Your Priceless Little Story
Congrats! You are on a quest to find your perfect photographer and you have it narrowed down to a few you love. (That's a great first step, by the way- you should LOVE the work of your photographer. After all, how often do you style and pull the whole family together? Plus- you're going to be in the picture-- do a Happy Dance!) Back to your big choice: All things equal, you'd be satisfied with any of your top photographers. But of course, all things aren't equal. You notice that one of the photographer's price is more than double the others. Why, you ask, for an hour's worth of the photographer's shooting time, would you pay more than double for this one?
That photographer is probably me, and before you cross me off your list, I'd like to share with you why I'm priced the way I am.
First, I'm a storytelling photographer, and that means you get a lot of images!
Even for my shortest 1 hour session, I string photos together to tell a story. I learn about you as a family, and then I attempt to tell the story of your connection through my lens. For my one hour Family Portrait sessions, that means I help your family plan a few activities that you love to do together and I use those as the "plot" in my story. In my longer documentary sessions, I come to your home and shoot your real life, no planning necessary. In both cases, I take a LOT of photos and I also DELIVER a lot of photos. I don't cut out the charming outtakes or the transitions as the kids put on their shoes. I leave in the pouts and grumps. It's all part of the story. For a short session, I deliver a minimum of 40 images. Here's an example of what I might deliver for a short session:
Second, along with delivering all those images to you in your gallery, you get to keep the digitals.
My work doesn't make sense when my client chooses their favorite 5. You need all the pictures to have the Big Picture. My old pricing was: $100 for the photo session and $150 to purchase the digitals. But in every case, everyone bought all the digitals. So now I simply charge $250 for my time, talent, and your digital files.
Here's an example of a Home Movie my clients receive when they book a longer 2-3 hour, in-home Story of a Day session. The family gets to keep the movie and all the still image files. ($350)
And finally, your finished product is a polished work of art!
Whether I shoot for one hour or three, that is just a small percentage of the time I spend on your photos. I spend 3-4 hours editing and culling small sessions and even longer preparing my signature Story of a Day sessions. The Home Movies are a labor of love! It takes me almost the same amount of time to choose a song, fuse the videos and stills, and match it to the audio. I really love my job.
Because I take the kind of time and care I do, I only accept up to 4 sessions per month.
So if you love a good story, appreciate artistic photos, and crave a gallery full of memories for you to keep, you might be My Client! I hope you'll feel free to ask me any questions you have so that we can proceed with booking. I can't wait to tell your little story!