Lessons

Lesson Info

Pricing Fine Art

Pricing fine artwork this is blend on her little girl and that's the original image and when you show this kind of things your clients and show how things could be changed and done and turned into art they look at that and go wow there's no way I could ever do that and that's truly how I feel about my child you know, they they start out it's just that I want that in my own child ok it's really important to understand that you are worthy of high prices when you do this stuff okay, do not undervalue fine art this is the kiss of death for your brand it really is like no one will respect you if you do this quality work and it's dirt cheap no one will respect you you might get a bunch of clients all at once, it'll destroy rand and you don't want to do that, okay, this was a quote by one of the gals on our facebook group, she said I might be only one that is so tired of seeing all the posts. Does anyone know someone who could take my family photos for cheap but is a good and can give me good...

quality? She goes on to say, I don't know about you all, but that is so insulting it's, like people are losing their respect for our art melissa pageant was a photographer in atlanta georgia and also a member of our peace put croup she said that and I went yeah that's pretty much the problem that all of us have is now clients have been so conditioned by the photographer who shoots and burns and the cheap prices they want somebody good who does great work but it's cheap and I get good quality that's a gin oxymoron I want cheap equality if that is not a traditional consumer I don't know what isthe okay? They're driven by price features and status symbol if you have status in your community let's look at an example believe it or not donald trump is your classic traditional consumer richest snot okay he is a wealthy man you will go into a nightclub and by cristal champagne because it's a status symbol but you think that guy wants the best deal any property could possibly get you better he is a traditional I'm sure he acts like a new in certain situations he certainly got the money to spend what he wants but people go back and forth I act like provisional too you know I am a neo consumer but let me tell you if I think I can get a dime a dozen anywhere I look for the best price sure I mean so keep that in mind don't be a commodity don't be like everyone else the unique be authentic that's what this whole classes about connect with yourself, connect with your clients, be authentic and put yourself above the rest so that you are worthy and people say your work is worth spending money on because it's quality it's authentic I get an amazing experience and it means something to me that's the classic neo mindset okay, get rid of these clients they are damaging to your health. They're not your client if you're a fine art photographer wouldn't want to be a okay it's true you don't want these clients mair effect I see one of these and I run like halliday the direction I mean the first thing you know you know it the instant you hear him on the phone. Oh, well we're just looking for you know something for the birth announcement and you just want the digital files and you know, I tried to call warmer but they've shut down their portrait studio what I mean were I immediately started talking about price right off the bat and I call myself expensive. I say a session is to twenty five most clients spend between eight hundred fifteen hundred dollars on their portrait session and that gets him a nice selection of images that will be an airline for their generations to come after them on the other line all oh okay well that's kind of expensive for us do you have anything less yeah, we do many session you know what we understand? We are a boutique studio and custom find our photography is not for everyone. I would highly recommend that you go to so and so down the street or so and so down the street who will offer you a session that maybe a little less involved less detail of an attention paid to it but you will get quality images from much better rate no, I'll say that and go I'm not gonna sell theater photographer but I'm going to tell him that is an amateur and that you know if you want really nice work you got to spend for it and people do get that they don't want to admit it but they do get it okay pricing fine art it has to be a bit unreachable folks, you don't want to do this every week it's way too taxing number one on your creative brain it has to be elusive and elite consider it's perceived value consider that your your clients can't do this kind of work especially the composite stuff the stuff we were photoshopping this morning the stuff we shot yesterday even really really high quality every day work is fine art and your clients can't do it okay so its elusive to them so it has to be priced that way and if they truly value it they will pay for it consider an hourly rate for versus a flat fee for something like a composite or a painter okay, I'm gonna tell you what we do here in a second and consider having like minimum sizing and then the delivery time associated with it you know with most of our work our everyday work delivery time and turnarounds pretty quick when they get to walk home with their usb that day at the ordering appointment but this fine art stuff it's a six to eight week process minimum minimum very long time because I wanted to have that idea that we're spending way we need that really were spending a lot of time to create this for you and make it something very special and unique and so you have to kind of make sure that this is considered different than your regular photographic work. You have to consider your cost of goods your average sale needs of course your salary needs your client numbers how many clients you're going tohave coming through your door your break even point packages and incentives etcetera, etcetera but fine art should always be a little bit illusive this is carriage trade stuff people carriage trade you want carriage trade means remember back in the old days when the the very high society people were in a carriage with six white horses going down the road they were the ones who had transportation nobody else did okay carriage trade upper upper, upper echelon stuff so it has to be somewhat elusive. You will only sell a few of these a year unless you're in a large, large market, you know, a los angeles chicago type place, you can probably pull in more, but even my friend and mentor, tom rouse, doesn't do a ton of commissioned work. You know, maybe a half a dozen to a dozen pieces a year that's a lot to do in one year with this stuff, we do a create your own collection method for our regular work, and clients can can do a fine art piece in the first step. So how it works is it's a hybrid system, both digital files and prints, and what wall art art pieces it's they have just followed the two steps so they can choose water bore pieces of wall art or an album this khun mean, fine art, this could mean painting this could mean whatever, and each thing is priced according to our cost of goods and what we need to get out of it. Then they get to choose their digital files in credit collection. They get all we don't make them pick how many? Because it's two tortures for them, it makes the order department like three hours long, and I'm not only sit there long enough so I'd much rather just spend another ten minutes at in the images so they can have them all rather than sitting there for another two hours to the order appointment for them to pick which ones I want so we just made it so they got them all and they love that that's why they buy create a collection