A little over a year ago I started taking photos at a local club to promote their dubstep/electro dance party that happens once a month.
The guy who runs the thing was a mutual friend and I noticed him fumbling over a borrowed DSLR around September '09. I offered to explain what some of the settings were since it was also a Canon similar to mine. He basically said that he didn't have the time to mess with it since he also DJ's for part of the party. He then asked if I could just come take photos for the next event. He started paying me $30 for the photos from the evening (without ever actualy seeing any photos of mine). I got my DSLR in January of '09 so I was (and still am) learning a lot. I was stoked about getting any money for taking some pictures so I started doing it every month. Eventually it got up to $50 for the night and that's where it has basically stayed with the exception of a few times that I have gotten $60 and $80 for the Halloween event. Last month however he only paid $40 because they had a lower turnout than expected. In relation to what I am getting paid for each night, that's fine, however my problem with it is the amount of work and expensive personal equipment that I am providing for the pay that I am receiving. It was fine at first because, like I said, I had never been paid for photos before and it would be a cool way to get some exposure.
Typically I'm there each night for about 3 hours and give him about 200 photos from the night that he puts up on their facebook fan page for people to view, comment, and tag each other. In this regard it works great. There are typically around 50 different people tagged in each album and they really enjoy seeing the pics and making comments. At the same time I would say that there are a handful of people that make my photos their profile pictures after each event.
Taking the photos is the fun and easy part though. Filtering through them on the computer and running them all through photoshop takes a full day of work. (I use actions to batch process, but it still ties up my computer).
Here are some samples of the pictures that I give them. What do you think is fair pay for photographing an event like this while providing around 200 images?
Photo critiques are welcome too.
The guy who runs the thing was a mutual friend and I noticed him fumbling over a borrowed DSLR around September '09. I offered to explain what some of the settings were since it was also a Canon similar to mine. He basically said that he didn't have the time to mess with it since he also DJ's for part of the party. He then asked if I could just come take photos for the next event. He started paying me $30 for the photos from the evening (without ever actualy seeing any photos of mine). I got my DSLR in January of '09 so I was (and still am) learning a lot. I was stoked about getting any money for taking some pictures so I started doing it every month. Eventually it got up to $50 for the night and that's where it has basically stayed with the exception of a few times that I have gotten $60 and $80 for the Halloween event. Last month however he only paid $40 because they had a lower turnout than expected. In relation to what I am getting paid for each night, that's fine, however my problem with it is the amount of work and expensive personal equipment that I am providing for the pay that I am receiving. It was fine at first because, like I said, I had never been paid for photos before and it would be a cool way to get some exposure.
Typically I'm there each night for about 3 hours and give him about 200 photos from the night that he puts up on their facebook fan page for people to view, comment, and tag each other. In this regard it works great. There are typically around 50 different people tagged in each album and they really enjoy seeing the pics and making comments. At the same time I would say that there are a handful of people that make my photos their profile pictures after each event.
Taking the photos is the fun and easy part though. Filtering through them on the computer and running them all through photoshop takes a full day of work. (I use actions to batch process, but it still ties up my computer).
Here are some samples of the pictures that I give them. What do you think is fair pay for photographing an event like this while providing around 200 images?
Photo critiques are welcome too.
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