Take More Holidays Blog

The question is often asked, “How much should I charge for my work”?  The answer is that you charge as much as you need to charge.

The principles are the same in any business. Work out your overheads, and then work out how much work you need to do to cover them. Then the figures just fall out.

So let’s say your overheads look something like this:

Rent                            $1000 pm                              $12000 / yr

Advertising fixed       $200                                       $2400

Internet / Web          $100 pm                                $1200

Wages                         $4000                                     $48,000

Total                                                   $63,600

Note the wages are YOUR wages. If you have staff then you have extra overheads.

If you can’t pay yourself a basic wage (eventually) then you need to stop doing it and go and work on a checkout at Woolworths or something. Either that or you regard it as a hobby.

Then you look at what you need to sell to achieve the overheads. You may do portraits, landscapes or whatever. Let’s say that you do portraits.

So you could sell one portrait session for $63,600 and you would be right! For most of us that is not going to happen.

So say a portrait session is $500. Then you would need to do 127 or so portraits a year.  That’s roughly three portraits in a week. That’s a fairly relaxed number.

Say that you were charging $100 for a portrait session though. You would need to do 636 portraits or about 13 a week.

Unfortunately you don’t have all week to do portraits. In practice you can only work about two days and need to spend 3 days marketing yourself.

The next thing to consider is that sales aren’t free. For each sale there is a cost. This is called “Cost of Goods Sold” or COGS. So for each portrait session there is a cost to make the prints and frame them or whatever. These are you Variable costs, the ones that you incur the more you sell.

This is fairly basic. Anyone considering doing professional photography should consult with their industry body and perhaps do a mentoring program. In Australia, talk to the AIPP or ACMP. The AIPP I know has some excellent material and does a mentoring program. See www.aipp.com.au

Better Photography also has a lot of good information and courses at www.betterphotography.com

As they say, this is general and it is not advise and may not apply to your particular situation. You should seek independent professional advise before any decision.

There are often questions asked about what is the difference between a “full frame” sensor on a camera and a “cropped” sensor. This will hopefully explain the differences.

A “Full frame” camera has a sensor the same as size as 35mm film, being 36mm x 24mm. The film was 35mm wide and with sprocket holes etc allowed the 24mm width and it was very popular over a long period of time.

APS stood for Advanced Photo System and the idea was that you could take portrait, landscape and panoramic images with the same film by selecting a switch on the camera before you shot. It never really took off.

APS-C is a format 22.5mm x 15mm so it is the same aspect ratio as full frame (3:2) but much smaller in each direction. This means that for a given lens the image will appear 1.6 times bigger in each direction or 2.5 times bigger in area overall.

There are some advantages to this. The camera and lenses can be smaller and distant objects will appear bigger. Because the sensor is small the moving parts like shutter and mirror can also be smaller and so a faster frame rate can be achieved. These advantages also apply to most point and shoot cameras.

The disadvantages are that you lose wide angle capability and the lenses no longer work as they should for the focal length they are made for. By that I mean a wide angle lens is no longer wide and a portrait lens, if you even have the space, puts you too far from the subject.

Because the sensor is smaller the pixels or picture elements are smaller and closer together for a given resolution so this makes the images noisier. All imperfections from the lens or dust etc are also magnified 2.5 times more.

When you print an APS sensor to A4 you have to magnify the image from 22.5 to 297 mm or 13 times in that direction. So your A4 print is basically 169 times as big as what you captured. It had better be good.

Your A4 print off a full frame camera is magnified from 36 to 297 so its magnified 8 times each way or 64 times. That’s a pretty big difference in potential image quality.

So yes, a full frame camera, ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL, does take better photographs, but you may need to magnify them up to see. The differences in usage however are apparent as soon as you have look through the viewfinder.

If you step up to medium format the same thing happens again. An A4 print off a 645 camera (56 x 42mm) would be magnified from 56mm to 297 or 5 times, so roughly only 25 times.

With cameras, if image quality is the criteria, for a given brand and lens, bigger is better.

If you photograph architecture, landscapes or portraits you will almost certainly be better off with a full frame camera.

What is a portrait? According to Wikipedia, a portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. I have also heard the word portrait refer to pictures of animals, like a portrait of a walrus. So beauty is not essential.

Like all photography, the key to a successful portrait is lighting. You should flatter or show the character of the subject. You can use natural lighting, continuous lighting or flash lighting or a combination. Each has its benefits, but for still photography I generally use flash. Indoors with flash lighting you can reproduce the same lighting at mid-day or mid-night and outdoors on location you can light the environment and the subject separately.

Your main light is called the “key” light and its purpose is to simulate the sun (if you aren’t actually using the sun). That means it is never below the level of the eyes and on this planet there is only one key light. Other lights are “fill” lights of various types to reduce shadows or light specific areas like the hair or eyes.

If you are using studio lighting you must embark on the single thing that will make 90% of “people who own cameras” turn into “photographers”. That is, the use of the dreaded but essential, Manual Mode. Until you have master manual mode you are merely allowing some technician in Japan to make your exposure decisions for you. You will probably also be using manual focus, at least to some extent. Having 45 Focus Points on your very expensive camera is fairly useless. The only thing in portraiture that needs to be in focus and correctly exposed are the subject’s eyes, not the tree stump she is standing next to.

Equipment wise, a “portrait” lens is a short telephoto lens 80-180mm in focal length. This is because a wide angle lens expands the distance between foreground and background giving landscapes depth. A telephoto lens compresses distance so foreground and background appear closer together. This means your subject does not have a big nose compared to her ears. Big noses created by the photographer are generally not flattering to the subject.

For this reason full frame cameras like the 5DMk2 or D700 are regarded as entry level in portraiture and especially fashion, with the real pros using medium format like Hasselblad or PhaseOne. If you put an 80 mm lens on a cropped sensor camera you will find you need to be nearly 5 metres from the subject to take a full length shot, which is an unworkable distance. With full frame you are 3 metres. A medium format will let you work 2 metres away. But don’t despair, work with what you have.

I hope that has been informative. I run a one day Studio Workshop and Model Shoot in Sydney for those interested in learning more. I also run location shoots. The next ones are on the 25 June and 2nd July around the Royal National Park. I supply the model and lighting equipment. Details at http://AspirationImages.com