because they want all the images all a cart they gotta pick if they wanted by allah card they have to actually pick the images that they want it's torture for them absolute torture so they don't even bother for two or three hundred dollars more they could just go straight to credit collection get an art piece and all the images so it's a much better value to do this so if they want to do a fine artwork for their for their wall art they can we could do a painting here or whatever, but this puts our average sale of the thousand dollars for every session and this is just for standard work that would not including our peace like a fine art piece what we've been doing here but it puts our sail around a thousand dollars and then plus session fees so we range about nine hundred thirteen hundred dollars per client and we have about eight to ten newborns coming through the door each month and stand family sessions the baby planners on top of that okay, so we're shooting about fifteen to twenty sessions a month and our studio at this time which is plenty for me I can't do any more than that. Okay, so as far as far fine art pricing goes, we have a minimum size you must to a sixteen by twenty four at the minimum and we haven't a minimum finish you must print on campus or watercolor, which are two highest and vanishes um it's a one hundred dollar per hour rate on top of the size and finished price so is sixteen by twenty four is around six hundred fifty dollars just for the print on the canvass at that size and then it's one hundred dollars per hour for us to do any kind of photo shop composite of painting work and most pieces I do for clients probably have about fifteen hours in them so it's two thousand dollars for sixteen by twenty four fine art piece it's very expensive it's not cheap and most clients who do this kind of commission work I have I have a few you know they typically do the minimum size, but every once in while we have a family who comes in and wants to do something much larger than that ends up being a five six seven thousand dollar piece I've only had it happened once or twice so it doesn't happen very often but they must frame it so it's two thousand dollars about for the peace and then they have to add another five or six her door frame on top of that, it has to be a finished piece that we're gonna provide the client. Okay, so you know you're looking at twenty five hundred dollars minimum out the door for sixteen by twenty four for the size okay, so it has to be a little bit out of reach you want that value put on to it? This is very special, you know? I mean, um we usually ask for all encompassing, creative, creative freedom we do not provide the digital of the image that we create for them they cannot reprint it. It's a one time deal. One piece, one edition we will print additional for them but we will not print the additional the same ways we did the original that makes sense. So there's one original print that has that value associated with it delivery time is anywhere from six to eight weeks. Like I said, any questions before I wrap up on review here. Yeah. How do you deliver? Not not just the fine art prints, but your regular prince albums. How do you deliver them to your customers? And how are they packaged? What's the final and product look like sure it's pretty stand it's, pretty simple standard we have little cute white vogue shape bags, the little ones that kind of stand up real straight with the strings on the top. And so like albums air wrapped really beautifully in tissue paper with ribbon around them in a sticker with our studio name on it, framed prints are corners are put on them, and then we have that cellophane wrapping that we put around everything and then it's put in brown paper with some corrugated cardboard and grass king natural fiber ribbon. I'm into the organic feel stuff on stickers, so it's just standard packaging is nothing but it definitely isn't experienced. Open for sure, it's not just oh here's your pictures, you know we re wrap it up really nice, but I don't go over the top. I love things that are handmade, as you guys can probably tell, so I have a lot of hand stamps, so we'll have ink pads and we hand stamp things like this is your story or thank you for being you kind of thing on it. So cute little sayings that are simple, elegant but also very handmade, feeling like a little a little bit scrapbooking feeling, but not over the top. Like just a hint of that here and there but I love like we have kansas tags that will write their name on with silver pen and things like that teo attached to the to the bag so things have a very touchy feely like experience to open it. Okay, they come get it? Yes, I don't do installation. I will if they ask there's a fee for its hundred feet into insulation or hundred our fee to do in home design. I've had a couple clients who want me to go to their house and help them design where they want to put the piece and it's one hundred dollars for me to come to their house. Bring my computer with pro select we take pictures, put their images in, see how it's gonna look, arrange things and come up with the final design. Any other questions? Yeah. What you were talking about pricing the finer pieces were you? Do you price thie deck, aled edge prince separately differently than the painting? I mean, I'm guessing that you d'oh. Yeah, how do you price those separately? Yes, a, um, like a the watercolor product that I just made here is like a photographic product, and a fine art piece can be done that way, we typically don't we usually end up I do more paintings that I do composites for clients I typically do like if someone wants me to a fine art piece. They want me to take one their photographs and turn into a painting so that if that's the case well, usually do it on canvas. And then, you know, just like I showed you earlier of that that's a typical fine. Our product that we would produce for someone last. I don't. I don't put glass in those, but they are framed. The water color prints, that's. Just a standard photograph. No artwork has been done to the actual image itself in that deck. Old age is just a it's. Just a priced products based on our cost of good. So it's six hundred ninety five dollars for that. Sixteen by twenty with like, an eight by ten image in there. Um, like just what we produced with frame and glass out the doors, the door grand in credit collection. You can only buy that stuff if you do credit collection. The on ly thing I offer all of heart is selected. Jettel files. Wait. So I place value on printing. Oh, you just want the digitals, okay, it's still dark? You know, like I make it, I make it like, mad to get the digitals. Do you have people that do that just by digital file? Occasionally somebody'll come in, and not very often not all make your mark it twice a year at the most. Sometimes somebody will say, oh, it's usually it's usually the family who's kind of, you know, poor as a church mouse, but they really love my work. They want to get it, but they can on lee and like it's, a stretch to do the minimum, and I'm where they get the exact same customer service, and I'm very adamant about that. They need to have the exact same experience as the client who's spending ten grand and you know they'll go to the process, but they only have to pick and choose and it's torture for him. They don't like to do it, but their budget just won't dictate it, but they still love the work, and that means the world to me that they would want to come in and spend money. They don't have to come see me to get the work is hugely special, so we treat them justus well, a ce we would any other client, but they do end up spending the minimum.