FINE ART ATELIER: 02 | TATEV MONASTERY
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Tatev Monastery in Armenia is a highlight for photographers with a great vantage point accessed from a little further up the road and a short walk. On this day, low cloud streamed through to obscure our view, but rather than packing away our cameras, it provided a wonderful opportunity to capture a more moody interpretation.
The main purpose of the Fine Art Ateliers is to discuss ideas and approaches, not the step-by-step mechanics which are covered elsewhere in this MasterClass.
FINE ART ATELIER: 02 | MOUNT NEMRUT
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Mount Nemrut lies in the heart of Turkey, topped by a mound of loose stones and flanked by two terraces, each with a set of remarkable carved statues. Now in a state of disrepair, the heads of the statues on the western terrace are left lying around in a random fashion, ideal for a photograph or two.
What you are seeing in this movie is a series of steps from the basic capture to the final rendering. The steps are not necessarily the quickest way to create the image, rather they follow the thought process of discovering the image through colour, contrast and exposure. Two quite separate processes are involved: that of pre-visualising the image, and that of rendering it in Photoshop. This movie also uses an older version of Photoshop, but the process would be identical in the current versions.
KNOWLEDGE: 02 | Which Lenses Are Best for Landscapes?
Almost every lens is suitable for landscape photography, but depending on what you wish to achieve, some are more suitable than others.
Standard Zooms
The main problem with the standard zoom lens that comes with a DSLR or mirrorless camera is just that: it’s standard. It will let you take standard landscape photos with standard focal lengths and give you standard image quality. However, generally speaking we don’t want ‘standard’, we want something exceptional!
A standard zoom lens has a focal length (zoom) range of 28-120mm or thereabouts. The 28mm wide-angle is moderately wide, while the 120mm is barely telephoto. While these lenses are great all-rounders, their main limitation is that they don’t give your landscapes much of a hand. It’s not that you won’t take landscapes with these zoom settings, rather that you need to have a wider choice. Instead of a 28mm, you should be starting with a 16mm (or a 12mm on an APS-C size sensor), while at the telephoto end a 300mm lens can be a lot of fun.
With a wider range of focal lengths in your camera bag, more opportunities will present themselves and very often you can turn a ‘standard’ landscape into something quite exceptional, simply by choosing the correct lens.
Prime vs Zoom
These days, there is no need to purchase a prime lens over a ‘zoom’ lens. Most autofocus zoom lenses aren’t really zoom lenses at all, rather they are ‘multi-focal length’ lenses. A true zoom lens retains focus throughout the zoom range. Multi focal length lenses don’t need to maintain focus because the camera simply refocuses the lens, plus they are easier to design and manufacture, keeping the price down.
The main reason people claim that prime lenses (a single focal length lens e.g. 35mm) are superior to zooms is because they are easier to design. Generally speaking a 35mm prime lens will perform better than a 16-35mm zoom lens at the 35mm setting, simply because the optical engineers can work with fewer compromises.
You will generally find a prime lens does produce a superior result to a zoom lens at the same focal length, but the difference might not be as important as the versatility provided by a zoom lens. Sometimes the difference can be found in sharpness, but with modern zoom lenses being so good, often the main differences concern barrel or pincushion distortion. These may be issues for architectural photographers, but might not impact landscape photographer the same way.
Pro vs Consumer Quality
More important than prime versus zoom quality is consumer versus pro quality. Canon, Nikon and Sony all have professional series lenses which are more costly than the consumer models, but they offer a noticeable improvement in quality.
Sometimes we think that the sensor size is all that matters when it comes to image quality, but this isn’t true. Every link in the imaging chain is important, including the first link: the lens.
Years ago, I compared a 10-megapixel Leica M8 with a 21-megapixel Canon 1Ds Mark III and a 25-megapixel Nikon D3x. Surprisingly, the Leica M8 held its own against the Canon and Nikon, even though their sensors had twice the pixel count. And this isn’t to discount the quality of Canon or Nikon lenses – they are great, but Leica’s optics are a step up again.
