To a person outside the industry, $80 per hour may sounds like a lot, but it really is a very modest pay, something like what a person in his early 20s would earn for the first few years.
(No offense intended but) I am quite tired of reading the 'no one can tell you what to charge' type of 'standard reply' on clubsnap because people ask really because they are interested in going pro or semi-pro and wants to do it right. Otherwise all sorts of nonsense prices are surfacing everywhere probably also because of non-education or information, the ending up affecting the market in a bad way.
I will explain why $80 an hour is really a honest, low rate.
For a newbie pro (yes, there are newbie pros, nobody starts out as experienced pros) wanting to do it right and probably experimenting, learning along the way, 1 hour of shoot equates to about another 4 to 5 hours of post production. By post production I mean from uploading to culling bad pics, to color/tonal correction to creative edits, to final checks/edits to burning CD, to addon services like slideshows, CD designs, to printing invoices to packaging. If you do album or print sales, you spend more time on album design and trips to the labs. Heck, even sorting and slotting in 300 4R prints into an album can take you 2 hours.
Or think of it like on Saturday you shoot a wedding, you then spend Mon to Thu on post production. As you grow in experience and hammer down your post production workflow, the ratio goes down to 1:3, Saturday wedding shoot, Mon to Wed post production.
Leaves you Sun for rest (or Sat if you book a Sunday wedding), and Thu and Fri for marketing, client meetings, deliveries, fulfillment, and take MC if sick, because you cannot afford to be sick on weekends.
Lets take 1:3 ratio, 10 hours wedding, plus 30 hours post production, equals to 40 hours work week. That is the same as a full time job in a company.
$80 times 10 hours equals to $800 pay per week or $2400 a month, without CPF, benefits and without bonus. Most pros aim for 40 weddings a year, because the month of Qing Ming Festival and the month of Hungry Ghost Festival no weddings, dry season, also you need to rest and recharge your creative juice, and catch up on post production you lagged behind if you cannot hit 1:3 ratio. If you do book, most likely its to make up for the weddings you did not manage to book in some weekends, and also probably someone will ask you to discount because its ghost month (remember that exciting thread?). That is only $24000 gross income per year. Most young people in the early twenties can earn $30K or more.
We have not factor in cost of equipment and software licenses if you put in money upfront to buy, or if you had not put in money upfront, you rent.
We have not factor in the cost of equipment (and software) depreciation and upgrade after a few years, (if you are still in business.)
We have not factor in cost of transportation and stationary. You probably take a lot of taxi trips, eg early hours, late hours, rushing for receptions, etc. Car ownership is impossible at this current income level, motorcycle too dangerous and hard to carry gear, too much at risk.
We have not factor in one very important thing, cost of marketing/advertising. We are looking at double to triple digits for google or facebook ads, or 4 to 5 digits for magazine or print ads or roadshows.
We are now at the assumption that you are very successful as a budget $800 per wedding shooter booking a full 40 weddings a year. But most likely you will not book 40 weddings a year easily with all the undercutting going around.
Weddings are not going to come knocking on the door fully booked for the year the moment a person declare his a wedding photog. Even if you DIY the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) yourself, you will be spending even more time working behind the computer trying to outsmart google.
This similar figure can translate to a events photographer, except its probably even harder, coz you can book a wedding for a weekend and covered your $800 a week, but an events photographer need to book three 3-hours gig over the Fri-Sat-Sun to land 9 hours. Most events dont last as long as weddings, even so, companies try to save money and hire you for only 3 hours. Also you probably attend more meetings and chase more invoices. With weddings you can collect 50% or full payment in advance and live on retainers/deposits, but with commercial work, you are lucky if you are paid 30 days after invoicing, sometimes 90 days, sometimes chasing 120 day late invoices. PLUS, weddings are easier to get in cause its lifestyle work, anyone can get in (just like that Derrick guy who recently started a huge thread) but for events and commercial work, someone had to open a door for you to get it. Otherwise its hard and jobs are going to be few.
After minusing all the variable expenses we have not factored in, a salaried security guard probably earns more.
People see $80 per hour on the shoot, but never see the many many hours behind.
Everytime an amateur undercut a pro, someone starved. That someone could very well be your friend-in-photography.
