Professional Photographers Digital Processing Fees Explained.
You've commissioned a photographer many times before, you like their approach, love their work and have always been happy enough with their quotations. A new product needs photographing but times are now challenging, the market place has become over-saturated and you must tighten you marketing budget. Just ask the professional photographer to ditch those flimsy digital processing fees, they seem so unnecessary anyway?
From past experience several clients either simply don't appreciate the costs involved in shooting digitally or they seem reluctant to pay for something that they believe should be free due to the 'virtual' nature of digital files. Certainly there are no costly Polaroids, film, wet processing, printing and courier charges with digital capture.
In the past working out the price of a shoot merely involved adding up the price of the film shot, photo lab developing plus printing costs and then adding on a modest supplement to cover the managing of the whole process. Scanning and retouching was usually done and reimbursed by the customer but if I was expected to do it myself then this time would be billed for separately. With the arrival of digital capture, things have changed significantly.
Well I haven't even seen a roll or sheet of film, breathed the foul stench of darkroom chemistry or spent hours laboriously removing flecks of dust from a transparency before scanning for more than 3 years now. To be honest I rarely miss it. Digital photography has many distinct benefits over the traditional film capture process, most noticeably in the new level of creative command the commercial photographer and client has and also the time saved in finishing the whole process. But there are now many less obvious and unseen costs involved in getting to this final image file:
Digital Camera Equipment. Just to be able to capture digital files the commercial photographer must now continuously invest in extremely expensive digital cameras, far more expensive than their film counterparts. Film cameras are comparatively simple mechanical machines that would last a careful photographer for many years whereas digital cameras are full of technology that soon becomes obselete so therefore need frequent upgrading. Digital cameras also appear to break more often, let alone the regular sensor cleaning required!
RAW file processing and retouching. Professional digital cameras capture files that are RAW, think of them as negatives which need to be developed, printed and then finally scanned and retouched to the clients specifications. Rather than wet chemicals and lab machines the digital photographer now uses computers and RAW processing software. Instead of dodging, burning and spotting prints in a traditional darkroom, the digital photographer must now use powerful computers and image manipulation software like Photoshop to retouch the files including eliminating flecks of sensor dust, colour correction etc. Finally these finished files are either printed off on a ink jet printer, burnt to disk or digitally transmitted via an ftp service. Such high end computing devices doesn't come cheap, nor the imaging software that photographers must learn to use. Depreciation on such items is scary and the learning curve required to skillfully use such software programs is very steep and will often require further training.
Time. All of these new and often unseen skills will require time, although the customer may get the finished shots much quicker than with traditional prints, transparencies and scans, the work load and skill set of the photographer has actually increased. Remember the scanning and retouching costs you previously had to have to pay the repro house? Well now the photographer saves you many of these costs by undertaking it themselves, but this process still necessitates time which must be paid for by the client.
Overall, photographers digital processing fees simply reflect the ongoing capitol investments in appropriate professional apparatus, skills required to undertake such tasks and the labour time incurred in delivering the customer with finished digitally captured, edited and presented image files.
From past experience several clients either simply don't appreciate the costs involved in shooting digitally or they seem reluctant to pay for something that they believe should be free due to the 'virtual' nature of digital files. Certainly there are no costly Polaroids, film, wet processing, printing and courier charges with digital capture.
In the past working out the price of a shoot merely involved adding up the price of the film shot, photo lab developing plus printing costs and then adding on a modest supplement to cover the managing of the whole process. Scanning and retouching was usually done and reimbursed by the customer but if I was expected to do it myself then this time would be billed for separately. With the arrival of digital capture, things have changed significantly.
Well I haven't even seen a roll or sheet of film, breathed the foul stench of darkroom chemistry or spent hours laboriously removing flecks of dust from a transparency before scanning for more than 3 years now. To be honest I rarely miss it. Digital photography has many distinct benefits over the traditional film capture process, most noticeably in the new level of creative command the commercial photographer and client has and also the time saved in finishing the whole process. But there are now many less obvious and unseen costs involved in getting to this final image file:
Digital Camera Equipment. Just to be able to capture digital files the commercial photographer must now continuously invest in extremely expensive digital cameras, far more expensive than their film counterparts. Film cameras are comparatively simple mechanical machines that would last a careful photographer for many years whereas digital cameras are full of technology that soon becomes obselete so therefore need frequent upgrading. Digital cameras also appear to break more often, let alone the regular sensor cleaning required!
RAW file processing and retouching. Professional digital cameras capture files that are RAW, think of them as negatives which need to be developed, printed and then finally scanned and retouched to the clients specifications. Rather than wet chemicals and lab machines the digital photographer now uses computers and RAW processing software. Instead of dodging, burning and spotting prints in a traditional darkroom, the digital photographer must now use powerful computers and image manipulation software like Photoshop to retouch the files including eliminating flecks of sensor dust, colour correction etc. Finally these finished files are either printed off on a ink jet printer, burnt to disk or digitally transmitted via an ftp service. Such high end computing devices doesn't come cheap, nor the imaging software that photographers must learn to use. Depreciation on such items is scary and the learning curve required to skillfully use such software programs is very steep and will often require further training.
Time. All of these new and often unseen skills will require time, although the customer may get the finished shots much quicker than with traditional prints, transparencies and scans, the work load and skill set of the photographer has actually increased. Remember the scanning and retouching costs you previously had to have to pay the repro house? Well now the photographer saves you many of these costs by undertaking it themselves, but this process still necessitates time which must be paid for by the client.
Overall, photographers digital processing fees simply reflect the ongoing capitol investments in appropriate professional apparatus, skills required to undertake such tasks and the labour time incurred in delivering the customer with finished digitally captured, edited and presented image files.
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