What this experience shows is that a good quality lens can make improvements to the overall image quality, perhaps as much as twice your pixel count. Upgrading to professional quality optics is a good first step in your quest for image clarity.
More Focal Lengths
So which lenses should you own? Your decisions will be affected by your budget for photography, but assuming you’ve just won a lottery or that money is no object, here are some suggestions:
Replace your standard zoom lens with a professional one. This generally means a constant aperture f2.8 lens like a 28-70mm or a 24-70mm (for a full frame sensor) and you will notice an improvement in image quality immediately.
Next you need a wide-angle lens. A 16-35mm zoom or equivalent is a great place to start (assuming a full frame sensor), although Nikon’s 14-24mm ultra wide-angle zoom and Canon's 11-24mm are wider still. You should also look at the 17mm and 24mm shift (perspective control) lenses from Canon and Nikon as these can be used creatively for landscapes as well.
At the other end of the scale, a 300mm lens is incredibly useful. Landscape photography isn’t always about capturing a wide-ranging vista. Often much stronger photos can be composed with a telephoto lens, isolating the interesting sections from an otherwise busy scene.
Now jumping into a 300mm f2.8 lens is both expensive and heavy! If you have to carry your equipment for any distance, a smaller f5.6 lens is much lighter, or you may prefer a 75-300mm or 100-400mm zoom.
So have I forgotten the 70-200mm zoom? The constant aperture f2.8 lenses from Canon, Nikon and Sony are very good, but a 75-300mm or a 100-300mm zoom is a better option still, in my opinion. However, if I take a 300mm or 400mm prime lens, I also take something like a 70-200mm.
High End Issues
For readers who are using medium format equipment, the lenses for the Phase One, Fuji and Hasselblad cameras are extremely good and you’re not going to be complaining about your results. Nevertheless, you can get even better quality by putting the MF (medium format) digital back onto a view or technical camera (such as a Horseman, Cambo, Alpa or Arca Swiss). This applies more to wide-angle lenses than telephotos.
Designing lenses for DSLR cameras is problematic. Often the lens’s optimum distance from the sensor for a wide-angle focal length is much closer than is possible with a DSLR mirror box. However, when it comes to the large format lenses from Schneider and Rodenstock, mounted on a technical camera, the lens can be positioned as close to the sensor as required and the image quality is unbelievably good, especially around the edges.
As the world changes from DSLR to mirrorless camera designs, the problem of the mirror box disappears and this is why a lot of camera manufacturers are encouraging us to upgrade to lenses specifically designed for mirrorless cameras. In theory, they can be sharper than those designed for a DSLR, certainly when it comes to wide-angles and the edges of the image. And mirrorless medium format cameras share the same benefits.
So, in terms of ultimate image quality, a 23mm/24mm Schneider or 28mm Rodenstock lens on a Cambo or XT camera with a Phase One medium format back is the answer, but it isn’t always practical to shoot with these technical cameras (no viewfinder, no exposure control, need a tripod etc). Often a more practical solution is a medium format DSLR like the Phase One XF because although its image quality isn’t quite up to the technical cameras, it’s much easier and quicker to use – no point having the best quality lenses in the world if you don’t have time to capture your subject!
However, medium format is very expensive and most readers will be using a full-frame DSLR or mirrorless camera. Certainly there’s no doubt that with the latest lenses from Canon, Nikon and Sony etc, you too will be producing landscape images with quality that was unachievable just a few years ago.
POST PRODUCTION: 02 | Soft Light Dodge and Burn
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In the feature Fine Art Atelier movie on Mount Nemrut, included with this Masterclass, reference is made to a '50% grey layer' using the soft light blending mode. It's one of many ways of lightening and darkening your images in a non-destructive way. It's not the only way, nor necessarily the best way, but it's a very useful technique to have, especially for subtle adjustments to shadows and highlights.
