Everyone loves a good family photo, senior picture, engagement photo, or a newborn baby photo. But don’t forget about others like head shots for work, fine art, or even pets.
When you’re looking to hire a photographer for whatever reason, please, PLEASE, don’t hire your friends cousin that is self taught and has only shot maybe two things!
- Hire a real photographer who has a website or at least a Facebook page set up just for their photography.
- Check out their portfolio, their work.
- Is their style what you’re looking for?
- Is their work of professional quality?
- Does their price seem reasonable. (more on this later)
Pricing
Many people think that photographers are over priced and to be honest some are, but some aren’t. Here are some things to think about when looking at prices.
- Time – the time they are taking to photograph as well as edit or retouch the images.
- Retouching – is retouching included or is it an added fee option.
- Equipment – the use of their equipment (camera, lens, lights, stands, computers, software, etc).
- Level of experience – You’re going to pay more for someone who’s had more experience.
- Location – are they traveling or do they have a studio.
- Use of images – They’re giving over the use of the images that they’ve taken for you to use as you want.
This is a business for them, don’t forget that. They need to make a profit.
My average price for a portrait session was $250 for a 2 hour session, minor retouching, and high resolution JPEGS.
Looking to hire
Now, if you’re looking to hire a photographer they might make some suggestions for location and time of day determining on their schedule. I personally enjoy later in the afternoon but early morning is also great. You just don’t want to do it during the middle of the day. The light is too harsh and it’s too hot to be outside. Sweating in pictures is not attractive!
If you have a location you’d like to shoot at let them know ahead of time. They might want to go check it out to get some ideas flowing. And try to keep it to just one outfit if you’re taking photos outside. Changing in the car is an option but that’s never fun.
The photographer will have plenty of ideas for posing but you can always come up with some of your own. Check out Pinterest for some fun and inventive poses that you might want to include in your session. I’ve got a Pinterest board called Photography Posing Ideas, where I like to collect ideas for poses.
Here are some of my portrait photographs that I’ve taken over the years.
