The Hidden Costs of Producing a Print

 Sometimes I marvel at the number (and cost!) of different products I use in the course of running my business, from marketing the business, to completing a portrait job from start to finish. I've put together a list of my workflow, along with all the different products I use, and their price.

• Recruit clients using my website (Photobiz.com, $15/month), Facebook (FREE) and my e-mail newsletter (Constant Contact, $30/month for 500+ contacts).
• Initial contact with client, where I am contacted either by e-mail (provided by AOL: FREE) or voicemail (my business phone service is through Grasshopper: $12.24/month). Return the call on my cell phone (iPhone about $89/month).
• Schedule the session in my online calendar (Google Calendar: FREE).
• Photograph the session with my digital SLR (Nikon D2X was about $5,000 new), with Nikkor 28-70mm lens (about $1,300), my studio strobes (I use 4 Photogenic 1250DR powerlights (about $600 EACH), softbox (Larson 4x6 "Soffbox" $699), softbox striplight (Larson 10x36" soffstrip" $258), reflectors (Larson Reflectasol 42x72" soft white reflector; I use 2 -- they were $330 each), and one of my backgrounds: Seamless background paper (107" x 12 yards Savage paper from B&H, with shipping it comes to about $60 per roll) or Shooting Gallery muslin (about $600 for the 10x20 "Elite" muslins that I use) or one of my new Orange Peel backgrounds ($129 each plus $25 shipping, plus $25 for the foam insulation to attach them to the wall) or PhotoBlack by Denny (with shipping this will run close to $200).
• Backup the photos with a sync cord to my external harddrive, which is a Passport that was somewhere around $100 (I buy new ones whenever I fill up the current one, and that depends on how busy I am) on my iMac (about $1300). Make a backup DVD (these, I think, are about a buck or two apiece).
• Bring photos into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 ($299) for exposure and color adjustments. 
• Export the images and then bring them into Time Exposure's Proselect software ($359) for the client's projection viewing appointment.
• If I am photographing a preschool or something like that with online viewing, I will upload the images to MorePhotos.com (for which I have a $49/month subscription).
• Project the images onto the wall using my Epson EX50 projector (about $600, I think).
• Create an invoice using Quickbooks Online ($44.90/month if you include the payroll option, although I think I have an upgraded subscription that is overkill and I am investigating downgrading it) and print the invoice on my HP printer (about $100)
• Edit the images in Adobe Photoshop CS4 ($699)
• Send final images to Millers Lab for printing.

I bet you anything there are other products I use daily that I am forgetting. Now you can see why the cost of printing an actual 8x10 print is insignificant relative to all the other costs of creating my images. Just writing this post and inserting all the links took ages, and was a wakeup call me to about how much I've spent to build my business! As someone pointed out to me, a lawyer just uses blank sheets of 8.5x11 paper to prepare their product, but their work costs an awful lot more than the 4 cents/per sheet that they paid for the paper, and no one would expect them to set their prices based on the cost of the paper. You should think the same way about pricing your photos. Even if I got the prints for free from my lab, the price I charge for my prints wouldn't change. 

Comments

[Courtney]

Hey Mary Lynne,
Check out Google voice for your voicemail service, etc. You have to request an account and it is free once you get it..but it may take awhile. I know quite a few people that use it and love it! I requested an account, but haven't gotten one yet.

[RosemarieGiles33]

If you are in the corner and have got no money to get out from that, you would need to take the loans. Because that should help you definitely. I take consolidation loans every single year and feel OK just because of this.