LOCATION SURVEY: 02 | Turkey
The ancient mosque ruins at Harran, south eastern Turkey. Taken with the Phase One P45 and an 80mm standard lens, around 7 exposures stitched together. It is overkill until I want to make a giant enlargement.
My flight to Istanbul landed early in the morning, too early for my hotel room to be ready. "Just go up to the restaurant and have some breakfast", the hotelier suggested. "We'll have the room ready in an hour".
Perfect, I thought. I was hungry and a strong cup of Turkish coffee would surely keep me awake for the rest of the day. The drive from the airport along Istanbul's modern freeway was in stark contrast to the Sultanahmet district - the old city - where our hotel was situated. Tight narrow streets twisted and turned their way up the hill with glimpses of minarets and shiny domes punctuating the skyline, but nothing prepared me for the vista from the hotel's top floor restaurant.
Spread out before me was a cloudless maritime panorama with the Aya Sofya and Blue Mosque framing the legendary Bosphorus, the narrow neck of water that joins the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. Ships large and small plied the waterways and the morning sun silhouetted the towering minarets. Istanbul, or Constantinople as it was known in ancient times, was awash with history, buildings and monuments stretching back to Roman times, yet it's a remarkably modern city. It felt like Europe, except instead of a surfeit of churches, there were literally hundreds of mosques.
When you visit a country, there are always a few moments you will never forget and the view from the rooftop was one of these. The coffee was pretty good too, although I chickened out and just drank espresso. I couldn't wait to grab my camera and get out there.
The New Mosque in Istanbul is over 400 years old! The Turks have a sensible attitude to photography and children inside their houses of worship. Phase One P45+ with 28mm lens.
Travel Tips
As with many places in the world, Turkey is more than just a landscape photography destination. You need to be prepared for a variety of opportunities including people, urban and architectural photography. The interiors of the mosques are simply sensational!
I have led a number of photography tours, plus I've travelled extensively with friends and family. Basically I'm happy if I'm travelling, but I have to acknowledge one important advantage for a photography tour to a new destination: a good photography guide will take you to places you might not think to go yourself. They know the best locations, the best days, the best times and, if you haven't been to a location before, it's a sensible introduction to a country.
For instance, most locations in Turkey are happy to let you take photographs, but if you want to use a tripod an extra fee is payable. Sometimes this fee can be $100 to $200, but our guide managed to ‘arrange' our visits so these fees weren't always payable.
The mosque in Eyup, one of the suburbs of Istanbul and a place less frequented by tourists. Nikon D700, 24-70mm.
And for people who are concerned about their safety, I found Turkey to be very safe. Sure, I was only there for two weeks and the places I visited were popular tourist destinations, so perhaps security was higher than I realised. Nevertheless, the people were friendly and accommodating. Similarly, I was always polite and I didn't go to places that felt inhospitable. There are places in my home city of Sydney where I wouldn't venture with a camera and it's the same everywhere around the world.
My guide pointed out to me that Turkey has 20 million tourists each year. Statistics are on your side!
Mount Nemrut - an amazing place in an amazing landscape. Phase One P45+, 28mm lens, stitched.
Master Photo: Mount Nemrut
The alarm went off at 2.30 a.m. It seemed like I had only been asleep for a few minutes and now it was time to get up again. I'm not a morning person, but the thought of the climb up to Mount Nemrut had me out of bed in a flash. We had a two hour drive ahead of us and the promise of coffee. I figured our guide, Mehmet, and driver would probably need two coffees.
A few hundred metres from the hotel our driver took a short detour and Mehmet jumped out of the minibus in front of a bakery. He returned with a bag of fresh bread - perhaps our coffee stop didn't have any sustenance.
The minibus bumped along. Road works, a few back roads, some tight corners. I dozed a bit, wondering why I was up so early! Mount Nemrut is a tomb, so they believe. On top of its peak, a crazy pre-Roman king built a huge mound of loose stones, some 70 metres high. On either side of the mound is a terrace, and on each terrace he erected large stone statues of the gods, including one of himself because surely he must be a god as well.
