STG Studios

Trying to start a photography business out of my home?

Ok so I am wanting to take photos of other peoples kids, and families, but I am having trouble with the pricing. I love how my photos of my kids turn out and I have many different backgrounds and some props, but not a real proffesional business or licence and all. I just need some advice on how much to charge people. Should I just charge like a session fee. I print all pictures through walmart.com so should I just take the photos and edit them and then give them to the customer all on a cd or should I print through walmart and charge them more than what I pay. Thanks for the advice...in advance

If you are going to do this as a business you need to have them done at a professional lab as there is a difference between what walmart uses to print the photos and a lab does. They also will do adjustments to your photos to get the best quality out of the photo. If you do enough work they will work out deals with you to do you prints.

The peopel who work in actual photo labs are photographers themselves not just someone shown how to run a machine. Look in the yellow pages for a camera shop. somewhere who sells professional equipment use their lab.

you never want to just give the photos on a CD to the customer becuase you are giving them the right to print whatever you want and if you really want to do this as a bussiness resale of more prints is how you make your money. plus you can work out getting proof prints made with a lab walmart doesnt do that. The lab will put the word proof accross the picture so it cant be used by the customer. The lab will also print copyrighted on the back of the photo so they cant just go print as many as they want from a scan at walmart.

you need to have a sitting fee a charge for then to come and have their photos taken it pays for your time if they chose not to buy packages.

Then you need to talk with a lab and see what they will charge you for x amount of wallets, 8x10's 5x7 and so on then from there you need to make different packages that you will sell them and an ala cart price list make the ala cart price high so they choose the package in most cases and you will make more money.

If you are doing this as a business you need professional equipment such as a professional camera (people are not likley to pay you to take their pictures if you have a point and shoot camera on a table top tripod) You need professional lighting, all in all you are going to spend a minimum of 4 to 5k min on equipment to make an actuall business.

I did landscape and nature & underwater and switched to fashion, portrait and such I just spent 3k building a studio in my garage that is just the studio and backprops not camera or lighting as I had most of that already.

People are leary of a hodge podge set up when doing these things becuase they can go down the road and have a actual studio take pictures for them.

If you choose to undercut the competition two things will happen they will get angry and find a way to push you out or you will not make enough money doing it that way and it is hard to raise your prices to generate more money becuase you will be known as the discount photo place.

One of the best things you can do is take a few days and set them aside and go to barnes and noble and go to their photography section they will have books on starting portiat photography, senior pictures and things like that. Amhurst books puts out some very good ones.

They will answer all of your questions and even ones you didnt know you had.

They tell you what you need to start of camera's lights, studio and so on. They will tell you how to figure out what to charge how to get customers, packages that sell.

If you are doing a studio of your own it should be about 16 ft by 13ft min with high cealings about 10 to 13 feet so light doesnt bounce off and come back down. you need this big of a studio becuase you can not put your subjects right against the background and get the lighting right for portriats.

I could type more but going to barnes and noble is the best way to get info. There is also book called posing models for photography that is pretty good it gives you rules to make the people look their best how to make people look thinner by positioning them certian ways how to get rid of double chins and all. Study study study.

You also have to look into fitlers and lens the books will talk about all of that, plus it is not just pointing a camera and taking a picture it is understanding ISO's F-stops apature value depth of feild and other things so you might want to look into a community college and taking some phot courses from them.

It always sounds like a great thing to go into but when you find out it is not cheap to start or easy to do it gets a bit scary, but dont let that scare you off once you get past that it is a great way to make a living and gives you a flexible life more than working a 9 to 5.

I will try to find the names of some of the good books and get them to you. They are about 30 to 40 each so I suchest taking a laptop to the bookstore and studying and taking notes. you could spend over 300.00 on all the books that have great information. Some you will only find a few bit of info that is useful but they will be gold. on tells you a site you can buy juniors addresses off of to do a mail out for senior pictures. They will send you the infor on pre made lables.

Child Photography: How To Photograph Kids : Photographing Kids: Getting a Reaction with Props

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