As a portrait photographer, I use a lot of my friends and family in my work but I need to start branching out and getting used to paying people to be in my work. Prices do vary depending on how high up you are in the modeling world. But also getting used to doing model release forms so I have my own back! For my current project I am doing at university I have started to produce model release forms and, in some cases, pay my models for working with me. Because I am wanting to start selling my own work I need consent from the models so that I can sell images that include them. But before I sell my work I need to know what other people are charging and this lecture really helped me understand what I need to be charging.
I need to make sure that I am:
- Market value, not a per-hour estimate.
- Research – compare and contrast how other emerging and more established photographic artists are pricing.
- Set prices at a conservative level for your first edition of prints – just as it’s better to sell out a print run, it’s better to gradually increase prices than cut them.
- This increase can happen slowly over time, but it also can happen over a single edition of work, which is often priced on a sliding scale these days
I Have created a model release form template that I have got approved by my tutors so I can use this in the future too when I ask models to work with me!