Today the gods' heads are on the ground, creating an eerie, other-worldly scene that proves truth is stranger than fiction. It's a popular tourist destination that works well with a sunrise or a sunset. Mehmet had worked out that the best time was sunrise and hence our early start. After a strong coffee, our van climbed a steep hill and into the Mt Nemrut National Park. The road stops around 600 metres before the summit and, after a second warming beverage, we hoofed it up to the top.
At the top, a park warden met us and Mehmet gave him the loaves of bread. It seems advantageous to have friends at these sites who can show you around and help you get the best angles. We enjoyed another cup of tea in a small hut in which the warden lived for the summer months, returning to the valley in winter when Mt Nemrut is covered in snow.
It was cold, but it could have been much colder. And it might have been had it been clear. Was it unfortunate that the weather was overcast that morning? It was if you wanted the typical sunrise (or sunset) photo with the angled sunlight and stark blue sky behind, but since I wasn't working professionally, I was quite comfortable with the low moody clouds and the starkness of the surrounding landscape. And it also meant we had the place to ourselves.
Being on the peak of a mountain, it was difficult to get enough distance between the camera and the monuments, but by stitching a series of images taken with the Phase One 645 camera and 28mm wide-angle lens, I was able to create a panoramic view in the flat light that would eventually work quite nicely in Photoshop with a little added contrast.
Cappadocia from the air. The photos from his article also feature in my book Away: The Art of Travel Photography co-authored with David Oliver. Nikon D700, 24-70mm.
Master Photo: Cappadocia
Weird. Amazing. Unearthly. Intricate. Surprising. Photogenic. Whatever you've heard about Cappadocia, it's that and more, a labyrinth of trails cris-crossing a landscape full of rock-cut chapels and monasteries. A world of fairy chimneys, our first sight was a typical tourist stop overlooking some well preserved examples with cobblestone walkways and shops on every corner. My heart sank thinking this was all that Cappadocia was to be, but I needn't have worried. There is so much to shoot around Cappadocia I could return half a dozen times and still get new and interesting angles.
Around 30 million years ago, two neighbouring volcanoes deposited vast quantities of ash which solidified into a soft rock called tuff. In places the tuff was covered with a layer of lava which today appears to cap many of the tuff formations. Cappadocia itself extends over 300 square kilometres, but the best concentrations of rock formations are found around Nevsehir, Goreme and Urgup where we stayed.
One advantages of travelling in spring and not summer is that sunrise is a respectable hour. We were up at 6.00 a.m. for a balloon ride, perhaps the best way you can possibly see Cappadocia. In the early morning light, the balloons lit up as they were filled, the pointed shapes of eroded tuff structures providing an eerie backdrop.
Once aloft, the landscape took on an otherworldly appearance. Cappadocia is strange enough, but viewed from the air it's simply amazing. Bleached fingers of land extend from the mountains across the flat fields, yellow leaved trees contrast sharply against the ivory rock surfaces, and everywhere you look vacant windows and doors peer out of irregular peaks and natural minarets. Shooting from the balloon, I found the 24-70mm zoom very useful, but felt a long telephoto would have been even more helpful. Keep the ISO setting up as high as you can before the sun comes up because, although the balloon may be moving very slowly, it's still movement which can degrade image quality. Fast shutters speeds are a must.
PHOTO ADVICE: 02 | Critique Session
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During the production of the Landscape Photography MasterClass, some of our early subscribers kindly provided some images for critique and review. This has turned into a very popular part of each MasterClass and we have received many complimentary comments about how useful the Critique Session is.
Of course, there are no absolutes in photography and so what you view in this movie is really just one photographer's opinion about another photographer's work. However, hopefully the advice and observations can be helpful in improving your own photography.
BUSINESS ACUMEN: 02 | How To Price Your Landscape Photographs
The castle at Belmonte in central Spain is in a wonderful state of delapidation and you can walk around the battlements and through the old halls without guides or ropes.
