First paid shoot was $225, and the sun nearly sank it

Still finishing my license, so I've been picking up shoots on weekends to have some cash coming in while I study.

Saturday was the first one someone actually paid me for. A 1,600 square foot townhouse, agent found me because I shot a friend's rental listing for free in December and my name ended up in a group chat. Quoted $225 for 28 interior and exterior stills, no video, no 3D.

What it actually cost me: 40 minutes drive round trip, 70 minutes on site, and 2 hours 10 minutes editing that night. Gear was already bought (used body and a wide zoom, $980 total, plus a $60 tripod). So on that one job I made about $52 an hour on the clock and less if you count the gear.

The part that nearly broke it was the light. I booked 3pm because that was when the tenant could leave, and the front of the building faces west, so the exterior was blown out on one side and black on the other. I shot brackets and blended them and it took me an hour of the edit time to make the front elevation not look like a mistake. The interior was fine because I closed the blinds and lit with flash off the ceiling.

What I'd keep: I walked the whole place before I took a single frame and wrote a shot order on my phone. Kitchen, living, primary, secondary, baths, exterior last. That kept me from wandering and it's why I was out in 70 minutes.

Delivered by 9am Sunday. She sent me two more addresses Monday morning at the same price.

Answer

1tonyv88SO4CPRO6

halyard, the exterior fix you did by hand is the right instinct and you'll get faster at it, but the thing in your post that will actually get you rehired is the 9am Sunday delivery. I sit on the property management side and I book photos for unit turns constantly. I don't compare portfolios past a certain floor. I compare who answers the phone and who gets me files before the listing goes up.

What that means in practice for you: turn work is smaller and duller than resale. A vacant one bedroom is 12 to 15 photos, 25 minutes on site, and I'd pay somewhere in the $110 to $150 range depending on the market. Nobody wants twilight shots of a $1,300 rental. But I might have four of them in the same complex in one week, and if you can do them back to back on a Tuesday afternoon your per-hour beats the $52 you just calculated because the drive is amortized across four addresses.

So when you talk to management companies, don't lead with the resale price. Ask them how many turns they average a month and whether they can cluster them. Then price the cluster. Also ask who lets you in, because waiting 20 minutes for a maintenance tech with a key is the thing that eats these jobs.

And write down your 3pm lesson somewhere you'll see it when you're booking. Ask which way the front faces before you pick a time. You can't always control it, but when you can, it's free money.

6 replies

1mitchell_ray4 Get yoursPRO6

So the $1,040 in gear is paid back in five shoots at that math, assuming nothing breaks. That's the part I'd want to know. Have you looked at what the second lens costs, or is the wide zoom enough for everything you'll see in townhouses and rentals? I ask because in the trades the first tool is always cheap and the third one is the one that hurts.

1angela_burkeServicePRO6

$52 an hour on a single job is fine. It stops being fine the moment you add a second address on the same day with a 35 minute drive between them.

Price per shoot isn't the number I watch with a small crew, it's shoots per day and dead miles between them. Three shoots at $225 in one day with tight geography is a good day. Two shoots at $225 with 50 minutes of driving in the middle is worse than one, because you've burned the whole afternoon and you still have four hours of editing waiting for you at 8pm.

What happens to your $225 when the agent asks for a floor plan and you say yes because you want the next two addresses?

2monica_tran3SF4CPRO6

Five years in and the thing that crept on me was exactly what cobalt is pointing at, except it was edit time rather than drive time. I started at about 90 minutes per set. Then clients started expecting sky replacement, then lawn cleanup, then "can you take the trash cans out of frame." Nobody renegotiated the price. Three years later I was at three hours a set for the same money and I hadn't noticed because it happened one small request at a time.

halyard, your 2 hours 10 minutes is honest right now. Write it down monthly. The day it hits 3 hours you either raise the price or say no to something.

0derekj19SB1B

How did the free shoot in December actually turn into paid work? Did you ask her to pass your name on, or did it just happen?

1joe_delgado5AP4CPRO6

I buy this stuff, I don't sell it. I flip and I need photos the day after the punch list clears.

What I pay for is a person who confirms the time and shows up at it. Last spring I had a photographer go dark for four days with the files sitting on his card and I listed with phone pictures because my carry doesn't wait. I'd have paid him another hundred to not do that.

So the 9am Sunday is the whole post as far as I'm concerned. Keep that and you'll out-earn people with better cameras.