Shoot Concept: 13 images of plated food and restaurant environments
Licensing: Web collateral and web advertising use of 13 images for 3 years
Location: Actual restaurant (local to the photographer)
Shoot Days: 1
Photographer: Midwest food and lifestyle specialist
Agency: Medium-sized Midwest agency specializing in digital advertising and marketing
Client: Restaurant chain with 500 locations
Here’s the estimate:
Here’s a breakdown:
Creative/Licensing Fees: The agency sent us a detailed shot list describing 13 images in 3 categories:
1. Two tabletop still-life images of various menu items shot head-on (camera level with the tabletop).
2. 10 tabletop still-life images of various menu items shot at 3/4 angle (camera placed slightly above the tabletop).
3. One architectural/environmental shot of the restaurant.
The camera angles and lighting would stay about the same for all of the food photos, so most of the creative challenge would be about making the food look great. Each food or drink item would need to be meticulously styled, requiring good collaboration between the photographer, stylists, client and agency.
The primary use of the images was for a re-design of the restaurant’s website. Secondary usage would be for online advertising, email marketing and social media. I chose to price the first image higher since only one “hero” shot would be used on the website’s landing page, and would likely be the main image used on social media, web ads and other online collateral. The other 12 images would be used on secondary pages of the client’s website (though the agency asked for identical licensing for all 13 images).
It’s important to remember that “web” isn’t so much a type of use, but rather a medium. Depending on how a picture is used would determine whether it’s publicity, collateral or advertising use (see definitions on Terms & Conditions page below).
After considering the size of the client, scope of the use (no print), experience of the photographer (this was his first major commercial assignment), shoot difficulty/complexity, the quantity of photos, the fact that only one image would be used as the “hero” and that the value to the client would diminish for similar images from each scenario, I valued the first image at $2500, the 2nd – 5th at $1250 each and the 6th – 13th at $800 each for a total of $13,900.
After I come up with a price on my own, I like to check a couple of other pricing guides to see what they recommend. Blinkbid called for $2600 – $4500 for 1 image for 1 year for that usage. Fotoquote recommended $6500.00 per image for three years within their web pack (which includes web advertising). The pricing guides are useful when you’re quoting exactly the same parameters that they’re showing (though I generally find them to be on the high side). In this case, we were essentially shooting 12 variations of the same food picture. So the question is, do you simply multiply that one-year fee for one picture times the number of pictures and times the number of years? If I did that, the fee would be $2600 x 13 x 3 = $101,400. As much as I’d like my photographer to get that fee, it’s simply not worth that much to the client and there are a lot of excellent photographers who would price it for a lot less. I decided on an even $13k for the fee to keep the overall budget under $20k.
Assistant: We budgeted two assistants for the shoot day.
Digital Tech: We’ll hire a digital tech any time we have a client making approvals during the shoot. It allows the photographer to keep working on set while the clients watch the progress on the monitor.
Food Stylists: The restaurant’s chefs would be cooking the food, but in order to plate and arrange all of the shots in one day, we wanted 2 food stylists – one working on the current set-up, the other prepping the next one. We also included a stylist assistant to help out.
Photographer Scout Day: The photographer would need at least a half day to walk through the restaurant with the agency and client to determine locations and angles, and review the menu items.
Equipment Rental: Included the photographers own equipment and some additional rentals.
Images Processed for Editing: Even though the digital tech would be importing and handling basic organization of the images as they were shot, the photographer would still need to spend additional time after the shoot to edit, rename, tweak and process the web gallery for the client to review.
Images Processed for Reproduction: We budgeted a day to process and retouch the 13 hi-res selects.
Miles, Parking, Misc.: The restaurant was local to the photographer and the client would be feeding the crew so I only needed to include $100 for miles and miscellaneous expenses.
Results: The photographer was awarded the job.
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