Are your landscape prints good enough to sell? Have you thought about having an exhibition and putting a price on your work? How much are you going to charge?
This is probably the toughest question you’ll have to answer. If you price your work too high, people might not buy them because they’re so expensive. Price them too low and people might think there is something wrong with them because they are too cheap!
The good news is that there are many people around the world buying landscape photography and there's no reason people won't buy yours. A market exists and certainly it is very gratifying to have someone use their hard earned cash to buy one of your images.
How Much?
So how much should you charge for your work? I recommend you charge $500 for a 20-inch, unframed photograph, and $1000 for a 40-inch print.
Why This Is The Wrong Answer…
It is possible you could charge $2000 for your photographs, in which case my advice has cost you dearly. Or $500 for your work might be more than the market is willing to pay, and so you won’t sell anything. An article like this can’t tell you exactly what you should charge, but we can look at the process of working out your prices to give you a starting point.
What Are Other Photographers Charging?
A quick trip around the internet will show you what other landscape photographers are charging for their work. Click onto Ken Duncan’s website (www.kenduncan.com) and take the link to one of his photographs and you are likely to find a price between $2000 and $5000 depending on its size. At Peter Lik’s on-line gallery, the prices start at $400, but I know from visiting Peter’s galleries that his prices also extend well into the thousands for larger prints.
Now take a visit to a Sydney newspaper website, www.fairfaxphotos.com, click on the consumer link, select an image and take a look at the pricing. A 6x8-inch print will cost you $30 or you can spend up to $90 for an unframed 20” print. This is less than five percent of the cost of Ken or Peter’s prints. What’s the difference?
Many of the photographs on the Fairfax site may be unremarkable, whereas most of the photos on Ken and Peter’s sites are exceptional, but the reality is all three websites are selling photographs. If you continue your investigations around the internet, you’ll find photographs selling for very little (the price barely covers the cost of the paper) to much, much more (the photographer only needs to sell one print a year to make a good living). The point to note is that what you charge for your work hasn’t much to do with what other photographers are charging because you can always find someone somewhere charging at every price point. Copying other photographer's pricing isn't the answer, although it is very good research to have on hand.
Perhaps a better question to ask is, what is your market willing to pay?
What Are People Willing To Pay For Landscape Prints?
The answer to this question is the same as the first one. Ken and Peter’s customers are paying from $2000 to $50,000, while visitors to the Fairfax website are paying between $30 and $90.
There are many reasons for justifying the pice difference, but looked at logically, none of them will make a lot of sense. The same can be said about many purchasing decisions. Why, for instance, do some people buy a Rolls Royce when a large BMW or Mercedes will do just as well (or perhaps a large Ford or Holden, for that matter!) Why do some people buy their clothes from a boutique store, others from department stores like Target or Kmart?
Let’s say you take my advice and charge $1000 for a 40-inch print. Some people will think it’s too cheap and that you can’t be much of a photographer. Others will ask how can you justify such a high price when the cost of the materials to produce it can’t be more than $50. And then a few people will happily open their wallets and buy the print because they love it so much and $1000 is within their budget.
Some people will pay whatever you want them to pay. Note, this doesn’t mean that all people will pay your price, rather there are some people out there who will if you can find them and package your product in such a way that they see value in its price.
So, if your landscape photography isn’t as good as Ken Duncan’s or Peter Lik’s, if it isn’t clear, clean and impressive, you might have trouble asking for prices as high as they do. In fact, you might have trouble getting any price at all because the quality of your photographs needs to be of professional quality. However, even if your images are as good as the best in the world, will you be able to charge the same. Yes, you can, but...
The ‘but’ is a huge subject and has to deal with marketing, reputation and perception. Ken and Peter have built impressive reputations, published many books, invested in galleries and staff who are trained to sell. When people enter their environment, they are impressed by what they see and all the surrounding indicators (the size, the quality, the framing, the gallery ambience, the gallery fittings, the location, the staff…) tell them that these photographs are valuable works of art and that the prices being asked are justified. The only question the customers need to answer is which print do they want to buy and what size!
