Pricing and other yucky details like that

The past few months I have been working my little tail end off getting my business actually up and running.  I have always been taking pictures, but I'm talking about the yucky, tax ID's, business licenses, business account, pricing list, yada, yada, yada.  Pretty much just making it all real and legit.  Most of my business experience beforehand has been with family and friends where I was too shy and and unsure of my own talent to officially charge. So I am still finding it a problem to have the guts to charge appropriately even for family and friends. It is a HARD thing to do, especially when last year, I was more or less free!   I have had the most problem narrowing down a pricing list for clients.  Being a relatively new "real" business and photographer, thoughts like these always are torturing me in the back of my mind, "Am I charging too much, am I charging too little, should I make the CD included with the session, or make it available to purchase as an extra, should I print pictures for clients, what about online galleries, etc, etc, etc!  I have been going crazy!  Every photographer  seems to do things there own way and I'm not any different.  I have finally decided on a pricing list and I think I like it enough to keep it for awhile and hopefully clients will appreciate the two new types of sessions available.  (See my pricing page for details.)  


So much of a photography session a client never sees.  A one hour photo session with clients is most often the easy part of what I do.  The late night/long hours of editing alone (while it is something I love to do) is very time consuming. Just ask my husband.  He often has to give me the big puppy dog eyes and drag me off the couch to get me to put down the computer when I realize I have been editing a session/ignoring him for the past three hours.  Don't get me wrong, I love it, I love every second of it, and my need to learn how to manage my time, is my own problem, but I am just saying, I will now be charging for my time as any respectable photographer should.  That saying, I do realize that times are hard these days and I have rearranged my pricing list to prices I feel much better about.  I hope you do to.  Thanks for stopping by and listening to me rant...it feels good to get it all out though!  I feel like Pam on The Office at the end of Beach day!  

And because two NO PICTURE posts in a row on this PHOTOGRAPHY blog would be SUPER lame, here is a little picture I took for my photography class...

We are discussing aperture and I happened to be out in my favorite place so far in Cache Valley, so I tried a few things.  Isn't it beautiful this time of year?!