the cost of sophisticated computer time is already set by other agencies.
There is a basic problem here for many photographers. They are not charging enough above bureau time at �75 per hour to separate their talent fee from their process time. They are not even charging as much as a country solicitor, with no overhead in equipment, and just look at how many of those there are. Some of these country solicitors who are nowhere near the top of their profession are charging �320 per hour.
I have a gut reaction against charging silly prices for every little item. Someone, a while back, mentioned a charge of �30 per CD of images. The problem is he didn't charge the hour+ it took him to deal with the images and gave the client the idea that he was overcharging for CD burning. Surely it is better to see an invoice with two items 1/Time spent processing �120 per hour and then 2/ CD burning at �3.
Bob Croxford
On 2 Jun 2004, at 19:54, Richard Lewisohn wrote:
On 2 Jun 2004, at 14:44, Jorge Parra wrote:
it came as a surprise to most in the crowd to realize how many
billable things in a Digital Workflow we are just giving to our clients
(starting with Time), for peanuts or just for free.
Indeed; but on the other hand, if the billable cost becomes more than that of shooting film and scanning the result, we're in trouble.
Regards
Richard Lewisohn
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