Hopefully the first two issues have convinced you that the price you charge is as much in your head as it is in your customer’s. Create a great product, surround it in a convincing story (the marketing) and you can charge anywhere from $30 to $6000 for a print. How many you sell will be more a matter of marketing than the dollar value you choose.
So, you can charge whatever you want to for a print, but how much should you charge if you want to make a profit?
How Much Do You Need To Charge?
How much you need to charge for your work depends on whether you're selling your work as a full time professional, or if you’re selling a few prints on weekends for pocketmoney. Note, this determines how much you ‘need’ to charge for your work, not what you 'should' charge. Let’s go through the thought process.
We'll start like most photographers do with some casual sales of their work. Perhaps you’ve taken a market stall or you have your prints hanging in a local café. You still have your day job, so if you don’t sell anything you won’t be going hungry. How much should you charge?
Let’s break down the answer into three components:
- The cost of the materials;
- The commission or rent;
- Your profit.
There’s little point in selling your prints for less than it costs you to produce them, but generally speaking photographers don’t take into account the cost of taking the photographs. The starting point is turning your beautifully produced digital file into a print, rather than the three month tour around Australia or America capturing raw files.
Let’s say a large print costs you $50 and you’re selling your prints unframed. In this situation, the cost of materials may be as little as the cost of having a lab or bureau make a print for you. However, even if you sell your print for $50, you will make a loss because the market stall or the café are likely to charge rent or commission costs.
Let’s assume the commission we’re going to pay to the café is 50 percent. Now I know that many cafes mightn’t charge anything, but most galleries charge 40 to 50 percent and so it’s useful to have a pricing system that factors in a commission.
How much is the commission? This will depend on the selling price so in some ways we will have to work out our price backwards. Let's start with a simple example:
|
Selling Price:
|
$100
|
|
Less Commission
|
$50 |
|
Less Cost of Product
|
$50 |
|
Profit
|
Nil |
This isn’t a good result, so let’s put our price up.
|
Selling Price:
|
$200
|
|
Less Commission
|
$100 |
|
Less Cost of Product
|
$50 |
|
Profit
|
$50 |
As you can see, that 50 percent commission is having a big impact on the profit, yet this is how most markets work. Every product you purchase in a shop includes commissions or mark-ups retained by the retailers and wholesalers.
Some photographers think paying a commission is too expensive so they set up their own galleries. However, instead of paying commission, they end up paying rent, advertising, wages and so on. It doesn’t really matter what you call these costs, the reality is that every business has them. So, when working out your prices for casual sales, I recommend you keep the commission figure at 50 percent.
So, if you start with a $500 selling price, what profit might you make?
|
Selling Price:
|
$500
|
|
Less Commission
|
$250 |
|
Less Cost of Product
|
$50 |
|
Profit
|
$200 |
If you sell your prints through a gallery, you end up with $200 profit. If you sell your print over the internet, your profit is $450 because you don’t have any commission to pay, but you do have internet and delivery costs. Many photographers think that $500 is a good selling price because for the few sales they make, they end up with $450 profit, but their reality changes drastically if they decide to sell their work full time. Now, instead of earning a little pocketmoney, they have to get out there and actively sell their work and this costs money for advertising, rent and staff.
So what happens if you turn your casual print sales into a business? How many prints do you need to sell each week to make a living?
|
Number of sales per week
|
5 |
|
|
Average sale
|
$500 |
|
|
Annual sales (50 weeks)
|
|
$125,000 |
|
less Cost of Sales
|
|
|
|
Number of sales per week
|
5 |
|
|
Average cost of print & frame
|
$200 |
|
|
Annual cost of sales (50 weeks)
|
|
$50,000 |
|
Gross Profit
|
|
$75000 |
| less Overheads |
|
|
| Rent |
$50,000 |
|
| Staff Wages |
$50,000 |
|
| Utilities |
$5,000 |
|
| Advertising |
$10,000 |
|
| Other |
$15,000 |
|
| Total Annual Overheads |
|
$130,000 |
| Net Profit (including your wages) |
LOSS |
-$55,000 |
At five prints per week for $500, the numbers don’t add up. You haven’t even earned enough to pay a staff person some casual wages and you’ve spent the entire year sitting in a shop for no profit. Either you sell more prints or you put your prices up.
