I Lost My Wedding Photos How Much Should I Pay the Photographer to Send Them Again

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Bryan Caporicci, Professional wedding lensman and CEO/Founder of Sprout Studio About Bryan

Has the digital file replaced the print?

Will all of our photos live and dice on a hard drive? Will we have nothing but iPads and iPhones to savour our photos on with our children, and our children'due south children?

… Not if we take annihilation to do with it.

As a lensman, you're probably asked about digital files often. Merely, do yous have a proficient reply?

Many photographers are in an awkward transitional phase, where they don't desire to offer digital files, simply sometimes they feel similar they need to. Do y'all sometimes make exceptions? Practise y'all have a set policy for digital files? Do you take a skillful respond to the "Do you offering digital files?" question?

Well, that's what I'll be showing y'all here in this article.

Why yous must offer digital files

Here's the quick answer to "Do you offer digital files" question – "Aye". I believe that maxim "No" is not fifty-fifty an option.

Aye, yous heard me right. I said that you must say "Yes" to digital files.

Listen, I am a huge proponent for the printed product. It's engrained both in my personal life and in the very culture of my own photography business. Personally speaking, my married woman and I have boxes and boxes of 4×6 prints; we impress everything. Sometimes to a fault! We have ii beautiful books from our daughter Ava'south newborn session that nosotros look back at often. Nosotros have hymeneals photographs all around our house and we look through our album every yr on our ceremony.

Professionally speaking, prints, books and albums are a role of every conversation with every client, without question. And most of our clients leave their experience with our studio with a cute finished heirloom.

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Sprout Studio is made by photographers, for photographers. Start making a living doing what yous beloved today.

Merely … I however subscribe to what I believe is the #1 dominion of business organisation: never say "No" to a client.

In that location are too many photographers who accept had to hang up their cameras because they were unwilling to adapt to change and evolve with our manufacture. Don't be like them. Don't be proud. Don't be stubborn.

The only thing that is constant is change (Heraclitus), and if you refuse to move forrard with the times, you lot'll find yourself stale, stagnant and, frankly, out-of-business.

Always remember that y'all are in the service business organization, and information technology's your job to give your clients what they want. That being said, it'south also your job to educate your clients in what's available, and build their want for a printed product to be greater than that for a digital product.

Why prints should matter to yous

In case you demand a reminder, or a "push" as to the importance of prints versus digital, hither's a quick summary of an article I wrote for Digital-Photography-School.com every bit to why prints should thing to you lot:

1. A print will e'er be at that place.
2. A impress doesn't need to exist enjoyed on a screen.
3. A print lasts a lifetime, and oft even longer.
4. Prints separate you lot as a "great" photographer.
5. Offer printed products increases your perceived value.
6. When you lot offer printed products, you testify that you lot intendance nearly the quality of your work.

In summary, prints offer ii primary benefits, one for the consumer and one for you, the professional.

For the consumer, a print is the most meaningful way to enjoy photography. As a professional, a print is the vehicle in which y'all can communicate value and offering the greatest customer experience.

Every bit much equally I love prints for all the reasons higher up, I yet have no problem in offering digital files, because I am a service provider and desire to give my clients what they desire. I'd encourage yous to consider the same.

Assigning a value to your digital files

It bears repeating: you are in the service industry, whichmeans it's your job to say "yes" to your clients and give them what they desire. While yous must however make information technology your mission to promote and brainwash well-nigh the value of the printed product (and if you lot do it correctly, you lot'll accept them request for prints instead), you lot still have to have an answer to the question "Do you offer digital files", and that answer should exist "Yes".

Just … here's the grab. If you're going to give digital files, and then you must sell them.

You must handle digital files with respect and care. Y'all must give them value. You must non care for them as a throw-away product. Nigh importantly, you must position your digital files and so that they are less-than-desirable in relation to their alternative, the printed product. If you brand digital files so easily attainable and more affordable than the culling, so you'll accept a hard time selling anything but digital files.

By positioning them as more expensive than your printed products, you lot're making it easier for your clients to purchase prints, books and albums instead.

How you should price your digital files

I'g normally an abet for the cost-of-appurtenances pricing model, and I've taught this method and written about it more than times than I care to count. I love the mechanics of pricing (I know, I'grand a weirdo), and since so many photographers struggle with information technology, it really allows me to assistance photographers attain break-throughs and construction their business for sustainability.

The cost-of-goods model is simple: you add together upwardly the inputs (labour + material) and so multiply by your mark-upwardly gene to get the toll you should be charging. This is the only pricing model that is repeatable, consistent and reliable.

Just this model doesn't work with digital files though. Why? Permit me show y'all.

Calculating the price for a digital file

Let's say that for a single digital file, your labour input (time spent) is:

• five minutes retouching the paradigm
• ane infinitesimal uploading the file for your client to download
• 1 minute to email your customer the link to download

And your fabric toll for a single digital file is nothing.

So your total cost for this digital file is 7 minutes of labour, which if you're paying yourself $60,000/year, means that the price is $three.50. Multiplying this price past a mark-upward cistron of 2.85 gives you a price of $ix.98.

Based on the cost-of-goods model, you lot should be charging $ten for a digital file.

Calculating the cost for an 8×x print

But let'southward speedily consider the culling – an 8×x print of that same image. The labour input is:

• five minutes to retouch the epitome
• 1 minute to lodge the image from your lab
• 1 minute to unpack the impress from your lab
• 2 minutes to package the print
• 5 minutes to meet with your client when they pick it up

And your textile cost is:

• $2.fifty for the print from your lab
• $5.00 for aircraft from your lab
• $iii.75 for the presentation and packaging

Therefore, based on the numbers above, with the same $60,000/year salary, your cost-of-goods is $7.00 in labor and $11.25 in cloth. Added together and multiplied by the same marking-upward gene of 2.85 gives you a cost of $52.

Based on the toll-of-goods model, you should be charging $52 for an 8×10 print.

Exercise you think this makes sense … charging $10 for the digital file, and $50 for the print? I don't think so.

Plainly your client will choose the digital file in this case, considering you lot've fabricated the digital option more attractive. And so this is why the cost-of-goods model doesn't work for digital files. Y'all need to notice another fashion to price them so that you lot are making the printed option look more bonny instead.

I still wouldn't recommend judge-pricing though, which is when y'all just choice a number out of sparse air. I notwithstanding believe there should be a calculated, repeatable, systematic arroyo to pricing your digital files.

And there is …

The "opportunity cost" pricing model

The method I recommend is the "opportunity price" pricing model. In it's simplest course, opportunity price is defined as "what you have to give up", which for pricing your products ways yous must consider what income you'd be missing out on by selling a particular production.

If yous sell the digital file, there's a slim chance that you'll be selling a impress of that same file, right? So, therefore past selling the digital file, you lot're missing out on the sale of that print. The opportunity cost of the digital file is the income you'd not be making in selling the print.

More specifically, let's say that if y'all didn't sell the digital file, you'd exist selling at least an 8×10 print of that epitome. Therefore the opportunity cost for the digital file is the cost of the 8×10 print – $50 from the example above. In this case, I'thousand suggesting that you price your digital file to be greater than $50, peradventure something more like $65 or $70.

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Let'southward look at another example – selling all the digital files from a session. What's the opportunity cost? If you didn't sell all the digital files from a session, what would you exist selling instead? Perhaps a wall portrait, a bunch of smaller prints and a portrait book? Add that up … what is your average sale? Allow'due south say your average auction is around $1200. Therefore, your opportunity cost for the whole gear up of digital files from a session is $1200, and then I'd suggest that you price your set of digital files from a session around $1500 in this example.

When yous price your digital files this way, you are still giving yourself a way to say "Yes" to the question "Do I go digital files", but you also make your printed products much more attractive. Combined with your enthusiasm and ongoing pedagogy almost the importance of the printed product, you should have no client that wants only the digital files.

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Source: https://getsproutstudio.com/photographer-digital-files/

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