Let’s look at selling more prints first:
|
Number of sales per week
|
10 |
|
|
Average sale
|
$500 |
|
|
Annual sales (50 weeks)
|
|
$250,000 |
|
less Cost of Sales
|
|
|
|
Number of sales per week
|
10 |
|
|
Average cost of print & frame
|
$200 |
|
|
Annual cost of sales (50 weeks)
|
|
$100,000 |
|
Gross Profit
|
|
$150,000 |
| less Overheads |
|
|
| Rent |
$50,000 |
|
| Staff Wages |
$50,000 |
|
| Utilities |
$5,000 |
|
| Advertising |
$10,000 |
|
| Other |
$15,000 |
|
| Total Annual Overheads |
|
$130,000 |
| Net Profit (including your wages) |
|
$20,000 |
Things are looking better with 10 prints per week, but there still isn’t enough profit in the business to let you do it full time. What if instead of selling more prints, keep it at 5 prints per week and just put your prices up?
|
Number of sales per week
|
5 |
|
|
Average sale
|
$1000 |
|
|
Annual sales (50 weeks)
|
|
$250,000 |
|
less Cost of Sales
|
|
|
|
Number of sales per week
|
5 |
|
|
Average cost of print & frame
|
$200 |
|
|
Annual cost of sales (50 weeks)
|
|
$50,000 |
|
Gross Profit
|
|
$200,000 |
| less Overheads |
|
|
| Rent |
$50,000 |
|
| Staff Wages |
$50,000 |
|
| Utilities |
$5,000 |
|
| Advertising |
$10,000 |
|
| Other |
$15,000 |
|
| Total Annual Overheads |
|
$130,000 |
| Net Profit (including your wages) |
|
$70,000 |
Ahh, a much better result, but there’s an important lesson for photographers who want to start out selling at market stall prices and then make the transition to their own gallery. If you build up a following of customers who are used to paying $500 for your work, and then suddenly you turn full time and put your prices up to $1000, will your market still be there? Why would someone want to pay twice the price simply because you decided to open a gallery?
Perhaps a better strategy is to start with the higher prices so that when you do decide to go full time, you won’t have to chase a brand new market as well.
Okay, so what happens if you put your prices up and you sell more prints?
|
Number of sales per week
|
10 |
|
|
Average sale
|
$1000 |
|
|
Annual sales (50 weeks)
|
|
$500,000 |
|
less Cost of Sales
|
|
|
|
Number of sales per week
|
10 |
|
|
Average cost of print & frame
|
$200 |
|
|
Annual cost of sales (50 weeks)
|
|
$100,000 |
|
Gross Profit
|
|
$400,000 |
| less Overheads |
|
|
| Rent |
$50,000 |
|
| Staff Wages |
$50,000 |
|
| Utilities |
$5,000 |
|
| Advertising |
$50,000 |
|
| Other |
$15,000 |
|
| Total Annual Overheads |
|
$170,000 |
| Net Profit (including your wages) |
|
$230,000 |
Wow, looks pretty good, doesn’t it! We’ve even increased our advertising budget to $50,000 and we’re still making money!
Were it so easy! To earn that $230,000, I can guarantee you there is a lot of hard work in shooting, marketing and general administration. However, that’s a different topic – what we’re trying to work out here is how much we should charge and hopefully I’ve shown you that it doesn’t pay to start too low because this is a short term outlook. Much better to price your work fairly so that should you be popular, you can turn professional on a full time basis.
And if you don’t want to turn full time professional, isn’t it better to be paid $1000 for a print than $30?
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